what do you think?

[michael fluharty]

do you suppose we should all introduce ourselves an somehow explain how brain injury came into our lives?

[Gregory]

Sure, I will go first,

I am a 41 year old living in Southern California. In 2000 my wife was
diagnosed with a brain tumor and over the past 5 years we have been
through 2 surgeries and 18 months of Chemotherapy. She is high
functioning, holds a part time job, but was left with several
"deficiencies" (that is what the doctors call them). Doctors have told
us that what she experiences and what she has to learn and re-learn is
very similar to someone who had an injury to the brain. The hardest
thing is having an injury that you can't see - not like a limp or
something that you can see and have other accomodate more easily. A
brain injury can affect personality, patience, emotions, judgement ---
all things that can't be seen.

I look forward to learning more about all of you.

Gregory

On Oct 9, 10:40 am, "michael fluharty" <fluharty.mich...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[phyliss fluharty]

HI GREGORY

I AM PHYLISS, I AM THE MOTHER OF MICHAEL FLUHARTY,THANK YOU FOR SHARING YOUR STORY, THE GROUPS FOR SUPPORT OF BRAIN INJURY PATIENTS AND THE FAMILIES IS FAR AND NOT TO MANY IN BETWEEN, MICHAEL HAS A BRAIN  INJURY DUE TO A DRUNK DRIVER AND IT NOT ONLY AFFECTS THE VICTIM IT AFFECTS  THE FAMILY OF THE VICTIM  AND THE DRUNK DRIVERS  FAMILY, IT IS A LIFE ALTERING EXPERIENCE FOR ALL NOW AND FOREVER. AND AS YOU CAN SEE IT AFFECTS ALL THOSE WHO COME IN CONTACT WITH US ALL FROM NOW ON.  I CONSIDER THIS DAY FORWARD TO BE A POSITIVE EXPERIENCE EVEN IF SOME DAYS WE CAN 'T   UNDERSTAND THE POSITIVE,  YOUR EXPERIENCE IS NOT ANY DIFFERENT. INSTEAD OF A ACCIDENT YOUR ACCIDENT WAS AN UNEXPECTANT LOVED ONE GETTING HIT WITH A BRAIN TUMOR. I HOPE WE CAN ALL SHARE THE TASK OF SUPPORTING YOU AS WELL AS YOU SUPPORTING US . I LOOK FORWARD TO SHARING WITH YOU . AND WE LOOK FORWARD TO-WHAT YOU CAN SHARE WITH US---- Original Message -----

[Jennifer Fluharty]

Hi Gregory

I am Jennifer Michaels Sister. I don't say much on this sight because it seemed to be for Michael and others with the injury, I like to see what they talk about and how they respond to eachother. I I am Excited that you have joined, I don't think that it is easy to talk about what happened to Michael with Michael. The brain injury is kind of a hidden thing, Michael doesn't look a whole lot different but some things he would never do and now he does. We have heard all of the same things from Dr.'s, all the relearning speaches, what they forget to tell us is that we have to relearn too.

[mlin...@fuse.net]

Hi Gregory,
I'm also 41 & like your wife,  my brain injury wasn't due to an accident. I was diagnosed with an arterio venous malformation, or AVM. At the time, 13 years ago, I'd never heard of AVM's. After I was diagnosed, I learned they're thought to be formed during the first trimester. So, I probably had it before I was born.  Following diagnosis, I was immediately placed on Dilantin and underwent 4 embolizations, staged 3 weeks apart,  to hopefully slow the blood flow in my brain before the surgery.  Despite the embolizations, however,  I still hemorrhaged after 24 hrs. of surgery & had to be put in a drug induced coma. A second surgery was scheduled a week later to "clean up" after the first, and it was then I had a stroke. I spent 3 months in the hospital, relearning everything: How to swallow, talk, walk, read, tie my shoe laces with one hand, etc.
I work pt-time, also like your wife, though it feels like I'm working 80 hrs./wk.  Every little thing takes so much more of an effort now. Though, I know from other members of this support grp., whether or not you have lost physical function hardly matters if the other characteristics you mentioned - emotions, judgment, patience, &  personality are altered. It's got to be trying for you. Hopefully, you'll find some support here.
Mikki

[fluharty...@gmail.com]

hello gregory and all!
my na,e is michael fluharty and i'm 31 years young and i was also
living in southern california up untill i had my accident in Chicago.
it's sort of ironic because i had just earned a degree and it really
did change my future. while is school i got this really cool job at
cummings servicing currency counting machines. the catch was that i had
to go back to corporate to be a factory trained technician. i wasnt
really looking forward to it because i didnt want to go back to the mid
west and i pretty much had learned all the stuff they were training me
from my service manager and co workers.there were two trips back to
home office and the first one i had gotten out of the way but when i
went back the seccond trip that is when my life had com crashing in.
the last weekend we were there my classmates and i went out for a
little relaxation and mall walking.so we had dropped off one class mate
to see a movie and when i was on my way back to pick him up from the
ending movie a drunk driver crossed the median and hit me head on,
fataly wounding my passenger, and causing me to have a 5 milimeter cut
in my brainstem and two hiematomas in my frontal lobe resulting in me
lapsing into a three month coma.while in my coma i was flown from a
chicago hospital down to the greater cincinnati area where i am
now.when i woke up from my coma i was unable to speak and pretty much
paralized on my left side. my left side is slowly coming back and i am
able to speak now but i still have a long road ahead of me. thats why i
am trying to do all this stuff on the computer because when we were
starting to deal with my brain injury there was little to be known.
untill later!
michael.

[Joanne Schrimpf]

Hi Michael,

can we do your web site again?  That really had some possibilitites for us.  can you hook up with the people at Mikki's new job?  I think they have a web site "In Return" and you could blend in some of the features of your former web site. I bet they'd really like it.  

Joanne 

fluharty...@gmail.com wrote:

---

All-new Yahoo! Mail - Fire up a more powerful email and get things done faster.

[michael fluharty]

its still up; although, i don't believe anyone uses it that much. www.mybrainconnections.com this google group is doing better than i had anticipated! are there any ideas of what any of you would like to see on it?
michael


visit my web site at www.mybrainconnections.com or my other one at www.michael.fluharty.com

---

Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 18:19:14 -0700
From: rjsch...@yahoo.com
Subject: [brain-injury-support:84] Re: what do you think?
To: brain-inju...@googlegroups.com

[jwarndt1952]

Hello all. First, I'd like to thank my old friend Elliott for inviting
me to join.

I'm a 54 year-old recovering alcoholic, sober for 31 years, living in
Cleveland, Ohio.

Prior to my 1994 accident, I had suffered 3 concussions (fell drunk
down a staircase, with a hairline fracture to my skull in 1970, was
assaulted by drug associates who grabbed me by my hair and knocked my
head against the wall in 1974, and I knocked my head hard on a low
overhanging arch while cleaning a foundry in 1986. I did not seek
medical help after that one, but I know I did some damage beacuse I
suffered a week or so of mild aphasia afterwards.) Also I know a 1971
aerosol sniffing binge caused some brain damage because I suffered
aphasia after that as well. I continued self-destructive drinking and
drugging for four and a half more years, but never sniffed fumes again
after that experience.

Then early in 1994, after 12 years of being ill with a bowel disease
that forced me to rise several times a night, I was weak, exhausted and

in the habit of simply diving back onto my flophouse-style mattress
after my trips to the loo. Well, one night I took one step too many
and
dove head-first into the wall. My head rang like a bell, and I knew I'd

knocked something loose, but I did not immediately lose consciousness.

I was too tired, too weak and too fed up with years of sitting around
in hospital emergency rooms after bloody flare-ups of my bowel disease
to even care any more, so I simply went back to sleep and got up in the

morning feeling woozey and confused. Over the course of several hours
things got worse till I was stumbling around delerious and falling down

repeatedly, probably having seizures. At some point I left the water
running and flooded the apartment downstairs, and my apartment
building's live-in custodian found me comatose when he came in to turn
it off. The apartment was not cold, but for some reason I was
suffering from hypothermia, and had a body temp of 90F.

I was only unconscious for about 24 hours. The ICU residents came
running when the nurse told them I'd spoken, and administered a
cognitive test that they repeated countless times for the next ten
days: Name? Address? Social Security number? What year is
it? Who is the president of the USA? Who is the VICE PRESIDENT?
After the first couple times I got them all right except for the last
one. No matter how many times they told me the answer (Al Gore) I
could not for the life of me remember it the next time they came in to
grill me. I mean, I'd VOTED for him along with Bill Clinton less than
18 months earlier, but to me in that hospital room, the vice president
of the United States was, and remained for my entire stay, a complete
blank.

And they kept giving me arithmetic tests that I did not do well on. The

guy who I think was the head of the neurology dept seemed particularly
annoyed at that and I overheard him saying something about "long term
care," which scared the bejeezus out of me.

They told me I had two subcranial hemotomas (blood clots underneath the

skull) One was on my left frontal lobe, the other on my left temporal
lobe. There was some discussion about cutting into my skull to remove
them, but they dissolved quickly and brain surgery was not necessary.
Thank God.

Elliott came to see me. I immediately recognized her, but didn't know
her name. But unlike the case with Al Gore, as soon as she told me I
remembered it. Apparently some idiot at the hospital had told her I was

brain dead and she drove from Cincinnati expecting to find a vegetable.
If she hadn't been there, I don't know what might have hapened to me.
Elliott, you truly saved my life!

The tv in my room was on most of the time I was there and since I was a

little too rattled to read, I watched a lot of it. The local stations
were covering the construction of Cleveland's Rock & Roll hall of fame
and Museum, which was scheduled to open the following year. Not
thinking too clearly, I hit on an idea to make a collection of
rock&roll sculptures for them. I did that upon release, and the
results can be seen here:

http://www.dreamwater.org/art/johnarndt/rock2.html

I was able to speak, but it was a real struggle. It was hard enough to
put three coherent words together, let alone a full sentence. I was
being given a lot of medications, some of which I'd been taking for
years for the intestinal thing, but didn't recognize any of the pills
that a male nurse brought me one day, so with a certain amount of
stammering, I asked what they were. He wouldn't say. So I told him I
wasn't taking them till he did. Then he accuses me of being
"uncooperative," and I just about went postal on him. Somehow my anger
gave me the ability to speak clearly and I told him he had a lot of
nerve to call me uncooperative when I was just trying to be a
responsible patient. I don't think he was
expecting that. I even called in the head nurse and complained to her
about him. That was a very empowering experience and gave me strength
for the struggle to come. (That nurse lives in my neighborhood and I
still make sure to give him a dirty look every time I see him, 12 years

afterwards. It turns out those drugs were generics of the same
medication I'd been taking, plus some antibiotics.)

They kept giving me that same damned cognitive test seemingingly every
hour, and that neurologist who'd been talking about sending me off for
long term care seemed even more concerned about my inability to
remember Al Gore's name than about my poor arithmetic skills, so I knew

I'd better do something about it. I'm a writer and I remembered that
if you called the Reference Department of a library, they could look up

the answers to questions for you. I even rememered the phone numbers
for a two suburban libraries I'd called often in the years prior to the

accident. So I called each of them a couple times to ask in my very
drunk-sounding voice: "Thish might thound like a thupid questhion, but
who is tttthhe Vish preshidunt of ttthhheee United Shtates?"

"Al Gore," they'd say. Heck, they didn't even have to put me on hold to
look
it up. So after the fourth or fifth time, I was able to write it on the

palm of my hand before I forgot it again. A resident neurologist who'd
administered that test numerous times (and who all along seemed to have

a rosier assessment of my chances of being released than that other
guy...) laughed out loud when he saw me sneaking a peek at 'ol Al's
name on my hand, and said: "Buddy, if you're well enough to cheat on
this test, you're well enough to go home!"

They released me the very next day. In the exit briefing they gave me,
I was told I faced a 50/50 chance of developing epilepsy within 5
years. If I made it 5 years without seizures, it probably wouldn't
happen. Also, a nurse told me she'd heard I might be written up in a
neurological journal as being a case of an exceptionally quick recovery

from the type of injury I had. I don't know if my pal Al Gore had
anything to do with that. I keep telling myself I should go across the
street to the medical library at Case Western Reserve University and
see if I can find it, but part of me is afraid of what it might say.

I was confused and disoriented for weeks after I was released, but
somehow I was able to take care of myself and not stumble out into
traffic. I met with a speech therapist a couple times, but since his
treatment was just to have me read aloud, I told him I could do that
myself, as I was working on a novel at the time. (It didn't help me
find a publisher, but I haven't quite given up on it.) A few months
later I had to have surgery for that bowel condition. It greatly
improved my physical health and I became an avid bicyclist, but I never

ride ANYWHERE without a helmet. And I'm always nagging other cyclists
to wear theirs. "You only get one brain in this life, and they haven't
started doing transplants yet," I'll tell them.

Then late in 1995, I started having the seizures they warned me
about. Violent, grand mal seizures. I had to go on a drug called
dilantin, which worked well for several years with a minimum of
problems, but suddenly early in 2001, I started having very severe side

effects to it and had to shift over to a drug called carbamazepine
(generic of Tegretol.) The fact that it is also used on people who are
branded as being "bipolar" pisses me off to no end, because the way it
works is to suppress the emotional centers of the brain. The idea that
my feelings have to be kept locked in a chemical cage to prevent
life-threatening physical symptoms eats at me every waking hour. A
recent experiment with a different medication that is known to have a
less-lobotomizing effect was a failure. I take a very dim view of the
"mental health" racket and this experience has not brightened that at
all. I'll spare you all the angry political rants except to say anybody

considering going to a shrink should visit Dr. Peter Breggin's web site

at:

http://www.breggin.com

before they do. His site is a wealth of information on psychiatirc
drugs that the pharmaceutical industry has fought to suppress.

There are some fascinating articles I'm trying to dig up about recovery

from brain injuries in case anybody here is interested, and I would be
especially interested in sharing notes with anybody who has had to deal

with epilepsy as a result of a brain injury.

Well, I think I've rambled on much too long, so I'll end off here.

John W. Arndt
johnwa...@yahoo.com

[Ell...@aol.com]

Hi John and everyone else here,

 thanks for telling your true story how you hit your head in your apt. i guess in 95 i actually forgot a lot of what happened when i came to see you in the hospital, i never saw the drs. that were treating you, if they had tried to put you in long term care i would have fought it somehow. but thank great spirit it did not happen. and actually i still don't remember what the nurses and drs. told me about your condition.  but it's okay your here and doing the best you can with a head injury and epilepsy etc. it's a one day at a time thing..i always tell most people your my cousin, because you have been in the hospital a lot and You and i are best friends, the drs. and nurses would not tell me anything unless i was a relative. and since you had no contact with family for awhile when i lived in cleveland we became like our own alternative family, and you know my siblings you know their worthless anymore, they think i'm mentally ill not sufereing from any kind of head injury. they don't know how to deal with a family member who is no longer part of the genius kids, i have a younger brother who is a research scientist, another brother who is an internatinal corporate pilot , a sister who has her masters in fine art, and if i hadn't dropped out of college i would have graduated top 5% of my class. i know i was having some memory loss even in my classes, it just slowly has gotten worse over the years. i guess you could say john and i are kindred spirits. we have known each other since 1985 when i was in college in clev. hes the only old friend i have left everyone else went away because of my memory losses including my whole family. it's ok, i have newr friends that accept me the way i am especially thru the brain injury support groups that i go to at drake hospital have been a life saver. including being on here and getting these emails that michael has started for us and his web site my brainconnections .com i will have a brain injury the rest of my life and i'm a proud recovering alcoholic of 21 years. john you helped me a lot in my early sobriety so we helped save each other that's what real friends do, they stick by each other no matter what..sometimes we don't understand each other but we keep trying..peace.. take care,elliott

[Michael Fluharty]

Hello Michael,
I am also named Michael. thank you for visiting our group.
I am trying to become familiar with your Cyst Blockage, does it have
something to do with your liver?
Have a nice day,
Michael F.

On Apr 5, 2009, at 10:52 AM, delami...@googlemail.com wrote:

> Hi group, I'm michael, from UK, i'm 23 and i was born with a cycst
> blockage at 4 weeks old, and had a shunt inserted, then when i was 9 i
> had to have it replaced, but by that time the cycst was getting bigger
> and it caused minor damage.
>

[delami...@googlemail.com]

no..my cycst was noticed when i was 4 weeks old which they did an
emergency operation, then when i was 9 my parents noticed that i
wasn't right, but the doctors argued i was, but they ranted enough for
a scan which showed the cyst came away, so they did a second
emergency, but that time round it caused the epilepsy because the
cycst had already grown and damaged the right temporal lobe.

Michael

On 6 Apr, 19:43, Michael Fluharty <michael.fluha...@me.com> wrote:
> Hello Michael,
> I am also named Michael. thank you for visiting our group.
> I am trying to become familiar with your Cyst Blockage, does it have  
> something to do with your liver?
> Have a nice day,
> Michael F.
>

> On Apr 5, 2009, at 10:52 AM, delamitri2...@googlemail.com wrote:
>
>
>
> > Hi group, I'm michael, from UK, i'm 23 and i was born with a cycst
> > blockage at 4 weeks old, and had a shunt inserted, then when i was 9 i
> > had to have it replaced, but by that time the cycst was getting bigger

> > and it caused minor damage.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Michael Fluharty]

Michael
whew, how is your cognition and executive functions?
Michael

[delami...@googlemail.com]

there's a few problems sometimes with abstract thinking and probleming
solving. I can also have difficulty putting things forward sometimes.
but my perceptions are fine.

Michael

On 10 Apr, 00:06, Michael Fluharty <michael.fluha...@me.com> wrote:
> Michael
> whew, how is your cognition and executive functions?
> Michael
>

> >> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -