medical involvement

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KayTheCurler

KayTheCurler

Well-Known Member
I am concerned about my son's health. He is, rightly, deemed to be an adult and I have no rights around his health care. He has been having dizzy spells with vomiting for several weeks now. He said his doctor said it was caused by getting overheated. Yesterday was quite cool and down he went and up came his stomach contents! Today is cool again and he had the same scenario. He is still driving (truck and motor bike) and is at risk of hitting his head when home alone and falling.

I'm thinking his neurologist should be consulted on this. He has a severe brain injury and weird things happen when brains are damaged. Family doctors don't necessarily know the full range of difficulties experienced by this type of patient. He is more likely than average to get a brain tumour or dementia, for example.

What to do?????
 
KayTheCurler said:
I am concerned about my son's health. He is, rightly, deemed to be an adult and I have no rights around his health care. He has been having dizzy spells with vomiting for several weeks now. He said his doctor said it was caused by getting overheated. Yesterday was quite cool and down he went and up came his stomach contents! Today is cool again and he had the same scenario. He is still driving (truck and motor bike) and is at risk of hitting his head when home alone and falling.

I'm thinking his neurologist should be consulted on this. He has a severe brain injury and weird things happen when brains are damaged. Family doctors don't necessarily know the full range of difficulties experienced by this type of patient. He is more likely than average to get a brain tumour or dementia, for example.

What to do?????
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What does your son think?
 
I think that the problem here, chemgal, might be that the patient is, due to brain injury, not recognizing important symptoms, and is in need of an advocate. Kay, has son got a partner or good friend?
 
BetteTheRed said:
I think that the problem here, chemgal, might be that the patient is, due to brain injury, not recognizing important symptoms, and is in need of an advocate. Kay, has son got a partner or good friend?
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It changes what to do though, based on what his opinion is of the situation.
Does he not think it's a big deal?
Does he trust his family doctor 100%?
Etc/
 
And I say that with a lot of experience. My Mom needed direction sometimes, due to her classic bipolar status. She didn't like it much. But her husband gave it to her, and she accepted it. After he died, she didn't like/accept it from anyone else. Her psychiatrist and I really tried in the final years, even after she went into the home, but once the lithium destroys your kidneys, options get fewer.

I'm reading Homo Deus right now. We shouldn't die as we often do.
 
Having a friend involved usually works better than a mother. The friend should encourage him and accompany him to go to the emergency department where he could get a CT or MRI .
 
We used to have a good friend who would casually talk to my son about issues I wasn’t getting anywhere. Unfortunately, she died suddenly. Now another friend is trying similar to talk to him about getting vaccinated.
 
Are professionals sometimes the greatest enemy as they believe they have learned all they need to know ... when the potential field of learning is rather extensive to those that don't think that way?

I dealt with this in school and work as I asked questions that disturbed the tyrannical authority (authority being labelled as corrupt by some underdogs)!

Consider those that know all about God and yet have not figured out the schism between Deist and Theist! Is it necessary that one of "M" is really out there?

I suffer a rheumatoid condition that fascinates me because of what points the professionals cannot connect with ... it is sometimes source of vast stress syndrome and yet the subject will not give it a rest ... the object lesson being beyond them! This goes on too often in the field of mystery! Mystery being what's absent or abstract depending on your familiarity with the ambiguous metaphor as presents itself ...

I'd question that myself ... the route of way as pathway to understanding oneself! It is said to be a virtue less travelled ...
 
ChemGal said:
What does your son think?
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At the moment he is thinking he has acted sensibly and the problem has been dealt with. Consistent, logical conversation is very difficult - in many ways he is a typical 16 year old. As a parent I find it really challenging to help him through this type of thing. There are inconsistent deficits in memory, We can have a conversation that I think has reached an acceptable solution and ten minutes later he denies the conversation ever happened.
Brain injuries suck! The patient doesn't understand fully. The family don't understand how to help. Doctors assume the patient has a fully functioning brain.
 
Doctor's are always of assistance with good news ... "all is well" .. as it is a comforting thought!

In a Beta Psyche are there second thoughts?
 
That's a tough spot for you @KayTheCurler. It's hard to watch someone you love in that position. It doesn't help that the doctor has fed in to the minimizing. Your son can use that to avoid getting help

Part of me thinks he needs to be sick enough to take it seriously himself. Maybe one of these episodes will scare him enough to get help. But then, what if it's too severe by then. A dilemma.

I suppose one big thing you can do is love him and let him know your concerned and want him to be as well as possible. Of course that never feels like enough.
 
What's the set up like with the neurologist? Can a message be sent?

I find most emergency room doctors to be worse than GPs when it comes to understanding things outside the norm when it comes to what most others would experience personally.

If you can convince him to send a message/get permission to do so yourself, there may be less resistance to just keeping a specialist in the loop?

It sounds like he also may need reminders about impaired driving, it's not just about substances.
 
KayTheCurler said:
At the moment he is thinking he has acted sensibly and the problem has been dealt with. Consistent, logical conversation is very difficult - in many ways he is a typical 16 year old. As a parent I find it really challenging to help him through this type of thing. There are inconsistent deficits in memory, We can have a conversation that I think has reached an acceptable solution and ten minutes later he denies the conversation ever happened.
Brain injuries suck! The patient doesn't understand fully. The family don't understand how to help. Doctors assume the patient has a fully functioning brain.
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The Brain Injury Association has been a really good resource here and has peer and family groups and educational sessions for free.
 
ChemGal said:
What's the set up like with the neurologist? Can a message be sent?

I find most emergency room doctors to be worse than GPs when it comes to understanding things outside the norm when it comes to what most others would experience personally.

If you can convince him to send a message/get permission to do so yourself, there may be less resistance to just keeping a specialist in the loop?

It sounds like he also may need reminders about impaired driving, it's not just about substances.
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Neither of us has a way to connect with a neurologist, They are more than three hours away.
 
Mrs.Anteater said:
The Brain Injury Association has been a really good resource here and has peer and family groups and educational sessions for free.
Click to expand...
Locally (well an hour and a half way) ABI activities basically closed down for Covid. I don't know any of the staff - my son doesn't have much trust in them anyway. I suspect part of that was the disappointment of losing the person he had worked with for several years.
 
Oh, Kay, your son's case is an example of how our health care system fails those with complex medical needs who aren't close to a major hospital. You'd think that this time of COVID could have widened opportunities to "do" more health care virtually.
 
BetteTheRed said:
Oh, Kay, your son's case is an example of how our health care system fails those with complex medical needs who aren't close to a major hospital. You'd think that this time of COVID could have widened opportunities to "do" more health care virtually.
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Yes, the system has much room for improvement. One of those improvements could have been giving some guidance to doctors when the video appointments first started up. Our son complained bitterly when he had one for some problem or other. He said the doctor didn't LISTEN to him, spoke too fast so he couldn't process information given, and ended the meeting abruptly claiming that the time was used up even though he knew that more time was needed.
The have been opportunities since then for other online interactions that our son has declined.
It doesn't help that he 'gets pissy' at minor comments that most of us would brush off.
Life was much easier years ago when there was a doctor in town who worked very well with him. She also told us to contact her if there was anything we were needing some advice about. She actually did a short refresher course in brain injury because she realised her information was out dated and very sparse. She then presented the things she learned to other local doctors.
 
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