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Marilyn Spivack: Advice for Families with a Loved One with Severe Brain Injury Advice for Families with a Loved One with Severe Brain Injury

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I often say to families when someone is very severely injured to keep a journal, to take videos, to begin to chart steps and progress. It's a very slow journey, and families get discouraged as well as the individual. But keep looking back and see where you've come. The most important thing is try not to think you can do this alone. You have to seek help. You have to seek peer support help, you have to seek help from professionals, and you just have to be patient.

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Keeping a journal, taking videos, and looking back to mark progress can help families with a loved one with a severe TBI. But most importantly, families need to seek help.

Produced by Krystal Klingenberg, Justin Rhodes, and Jared Schaubert, BrainLine.


Marilyn SpivackMarilyn Spivack, Marilyn Price Spivack is the neurotrauma outreach coordinator at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston. She is the co-founder and past president of the National Head Injury Foundation, now known as the Brain Injury Association of America. Her daughter, Deborah, sustained a severe traumatic brain injury in a car crash in 1975 when she was 15 years old.


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 Comments [1]

THIS IS THE BEST.....THE MOST INFORMATIVE AND SUPPORTIVE WEBSITE I'VE FOUND SINCE MY LI'L BROTHER HAD A M/CYCLE ACCIDENT 64 DAYS AGO. HE HAD 20-30% CHANCE TO LIVE. WAS TOLD HE'D NEVER RECOGNIZE ME AGAIN. HE'S IMPROVING SO MUCH THAT I CAN HARDLY BELIEVE IT. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE GREAT RESOURCES & all around assistance. God Bless your precious souls~!~ Sheryl DeWald

May 16th, 2013 4:20am

 

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