My husband suffered cardiac arrest with 20 mins down time july 2024. He is finally having a combined pacemaker and icd fitted on Friday. I have took him for a brain mri(privately) today with results in 5 days. He suffered hypoxic brain injury and was sent to a hospital for rehab were we gad the worst experience ever and 3rd September after a meeting I brought him home. He has come on leaps and bounds and I take him 4 times a week for light exercise at the gym and a swim( always loved gym He was super fit prior)Unfortunately although he is doing well his short term memory not good and seems to have lost the last 7 years of his life( can't remember selling his business or looking after grandkids). He also fixates on things.He is more my husband now than when he 1st came home(I didn't know him) it's been 6 months now.
Has anyone else had or heard of a full recovery or is this what it is a bit like dementia.
I have been reading lots of your stories and I feel and pray for you all.
Written by
Shellmonkey
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Welcome to the forum Shell. My brain injury resulted from a spontaneous frontal lobe haemorrhage 13 years ago, leaving me with mobility issues, emotional lability and markedly impaired short term memory.
Memory is commonly affected by brain injury and, although we survivors are pretty much stuck with after-effects, we learn to find our way through or around the issue with the passage of time.
Your man's injury is quite recent in terms of adjustment (it was a couple of years before I developed the knack of accepting & coping with the changes.
On Headway we use the expressions - 'The New Me' & 'The Old Me' to emphasize the importance of letting go of things we previously took for granted but now struggle with, and celebrating stuff which we can achieve.
Your supportiveness and encouragement is exactly what's needed to keep your husband (& yourself) on track towards acceptance and continuing progress.
Simple crosswords, wordsearches & tv quizzes can help focus the mind in a light-hearted way ; worrying about the memory issue seems to exacerbate the problem.
I see it now as a nuisance which interrupts the flow of conversation, but no longer object to loved ones 'filling-in' for me. And I keep my thesaurus close . .
Keep doing what you're doing m'dear ; in brain injury terms, it's still early days !
Good morning, Shellmonkey. I suffered a cardiac arrest resulting in hypoxic acquired brain injury (down for 17 minutes) in 2018. I lost four years initially, stating Cameron was PM and we lived at our former home. I was paralyzed in all limbs initially and my eyesight was poor. I also suffered communication problems but woke from a 17 day coma speaking Spanish - a language I had never studied. My wife asserts my personality changed and, along with a friend of thirty years, She doesn't like the new me. Ideally (for her) I would be dead. She doesn't even identify as my carer as "the government no longer pays [her][carers allowance]" . My advice is accept whatever help is available. None was given here - no support and no rehab. Mobility problems persist. Adjust yourself to whatever is left of the person you knew. Don't expect him to adjust or revert to his former self. I wish you both well.
dad stuttered the same, pacemaker too, lived another 10 years . Yes it changed him but we all loved him anyway!! Spoil him, the old dad is in there somewhere!! Had to care 4 him & support mum threw the rest of his life, all the years he wiped my ass, mouth? Consider it pay back?!! Good luck & smile to vent frustration I know y will feel at times!!
My partner also has a hypoxic brain injury following a cardiac arrest and 20 minutes down time. It will have been 4 years in March. He has lost about 30 years (he was 47 when it happened and can remember until he was about 16) though he knows information about his adult life such as places he lived and worked, and that he has children, but no actual memories of anything from that time.
His short term memory is also very poor and he was unable to return to work, not least because he couldn't remember what he did!
It has been a huge adjustment over the last few years and there have been many times it's been quite overwhelming. In lots of ways he's the same, but so many others he's really not. I would say 6 months is still very early days though I hated being told that at the time. Don't believe the Dr's who tell you there's no improvement from now on. The 6 month 'cut off' gets thrown around a lot and I've seen first hand it's just rubbish.
You're doing all the right things so just keep going. Keeping a bit of a diary will help as improvement can be painfully slow and difficult to see week to week, but before you know it big chunks of time have gone by and you realise how far you've come with all those tiny steps added together.
I froze to death over a 6 hour period, 31 years ago. I had a have an hour of cardiac arrest with severe hypoxia. I am now 54, and although I still have some short attention difficulties, I am doing better all of the time. Don't let a cognitive therapist, disuade you to give up on your husband. I had a therapist who told me to resign. I never did. Healing takes time.
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