When Sonny had his accident, he WAS wearing a full helmet and did NOT experience spinal cord damage. His type of injury, and many others, are collectively referred to as "closed head injuries" because the skull bone remains intact. Sonny experienced what is called a Diffuse Axonal Injury ("DAI") to his brain, which can be a confusing term. Here is a quickie explanation in layman's English.
When trauma occurs to the brain, nerve connections are damaged or severed. That damage is seen later in varying degrees of deficit in the patient's health. For example, Sonny experienced damage to the speech center in his brain, which is why he is unable to speak now. But the brain heals in amazing ways, and will try to heal broken connections for a long period of time, attempting to return to the previous pathways of activity wherever possible. Eventually those connections will either be repaired or they won't, and with Diffuse Axonal Injury (DAI) there is definite interference with those connections being re-formed. This means that eventually the brain will begin to try to make NEW connections around the damaged areas instead.Imagine it this way: Let's say you have an old electrical panel in your home, perhaps about fifty or more years old. Some of the wires are frayed, some are exposed and hazardous, some are completely severed. Sometimes your lights come on when you push the switch, sometimes they flicker for only a second, and sometimes they fail to come on at all. You try to repair the damaged wiring and re-connect the wires that are completely broken, but still your lights are iffy at best. Finally, you give up and just re-wire the whole system, bypassing the old malfunctioning wiring and making new electrical connections completely outside of the old damaged system. This is pretty much what the brain tries to do when the previous connections are simply beyond repair...it begins to find new connections.
This example leads us to more questions than answers at this point, but at least it leads us somewhere! How many new connections can be made? Out of the billions of interrupted nerve impulses, how many can be re-connected? How does the brain even "know how to do this", especially considering that it itself is a damaged organ? How does all of this re-connecting equate into physical and cognitive function? Is it possible that Sonny's brain could eventually be restored to a point that he could walk...speak...read...write...? The answer to all of these and the thousands more questions we ask all the time is "No one knows", though those degreea of recovery from an injury this severe are not expected. We must remember that the number of patients who survive the severity of injury that Sonny had is very small...so small that deriving a helpful statistic regarding long-term prognosis is nearly impossible. But the questions themselves, the fact that Sonny is doing more now than he was doing even three months ago, and dare I say simply the person that Sonny IS, all lead us toward believing his progress of recovery will continue and that there are good things in store. Meanwhile, our goal is for Sonny to have as good a life as possible, knowing that his life now includes severe disabilities. Sonny smiles when he sees people he knows, and alwaya returns my kiss when I smooch him. He still enjoys music and pays attention when his favorite tv shows are playing. Sonny has not had a major seizure episode since April of this year, even with a reduction in his dosage of anti-seizure medication...definitely a victory!
In short, Sonny presses on now seven years after his accident. We hope that understanding his injury and prognosis will help friends and acquaintances to feel comfortable visiting and interacting with him, as we all understand that though Sonny lives in a very damaged shell, he is still in there.
Thanks for reading, and for standing with Sonny as he travels this road.
~Lorrie P. for Sonny
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