Rebooting an injured brain

Bob Stahl was thrown 20 or 30 feet in an accident from the tractor-trailer he was driving. He remembers that it was a Wednesday. In fact, it was November 1, 1989.

Lou Nash suffered the first of three strokes when he was 58 years old. Now 67, the Edmonds resident holds a monthly stroke-and-brain injury survivors support group at Edmonds Community College.

The first doctor that Stahl, 67, of Everett, saw after his accident said that he had suffered some hearing loss. The next day another doctor seemed more concerned.

By Sunday Stahl was staggering and couldn’t get up. He hasn’t worked since.

More than 15 years and several surgeries later Stahl still hasn’t completely recovered his sense of taste or smell. The two things he can smell are cedar and manure.

Stahl is one of 116,000 Washington residents who are disabled because of a brain injury. He is also a member of the South Snohomish County Brain Injury Association, a group that meets monthly to talk about their lives and how to cope as a survivors of brain injury.

“It’s nice to talk to people who understand you,” Stahl said.

Each year in the United States almost 1.4 million people suffer a traumatic brain injury. Approximately 475,000 occur among children under 14 years old. The highest rate of brain injuries are in adults 75 years or older.

In many head or brain injury cases caregivers don’t know how to handle the survivors. Caregivers, as well as family and friends, can come to the support group and learn about ways of coping and what resources might be available to them.

Marilyn Robison, 70, says that she has learned a lot from others who come to the group.

The Everett woman had surgery on a tumor in 1991. Robison had to relearn a lot of things. She worked with small children to do that. As they learned for the first time, she learned all over again.

Head injuries have a number of causes, including stroke, tumors, heart attack, falls, sports injuries, assaults, such as shaken baby syndrome and car accidents such as the one that Joel Forsberg was in.

Forsberg was living in Oregon, attending school and studying medicine in 1977, when he broke his neck in a car accident. He was in a coma for three months and in denial for many years after.

It took almost 20 years for Forsberg to recover his former speech patterns. His attention span has been shortened too.

“I was lucky to survive,” said the 49-year-old Lynnwood man.

The stigma attached to those with brain injuries is great. In the group, members talk about how much their lives have changed. They are not the people they were before. They are unable to do the things they used to do. Family, friends and outsiders become frustrated and sometimes consider them a lost cause.

Depending on the type of injury, the lasting effects of brain injury can be loss of memory, confusion, fatigue and hearing loss.

“You have no personality,” said group leader Lou Nash, 67. “People wonder who are you, what are you?”

Members of the group would like people to know that just because their disability doesn’t show, it doesn’t mean they don’t have one.

Not being able to remember things is hard for Sheila McConnachie of Brier. “I tend to withdraw,” she said.

McConnachie, 50, has felt isolated even by family and friends.

After surgery for a brain tumor in 1996 McConnachie’s confusion was such that she had trouble knowing what to wear and when. Her minister came to the house to visit her and she put on an evening dress. Also, she found she couldn’t tell hot from cold.

“I figured out ways to be a survivor,” she said.

It’s aggravating to Stahl to hear on the news that someone “just” has a concussion, he said. “The brain is a computer. What tells you to go to the bathroom? Put one foot in front of the other?”

Stahl said that it’s not just other people who don’t understand what a brain injury survivor is going through. The survivors themselves sometimes don’t understand what’s happening to them.

“We’re not throwaways,” Nash said. “Accept me as I am or don’t accept me at all.”

Nash describes himself as assertive and ambitious.

“That got me into trouble and it got me out of trouble.” He still has a hearty laugh.

He recognizes that there was a big power shift in his relationship, something that often happens after a brain injury when the main breadwinner all of a sudden can’t work.

Nash was a branch manager for a food manufacturing company. He worked in Redmond and had a staff of five. Then he had a stroke.

“A broken arm or leg mends,” said Bill Nelson of the Brain Injury Association of Washington. “Brain injury is usually permanent.”

The Brain Injury Association of Washington, based in Seattle, has been together since 1982. Nash’s south Snohomish County branch has been meeting for almost 10 years.

Nobody is prepared for that instant life change, Nelson said. Brain injury is an invisible disability.

Once every 21 seconds a person sustains a brain injury, Nelson said. He added that support groups are one of the best places to go to get information on how to deal with catastrophic events. “It all takes time,” he said.

But a big problem for people with brain injuries is that time is slowed down. It takes them longer to do the things they did so easily before. This can lead to frustration and depression.

This is true for some people when returning to work. “The boss does,” Nelson said. “Nobody knows what’s wrong, and you’re in trouble but you don’t know it.”

You have to do a lot of practice work to have people see what you don’t see, Nelson said.

Those in the south Snohomish County group would like to see people being discharged from hospitals given information before going home. What has happened to them, the accident, the stroke, the fall, is scary, but facing the outside world as a different person needs to be addressed. They should be given information about support groups, and notices about the groups could be placed in doctors’ offices.

“I’ve tried to tell people about the support group. I’ve done everything but stand on my head and whistle,” Nash said. “That’s next.”

Christina Harper: 425-339-3491. E-mail harper@ heraldnet.com.

More information

The South Snohomish County Brain Injury Association meets at 6:30 p.m. every third Thursday at Edmonds Community College. For more details call Lou Nash at 425-776-7264.

Nash will be sharing a booth with the American Stroke Association from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday at the South County Senior Center, 220 Railroad Ave., Edmonds. Call 425-774-5555.

The Brain Injury Association of Washington meets from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Thursdays at 800 Jefferson St., Suite 600, Seattle. Call 800-523-5438. Or go online to www.biawa.org.

Contact the American Stroke Association at 800-562-6718.