Neuro Pysch Results

Ok, neuro pysch eval results!! 

We didn't learn much more with the nearly 10 pages of information we received. Basically, no medical professional could ever look at Troys chart and match him to what he is today. There are no words to describe this miraculous healing that has happened with him. The results began with a summary of how Troy presented in his arrival to Spectrums ED and went all the way until his current state. To try and put this all into perspective for you I've done a little research. 

When a person presents with a head injury one of the many things they do is check/test a person and rank them using what's called a Glasgow Coma Scale. A Glascoma Scale gives some insight on how severe the injury is based on the patients responses to certain things; motor response, eye opening, and verbal response. It ranges from 3-15; 3 being the most severe and 15 being mild. Troy scored at a 4. Meaning he had little to no response with any kind of stimulation. 

As apart of the motor response scoring they look at whether the patient responds in these ways... 

6. Normal

5. Localized to pain

4. Withdrawals from pain 

3. Decorticating posture: an abnormal posture that can include ridigty, clenched fists, legs held straight out, and arms bent inward towards the body with wrists and fingers bend and held straight to chest

2. Decerebrate posture: an abnormal posture that can include rigidity, arms and legs held straight out, toes pointed downward, head and neck arched backwards

1. None

(Numbers based on scoring) 

Troy scored a 2 with Decerebrate posturing. Now, I've done minimal research on that but what I have seen is that people who present with this type of posturing almost always have a negative outcome. When I was in the ICU with him, nurses often talked about his posturing and at the time, all of this new information was coming at me a million miles an hour, I had a hard time processing everything. The first couple days Troy had a nurse or two to himself at all times. A nurse was always in the room, as was I. I would constantly watch and see how he responded to his reflexes check which they did twice a day usually, unless I asked for additional checks. This is when the nurse would pinch his arm, pinch his toes and fingers and occasionally give him a sternal rub and yell in his face. Scary. More times than not I would be jumping out of my seat with excitement that he moved only to be told it was apart of his posturing; a spinal reflex rather than purposeful reflex. 

Those are a couple of things mentioned in the results that I found interesting. While in the hospital nurses, doctors, and therapists would give me booklets upon booklets packed full of information on brain injuries. I never opened them. I knew troys injury was bad, I knew that his chances of ever being "normal" again were so very slim but I didn't need to read about it. The last thing I wanted or needed to do was google "brain sheering" or read about other brain injuries. Yes, some outcomes were good but I only saw the bad. I wasn't going to make myself miserable with things that may or may not happen and I'm glad I did it the way I did. I just recently got into all the material given to me. All I can say is, the brain is by far the most interesting, incredible organ of the human body. 

With this neuro pysch evaluation they did many tests similar to what he has done previously in speech therapy. Things that include; reaction time, fine motor movements, word recognition, etc. All of these tests are looking at how Troy processes things, how long it takes him to process, recognizing and problem solving and so much more. The Pyschologist had told us that his processing was his biggest deficit. Depending on what and how many tasks it ranged from mildly impaired to severely impaired. However, Troy has been really good at recognizing that his processing is his biggest deficit and because of that he needs to take things slower to make sure he is doing the task correctly. She believes that the fact that he was taking his time to do it right may have made the results range all the way to severe. She really appreciated that though, because of that she believes he is more likely to start work sooner. That is, if he can keep with that same attitude. 

We met with a care nurse at Holland Hospital through troys rehab who went over the results and discussed with us what the next step was. Troy will be doing an on site job eval with his OT to get an idea what his job all entails. I was expecting this, the Pyschologist said this was going to happen but I felt like a whole brick building fell on me. Troy is going back to work soon. Sooner than I'd like. Oye, so begins another step of anxiety for me! I can say that the hardest part of this whole process is steps. I feel like as soon as I come to grips with one step being taken like; driving, I'm right back at square one with the next step. All of those feelings of anxiety and panic come back again and I feel like I'm in the vicious circle. I'm bout ready to be done with these steps! Obviously, Troy won't be going back to work full time right away, although Troy thinks differently. He will start with a few hours at a time and work his way up to 8+ hour days again. 

There were many aspects against troys full healing potential. His injury was extremely severe. And in all honesty, as heart wrenching as it was to hear the doctors say over and over how his outcome was not looking good, I get it. Medically, he should have been dead. He should have never made it past those critical hours or days. But he did. You wanna know why? Because our God is bigger than stupid head injuries. I know working in the medical field it's hard to see things with potential when you so often see such horrible results. I hope for the people Troy could encounter  they have a new sense of hope in the fact that God works in miraculous ways and that miracles are possible even in today's world. As hard as it is to sit  and be completely in the dark of how the next day will be, it is something God has called us to do. Watch and trust that He is in control. 

We do not have a date for the job eval yet but when we do we will keep you posted. Only a few more weeks until we see Dr. Vandenberg again. I think that March will be another big month for Troy! 

I thought this was quite fitting for me and it gave me a laugh so I might as well share ☺️