Targeted Search

Rosemary Rawlins has heard it said that parenting is the hardest job, but she says she thinks caregiving is by far the hardest.

"It’s my personal belief that the quality of fulltime care someone with TBI receives during the first two years post injury has the potential to greatly impact outcome."

Rosemary talks about how to deal with possible feelings of embarrassment for a loved one with TBI.

"Caregiver expectations can cloud over concrete facts. I now find it amazing how many times I had to be told that we would not go back to our old life before I believed it."

Independence means different things for people with TBI — and their caregivers. Rosemary shares her thoughts.

Rosemary talks with Electra Liatos, a certified massage therapist, whose "fingers of love" have done just as much healing for Hugh and Rosemary as any other medicine.

Hugh taught the girls how to walk, to ride a bike, to swim and surf. When a car struck him just days after their fourteenth birthday, he slept in a coma after two emergency brain surgeries in three days. One word woke him up: Daddy.

At first, Rosemary thought Hugh was kidding around with his food. She soon found out he wasn't; he was  "pocketing," part of left neglect that can come with brain injury.