Charmian Johnson shares her experience of brain injury in light of Michael Schumacher’s recent skiing accident
The news from Grenoble on Michael Schumacher is not, alas, very encouraging: critical but stable and he remains in a controlled coma while they assess the damage to his brain. Whenever I hear of a brain injury now it brings back vivid memories of the accident my son had which left him with a brain injury. The events leading to a traumatic brain injury (assuming they are an accident) happen so quickly – in a split second – and yet that split second has a life-long impact. In some cases of course the outcome is fatal.
Michael Schumacher is in a controlled coma, which means that the doctors have put him in ‘shut down’ mode to rest his brain as much as possible, so it does not have to think about anything, even breathing. The vocabulary used by his doctors and by reporters is an alien one – controlled coma, pressure on the brain, lesions, scans – until it happens to your child and then you have to understand it very quickly. After my son’s accident (he was six weeks old) I remember driving back from the hospital on a clear, sunny winter’s day: people were walking down the street, shopping, chatting, just ordinary daily things. I felt as though I was in a parallel universe, removed from ordinary life, and remember wanting to shout at them to stop – didn’t they know my son’s life was hanging in the balance? How could life go on in such a mundane way? And yet it does. I imagine Michael Schumacher’s family feel much the same: their world now revolves around the hospital where they keep vigil by Michael’s bedside and time stands still as one day merges into another. And yet they will have to keep a grip on ordinary things too – phone calls to make, meals, clothes to wash.
Fortunately for us, Sebastian responded well to his operations – his injury was confined to the right-side of his brain in the temporal and parietal lobes and therefore relatively straightforward to locate and operate on. He was in a controlled coma for 48 hrs which seemed like an eternity. I will never forget when he first opened his eyes and moved his arms and legs – it seemed like a miracle and I suppose it was.
Since that dark time twelve years ago, we have been fortunate to have excellent care from the experts at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. Sebastian’s injury left him with some problems: no peripheral vision to the left, mild hemiplegia, and epilepsy which came on when he was seven but which fortunately is well controlled by medication. He attends an excellent SEN base in a mainstream school and is a happy, positive child who understands and accepts his ABI although no doubt the teenage years will bring their challenges! A major source of support has been the Child Brain Injury Trust and they have been there for me since Sebastian’s accident. The Charity has grown considerably since then – a much larger staff, lots of events, publications etc. But its main priority has always been to support parents to navigate their way through the complex world of ABI and for me this is the single most important thing it does. Our regional support worker, Caroline Molloy, has been wonderful and her knowledge of local resources is second to none. I never miss the Annual Conference and would recommend it to all parents.
Michael Schumacher and his family face a long journey and the road ahead must seem very bleak and frightening. I only hope that they too receive the best possible care and support – it makes such a difference.
We’d like to say a massive thank you to Charmian and Sebastian for sharing their story with us.