We have not a few post-trauma things in common, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and I. After having our heads stitched back together, stepping onto recovery road, there’s a darn good chance we soon could be embarking on yet another road not taken, the campaign trail.

Here is the conclusion of the guest post from Dixie Coskie that began last week. As you will see, a brain injury in one child can deeply affect the other children in the family. Parents are caught in the middle, knowing that all their children need them while having to spend most of their energy dealing with the brain-injured

We all react to others, and often that means we give up control over our lives to some degree. Sometimes we do this consciously, but most times, we don’t realize how we’re changing our behavior to suit someone else. And it’s not necessarily good for us. So read the story in this week’s post at Journal After Brain Injury (I hope you get a chuckle out of it), and then pull out your journal and choose a prompt or two to write about.

Rehabilitation after brain injury is hard. It is not fun. It isn’t glamorous. But it is THE most important component to a person’s recovery.

A rehab program is customized to meet the needs of the person and involves professionals such as a physiotherapist, occupational therapist, speech-language pathologist, and a neuropsychologist. Rehab can be done at home, in an outpatient setting at the hospital, a rehab facility or in a medical clinic. The goal of rehabilitation is to assist the person in restoring functions they lost as a result of the brain injury but that can be restored, or to learn how to do things differently if those functions cannot be restored. While rehabilitation sounds like an event, in my opinion, it is more like a process… a process that is built upon each time the person does the work. A process takes time… sometimes a long time.

In the past decade, emergency room visits by kids with concussions is up 60%. The increase is likely due to more careful treatment of head injuries. Football and bicycling were the leading reasons for children’s brain injuries, probably because these sports are the most popular.

Since my experience with TBI was through my husband, I haven’t written about the impact that the brain injury of a child can have on a family. However, Dixie Fremont-Smith Coskie was forced to become an expert in that subject when a car hit her son Paul and left him with a severe traumatic brain injury.

Social interactions with other people can be very difficult for a TBI survivor. A person’s personality is the way he interacts with others and the way he responds to various situations. Brain injury can often have cause a person to have heightened emotions and react to situations with anxiety and lack of control. Therefore, a person’s social response to various situations is probably one of the most noticeable dimensions in behavior.

Peer Support is essentially individuals supporting other individuals with similar or shared experiences. This support is offered one-to-one or in a group setting. The benefits of peer support are numerous, including that the supporter has credibility and is trusted because they have been through the experience.

Did you know that National Family Caregiver Month (NFC Month) is observed every November? The National Family Caregiver Association (NFCA) originated the observance in 1997 to focus attention on the more than 65 million family caregivers who provide 80% of the long-term care services in the US. Studies show that family caregivers provide over $375 billion in “free caregiving services” just in care for older adults annually.

After the trauma of a brain injury and all the changes it brings to your life and the life of your family, it’s important to discover the story of your new life. We humans respond deeply to story. We can’t help it. We’re not only natural-born story tellers, we are stories. Before your brain injury, or the injury of a loved one, you had one story of your life. Now you have a new one, which can be confusing, frightening, even incomprehensible. Uncovering the story of your post-injury life will help you understand what has happened, how you are reacting, and the actions you can take to enhance your life today and in the future. One good way to do this is to write in a journal.