Real Talk about Childhood Traumatic Brain Injury
When a person suffers a blow to the head—due to a sports injury, military combat, a car crash, a fall, a violent attack, or some other accident or event—it can alter his or her brain function and behavior. For some, the change is temporary. For others, it never goes away. And for some, whose injuries remain unidentified and untreated, it can set off a spiral into depression, substance abuse, criminality, homelessness, or—most tragically of all—suicide.
The CDC estimates there are 1.7 million Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBIs) a year. Yet, as common as they are—and as dire as they can be—there’s a shocking lack of knowledge and resources around them. Claire Galloway wants to change that. In A Call to Mind, she tells the story of her son, Luke, and of her inability over a 16-year period to find anyone to help him. No one she encountered believed that Luke’s difficulties stemmed from injury. |
After being hit in the head by a plastic swing, two-year-old Luke changed overnight. He displayed severe physical, intellectual, emotional, and social symptoms. Yet throughout his childhood—and despite Galloway’s many pleas for help to physicians and teachers, and her certainty that her son’s problems stemmed from his playground accident—he wasn’t diagnosed with a brain injury until he was 18 years old.
By then, years of shame, frustration, and hopelessness had taken their toll. At 22, Luke bought a gun, put it to the area of his head that head suffered the injury, and pulled the trigger.
Galloway has written her book to lay the groundwork for physicians, educators, psychologists, family, and friends to better recognize the symptoms of traumatic brain injury. At the same time, she hopes to embolden parents to fight for their children on behalf of what only they might see, increasing the odds of successful post-injury outcomes.
By then, years of shame, frustration, and hopelessness had taken their toll. At 22, Luke bought a gun, put it to the area of his head that head suffered the injury, and pulled the trigger.
Galloway has written her book to lay the groundwork for physicians, educators, psychologists, family, and friends to better recognize the symptoms of traumatic brain injury. At the same time, she hopes to embolden parents to fight for their children on behalf of what only they might see, increasing the odds of successful post-injury outcomes.