Brain Injury Resource Library
All (10)
Resources
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Advocating for Yourself
Video
Living with a spinal cord or traumatic brain injury often leads to a need to for self-advocacy. Self-advocacy involves communicating your needs and taking action to get your needs met. In this video, Craig staff and patient-graduates offer suggestions and strategies for getting organized, communicating assertively, and finding the resources you need.
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How We Breathe
Information on the respiratory system and how we breathe.
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Tracheostomy Guide
Information about a tracheostomy.
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Pleural Effusion
Information about pleural effusion.
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Fiber in Your Diet
Information about fiber in your diet.
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Quality of Life: What's Important
Information on quality of life and what's important.
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Traumatic Brain Injury and Acute Inpatient Rehabilitation
PDF
Information about traumatic brain injury and acute inpatient rehabilitation.
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Returning to School after Traumatic Brain Injury
PDF
Information about returning to school after a traumatic brain injury.
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Life Expectancy after Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
Information about life expectancy after traumatic brain injury (TBI).
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Disorder of Consciousness & Cognitive Recovery Following TBI Levels 1-10
Video
Recovery from a Traumatic Brain Injury is a complex neurological process. Severe injuries commonly result in a wide range of impaired consciousness. Consciousness refers often to a person’s awareness of self and their interactions with their environment. Mild injuries may sometimes cause brief timeframes of impaired consciousness such as confusion or disorientation. However severe injuries may have a period of time whereby they have complete unconsciousness and no awareness of themselves or the world around them. Terms such as Coma, Vegetative State, Minimal Conscious State, Emerging Consciousness and Post-Traumatic Confusion or Post Traumatic Amnesia are often used by professionals caring for your family member but can be confusing to understand.
This video presentation is intended to demonstrate general patterns of improving consciousness and cognition following severe TBI. In this video, you may learn basic anatomy of TBI and what happens behaviorally step-step with improving consciousness. Your family member may not follow this sequence exactly and may skip steps depending on their more specific type of injury. Furthermore, as consciousness improves your family member may also have different types of impairments in their thinking abilities , referred to as Cognition. This presentation will highlight a step wise sequence of improving cognition and offer you as family members helpful suggestions on how to better assist your loved one during the rehabilitation process.
We are in the process of building our interactive resource library, and new resources will be added regularly. Thank you for your patience as we continue to provide resources and services to support the spinal cord injury and brain injury community. If you are searching for additional educational information, we encourage you to call our nationally-recognized Nurse Advice Line. Nurses are available Monday through Friday between 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. MST. Call 303-789-8508 or toll-free at 1-800-247-0257. If your question or problem is urgent or an emergency, do not call the Nurse Advice Line - please go to the nearest emergency room, urgent care center, or call 911.