When Shirley Rogers’s 20-year-old son was injured in a snowmobile accident in February 1996, it was four years before he was able to come home.
But now that he is home, his mother says the family isn’t receiving enough help to meet his needs.
Delbert’s brain injury has left him dependent on his family.
Occupational therapy and physiotherapy has been dropped to two days a week and the family is expected to take up the slack.
“I knew he’d never get better if the professionals are not there to keep pushing him with the latest therapies,” said Rogers, of Neilburg, Sask.
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Speech therapy is especially lacking. Delbert has received 15 45-minute sessions in the past two years.
Fortunately, he does not need special transportation, but requires an attendant when traveling. Meanwhile “the family pretty much had to provide his social life,” among other needs.
Rogers said if she were older or Delbert were more disabled, he would likely have had to stay in Saskatoon. In 10 more years, that choice may arise again.
Right now, respite for the family is rare. The Rogers family can apply once or twice a year to put Delbert in a care home in Cutknife, Sask., or a health facility in Lloydminster while they take a week’s break. Shirley said one problem with the limited respite care in rural Saskatchewan is that a young mobile man like her son is put in with old people with Alzheimer’s disease.
Home care in rural communities is starting to provide backup and respite for families, but staff are not always aware of the latest therapies.
“There are times when you’re just run off your feet,” Shirley said.
“The brain injured need stimulus … Our son needs to avoid frustration, so we try to incorporate a lot of happy occasions to make him feel better about himself.”
She copes with the help of monthly phone calls among an informal “friendship group” of four or five people also dealing with family members who have brain injuries.
Rogers’s experience led her to join the Saskatchewan Brain Injury Association, a self-help and support group for survivors and their families. She is one of its directors.
She said the association helps rural families with a toolbox it has put together that makes people aware of the nature of a brain injury and what resources there are to support the individual and the family.
Her dream is a rehabilitation centre in Saskatchewan for brain injury patients that would provide a safe, comfortable environment where they could go after being discharged from hospital.
She would also like to see more residential options for injury survivors, since there are none in rural areas. Respite centres are also needed to allow young people to meet.
The association was formed in 1985 by Saskatoon parents, but is now reaching out to rural residents, said executive director Lissette Coulling.
Each year more than 2,200 people in the province injure their brains, half of them in vehicle accidents. Other major causes are falls, sports injuries, firearm accidents, near drownings and strokes. Men are twice as likely to be injured as women.
Coulling said most injuries are mild and people adjust, but there are lifetime effects. For example, people may need to organize themselves by writing lists, it may take them longer to process or recall information, and they are more emotional. Fatigue is a major effect of brain injury. It is a mental exhaustion that one person described to Coulling as an elephant sitting on her shoulders.
The association is raising money for its efforts with a brunch and auction March 12 in Saskatoon. For more information, call the association at 888-373-1555 or visit its website at www.saskbia.org.
Coulling said Alberta and Msanitoba have similar groups.
