hey guys, I wont post anymore boring replies , but just to let you know there are organizations trying to help...

Dear Mark,
Part of the lack of good care is the lack of good imaging. Docs seem to need to see something on a test before they will believe something is "real". The other issue is there needs to be more capacity. We need more docs that understand brain injury. When I first started in brain injury rehab way back in the day, the school of thought was if there was no loss of consciousness there was no injury, and a "mild" injury got better on it's own within 6 months. We have learned a lot since then, but there are still a lot of docs out there that learned that, and never bothered to look for newer info.

Sleep issues are the worst. It's the foundation of cognition really. If you are not getting good consistent sleep your mood goes down, you can't think straight, you are more irritable. And that's without a brain injury. It's also one of the harder things to treat. We really don't understand sleep all that well. We just know we need it.

There is hope - the BRAIN initiative started by the White House will give funding to develop better imaging technologies and better testing for all kinds of neurological trauma. Once there is evidence of injury, the medical community tends to believe there is a problem, and they will work to figure out how to fix it. There have been advances in neuroimaging that are very promising, and some work on biomarkers that could be very useful too.

The question still remains - once you know you have a brain injury, then what? That's the crux of what we try to push for more research - the treatment side.

Always feel free to contact me with questions.