The term TBI comes into play pretty often in hospitals and doctor’s offices. TBI means a traumatic brain injury. Many Americans injure themselves this way every day around the country. We’ll discuss TBIs right now. We’ll cover how they happen and how you can tell whether You’ve Received a Mild or Serious TBI.
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How TBIs Most Often Happen
You should know signs and symptoms of TBIs and how to get help if one occurs. If you hit your head, swelling, dizziness, confusion, or blood loss can all happen. If you are experiencing anything along those lines, call 911, or have someone else do it for you.
An ambulance can come and take you to an emergency room. You should have a doctor look you over right away. If you have brain swelling, they might conduct emergency surgery and save your life.
Many times, TBIs occur when objects fall and strike individuals in the head. That can happen at a construction site. Maybe you are working onsite, or perhaps you’re walking past on the sidewalk when something falls and hits you.
You might sustain a TBI while playing sports. If you’re playing a full-contact sport like football, even a helmet may not fully protect you. If you’re playing a sport like soccer, where you don’t traditionally wear a helmet, these injuries can easily occur as well.
You might sustain a TBI if you slip and fall in a grocery store or on a slippery sidewalk. You may sustain one during a serious car accident. However you hurt yourself, though, your doctor must determine whether you can call the injury serious or mild.
Will You Recover Completely?
The words “serious” or “mild” with TBIs aren’t exactly written in stone. They’re subjective terms, and your doctor will likely say the same thing if you ask them about head injuries.
Usually, though, you can consider a TBI less severe if you recover fully as time passes. If you can say three months or six months after the original injury that you have no lingering effects whatsoever, then you can probably call that a mild TBI.
If you experience symptoms like mild headaches after the original injury, then you can call the TBI mild. If you never lose consciousness, that qualifies as well.
If you feel a little dizzy, but you never vomit or experience any blood loss, that also means you have a mild head injury. If you’re in this condition, you probably took a nasty bump on the noggin, but overall, it sounds as though you got lucky.
More Serious Head Injuries
If you sustain permanent damage, or if you have damage that lasts for many months or even years, you likely sustained a more serious TBI. Let’s say you fell and hit your head when you slipped on some ice.
You lost consciousness. You woke up hours later in the hospital after a family member called 911.
If you lost consciousness, it’s more likely you suffered a severe TBI. If a doctor operated because you had brain swelling and they felt they must relieve the pressure to save your life, that’s a more serious injury.
If you suffer pounding headaches after the accident, that’s more severe. If you can’t understand language like you once could, that means you hurt yourself more seriously as well. Maybe you lost some vision or hearing. Perhaps you experience personality changes after the TBI.
These situations occur sometimes, and when they do, you can safely say that you sustained a more serious head injury. Basically, any time you experience significant life changes after hitting your head or something striking you, you suffered a serious TBI. Your life might little resemble its former routine if that happens.
You might seek a head injury doctor’s help. Some doctors study these particular injuries, and they can look at an MRI to see what damage you sustained.
They might suggest certain treatments when they see those results. They may recommend you lie down in a dark room with a cold washcloth on your head if you feel a headache coming on. Perhaps they’ll say you can’t drive anymore if you have poor vision following the accident.
You can say there are not any mild TBIs since any head injury causes serious concern in the medical community. However, sometimes you injure yourself more severely, which means your life will undergo some dramatic changes from this point forward.