Brain injury awareness focus of upcoming golf tourney

The human brain. It’s our thought processor, movement co-ordinator, analyzer, responder–our personal information highway.
Suspensed in cerebral spinal fluid and the thickness of three pennies of surrounding skull are all that protects it.
June is national Brain Injury Awareness Month–a campaign for greater understanding that will be highlighted locally when the second-annual “Acquired Brain Injury Golf Scramble Charity Fundraiser” tees off at Kitchen Creek this Sunday at 12:30 p.m.
The 18-hole tournament supports Brain Injury Services for Northern Ontario (BISNO), and includes a prize for the top team, putting contest, water and sand draw, closest to the pin contests, and longest drive.
A dinner buffet, green fees, and a donation to BISNO (with a charitable tax receipt) are included in the $50 entry fee.
Interested golfers can call the clubhouse to register, or just show up there to register Sunday at 11:30 a.m. Proceeds will be used locally for the needs of brain injury survivors.
Tournament organizer Dawn Brigham of Emo knows all too well the importance of “the more you know” when it comes to acquired brain injury, the difficulties facing survivors and their families, and the misconceptions that surround it.
Her daughter, Andrea, received a brain injury when a unsecured steel signpost base became dislodged from a passing vehicle and smashed through the front window of the school bus the 16-year-old was riding home in back on Dec. 5, 1994–hitting her in the forehead.
Tyler Derksen of Stratton and Jason King of Barwick also were hit in the head from the heavy projectile in the accident, which killed Jennifer Carlson of Emo.
The three brain injury survivors have since faced daily struggles with the permanent changes in their personalities and abilities that resulted from the accident.
“Decision-making, judgment, thoughts, ideas–everything that’s important in life–the frontal lobe [of the brain] does it,” Brigham said last week.
After the accident, Andrea underwent surgery in Winnipeg to remove some of the front of her brain due to embedded bone fragments. The orbital bone around her right eye also was crushed and titanium plates were put in to reconstruct it.
“Her personality is different now [but] she knows who she had been before,” said Brigham, noting the injury postponed her daughter’s high school graduation for two years and cancelled plans for a career in medicine.
“Andrea is a wonderful young woman with a lot of insight [but] in a span of two hours, she can go from aggressive, to angry, to crying, hopelessness, and laughing,” she remarked.
Andrea Brigham, now 22, attends a residence in Hamilton for brain injury survivors that focuses on the individual needs of its students while teaching independent living and learning, including structure and repetition.
She’ll be there for another year.
“[The school] is a wonderful place,” her mother stressed. “They draw out of the students the best abilities they have–they find their strengths.”
Public awareness about the effects of brain injuries is growing but still has a long way to go, said Brigham, who started a monthly brain injury support group here and in Emo last fall. Members are welcome from across the district and International Falls.
On her list of goals is to see local educators and health professionals gain greater access to information on brain injuries. Brigham and her husband, Andrew, also are part of a nine-person advisory committee for the Ontario Brain Injury Association at Brock University in St. Catharines.
“When our family was handed this accident, I was a quiet, shy, cookie-baking housewife who never said ‘Boo’ [and] I thought doctors, teachers, professionals knew all,” said Brigham.
“Not any more.”
“The education system needs to be aware, and general practitioners need to be aware,” she stressed. “If I had a magic wand, I would like to see a brain injury services office in this area so that we didn’t have to drive four-and-a-half hours to [a larger centre].”
Gladys Presenger, mother of Jason King, said she’d like to see more public awareness about the defining issues of brain injuries, which she often sees melded under the mentally-handicapped umbrella.
“In the last five years, there’s been a lot of emphasis on the mentally handicapped but there isn’t all that much [emphasis] for head injuries,” she said Tuesday.
“Be aware that there is a difference between mentally-handicapped and brain injury,” she stressed. “When brain injury survivors get praised for colouring inside the lines, that’s belittling to them.
“The brain injured [person] still has some knowledge of what they used to be able to do–they do remember,” she said.
For more information on local brain injury support groups or Sunday’s golf tournament, call Dawn Brigham at 482-2083.