Lessons From a Former TLC Patient

Recently, we had a guest speaker in our 4 p.m. Community group. A former TLC patient gave a wonderful presentation to our current patients. The former patient is a stroke survivor who had done well in therapy at TLC and continued to work to improve himself after discharge. The current TLC patients in attendance warmly received his wise words. I would like to share a few pieces of advice he gave in hope that they might benefit others.

1. Work as hard as you can to get better. It may seem obvious that you need to work hard, but some days are rougher than others. On those rough days give the best that you can, even if that best doesn’t quite produce the same quality of work produced on your good days.

2. Take advantage of the therapy you have now. Once you leave inpatient therapy, your access to trained therapists will significantly decline. You may still have access to outpatient therapists but this will by its nature almost always be for far fewer hours per week than in an inpatient setting.

3. Set goals. Goals reliably encourage motivation and allow you to check objectively to see if you are doing what is needed in order to take steps forward in your recovery.

4. You have to be self-motivated. No one can make you do anything, even if that thing is clearly in your own best interest. This is especially true after you have discharged to home and the brunt of the work falls on you and you alone.

5. Don’t get caught in the trap of saying “I’ll do it after discharge.” It is vital to set healthy habits there in a therapeutic environment specifically designed to be conducive to just that. Carrying over those healthy habits to life at home then becomes that much more attainable an objective. It is much harder to try to set healthy habits on your own without that support.

I hope all would take his sagely advice to heart for use in improving rehabilitation experiences!

Learn about the Moody Neuro’s brain injury treatment services.

Kody Fields, a talented and athletic young man from North Texas, was involved in a terrible vehicle collision in 2008. Through his hard work and with the help of the Moody Neurorehabilitation Institute staff, Kody has been able to attend college. Kody is truly an inspiration to others. TLC is proud to have helped him in his journey. Click on the link below to read his story.

http://www.kcbd.com/story/24776214/spc-student-overcomes-trauma-to-attend-college

Learn about the Moody Neurorehabilitation Institute’s brain injury treatment services.

Since opening in 1982, the Moody Neurorehabilitation Institute has enjoyed many successes with our patients. Tony Strueby is one of those success stories. Tony’s traumatic brain injury caused him to suffer significant deficits in speech and mobility which impacted many areas of his life. With the help of the TLC staff, Tony was able to improve and adapt. He has done so well that he has returned to working and driving. Read more about Tony’s journey in this linked story from the Texas Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services (DARS):
http://www.dars.state.tx.us/news/stories/drs_tony.shtml

For those unfamiliar with DARS, it is a Texas state agency which provides funding for treatment and medical devices for Texas residents who have suffered traumatic brain injuries. DARS has enabled many of our patients to receive treatment who would not otherwise have been able to do so due to a lack of insurance or having insurance that would not fund treatment. As receiving treatment is vital for post-injury improvement, please click on the link below to see if you or a loved one would qualify for services through DARS:

http://www.dars.state.tx.us/drs/crs.shtml

Learn about how Moody Neuro can help with neuropsychology and counseling, speech and language disorders, physical therapy, outpatient rehabilitation assistance, community integration programs, and occupational therapy.

The Galveston Daily News recently did an in-depth story on Moody Neurorehabilitation Institute therapist Lauren Mitchell’s extensive and tireless work in service of successful community integration of patients at TLC and residents of our sister-facility, Tideway. Lauren has previously written for this blog about the purpose and design of a community integration experience.

http://tlcrehab.wordpress.com/2013/07/15/community-integration-experience/

Below is a link to the article, which is available to subscribers to the Galveston Daily News:

http://www.galvestondailynews.com/lifestyle/health/article_b94cfaca-3230-11e4-9989-0017a43b2370.html

For those who are not subscribers, here is a photo of the article from the front page of the newspaper.

Great job, Lauren!

Vital to the core mission of the Moody Neurorehabilitation Institute is the conducting of research designed to enhance understanding of and improve treatment strategies for brain injury. The result of this research finds its home in publication in a wide range of top professional journals and chapter after chapter in books relied upon by the traumatic brain injury treatment community. Recently, TLC staff neuropsychologists Drs. Dennis Zgaljardic and Matthew Lambert along with staff occupational therapist Rebekah Miller published a paper on the reliability and validity of a newer test to determine naming deficits. Difficulty with the naming of objects (for example: saying “fork” when you mean “pencil”), known as anomia, is not uncommon with patients who have brain injuries (particularly if the injury is to the left hemisphere of the brain). However since most tests of cognitive abilities are developed using members of the healthy population as a testing sample, it is unclear to what degree these tests might be appropriate when applied to other populations (such as patients with brain injuries). Identifying which tests should or should not be used with a brain injured population is an extremely important component of treatment. Using a test that is not appropriate for an individual with a brain injury can lead to misdiagnosis and based on that misdiagnosis, incorrect treatment.
The paper, titled Naming Test of the Neuropsychological Assessment Battery: Reliability and Validity in a Sample of Patients with Acquired Brain Injury, was published this past December in the Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology. In the study, the researchers compared the Neuropsychological Assessment Battery (NAB) Naming test with various other neuropsychological tests. The Neuropsychological Assessment Battery is a relatively new group of tests designed to measure a wide range of cognitive skills including memory, attention and of course naming. For the NAB Naming test to be found appropriate for use in a brain injured population, the researchers first looked to see if the test scores correlated with scores on other similar tests that have been shown to be valid with such a population. For instance, a person who scores highly on the NAB Naming test should similarly do well on another naming test. The researchers found this to be true. Next, the researchers looked to see if the NAB Naming test scores were not correlated to unrelated tests. For example, a person’s score on the NAB Naming test should have nothing to do with his or her score on an attention task. This also was found to be true. Thus, the NAB Naming test was found to be an appropriate test to use with individuals who have brain injuries.

Below is a link to the paper abstract:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23714104

Dr. Brent Masel, President and Medical Director of the Moody Neurorehabilitation Institute, earlier this year was awarded the Sheldon Berrol M.D. Clinical Service Award from the Brain Injury Association of America. This award honors distinguished contributions to fields directly related to patient treatment and also recognizes exemplary involvement in professional training and/or education over the course of an extended clinical career. Congratulations Dr. Masel!

Learn about all of the Moody Neuro’s brain injury treatment services.