by Robin Yaros

Matt Ricottone

May 10, 2006…I’ll never forget the phone call I received that changed my life and our family’s forever. Matt’s car accident landed him in Long Beach Memorial Trauma Center in the ICU in a coma. When the doctors reported that it was very serious, that Matt had sustained “shearing of the brain” and damage to his frontal cerebral lobes, and that it was not a “good head injury”…a TBI, a Traumatic Brain Injury…we could not have imagined the outcome.

His Dad and I had to sign papers to keep our 25-year-old alive while they decided what to do. Although Matt was already in a coma, the doctors induced a deeper coma. They did this because Matt had a high fever and was shaking violently; his brain was very swollen and it needed time to normalize. The staff tried to keep Matt still; it was so hard to watch as they wrapped him down with tubes everywhere. Every day for two months, we did not know if he was going to live or die, much less walk or talk again.

As the third month began, the doctors felt it was safe to move Matt out of ICU. He spent that month in another hospital room, not speaking and barely moving. Then Matt was moved into a rehabilitation facility, and there he said his first words. Like so many other bizarre things that happen with brain injuries, Matt began to speak in cogent sentences when I held up a cell phone so he could hear his friend’s voice. The association of having a phone to his ear brought out the words, “Hey, I’m fine. How are you today?” after three months of nothing more than groans.

Matt lived in the rehab facility for four more months, learning how to walk and talk again and to feed and dress himself. But still there was no promise of recovery, no guarantees. I found out that one of the many frustrating things about brain injuries is that doctors really don’t know much about them. There are no two brain injuries alike.

During this time, the Lord was changing me in remarkable ways. God’s message to me over and over again was to trust Him: that Matt was the Lord’s child, and that God was going to take care of my son. The word TRUST became bigger than life to me. When we trust the Lord, He gives us peace and joy; peace that “surpasses all human understanding” (Phil.4:7) and joy, because “the joy of the Lord is our strength” (Neh.8:10). I was able to live in peace and strength as I trusted God to care for my son in my own powerlessness.

My world had turned upside down. Personal trials during Matt’s hospitalization included a divorce, when my husband didn’t want the hassle of a brain-injured adult stepson, and moving to a new home with the vision of bringing Matt home with me someday. I took three months off work after Matt’s accident, and then spent the next five months between Matt’s facilities and my job. Not knowing anything at first about how our public system works, I had to get Social Security disability benefits for Matt and find placement for him in a county that doesn’t have transitional living for anyone over age 21…only to find out that the one group home that could take him cost $10,000 per month!

This stunning revelation began my deep and continuing passion to see an affordable, long-term independent care and brain-injury rehabilitation group home in Orange County, CA. I am saddened that brain-injured veterans have no place to come back to that can help them and train their families to deal with their injuries. Other car accident victims like Matt who are brain-injured have nowhere to live transitionally or permanently after their hospitalizations. I hope to see these homes all around our nation someday. The truth is that there are more people brain-injured every year than new cases of breast cancer.

We got through this difficult time by God’s great grace, and I was able to bring Matt home. Soon, he started going to Adult Day Care for the brain-injured on weekdays by bus. Matt attends High Hopes, where he has begun to use the computer, work out at the gym and goes swimming. One of Matt’s favorite pastimes was surfing, and he had surfed competitively before the accident. Things others take for granted are a big deal for Matt. Just yesterday, two-and-a-half years after the accident, Matt walked out of our home and got on the bus for the first time by himself.

There are also pressing questions I must answer, because there is an unpredictability that comes along with brain injury that is very unsettling and can be dangerous. What happens when I get too old to care for Matt? What happens when he gets too strong for me to manage? The reason he is living at home is because it is too expensive to have him any place other than home. How wonderful it would be if Matt—and others like him—had his own place in a community of understanding, caring, brain injury-trained individuals. If he was monitored carefully and given boundaries and rewards for positive behavior, Matt might even improve even more.

Brain injuries are so hard on families. Matt is physically functioning and strong, but many are in wheelchairs and can’t even talk. Most of these dear ones were once normal and independent; they and their families long to have some semblance of normalcy again. A group home designed for the brain-injured would allow then to live with others like themselves, bringing a sense of camaraderie along with the structure, exercise and re-education imperative to live in a brain-injured body.

Families can only take so much strain before they break down. Caring for a brain-injured family member is very time consuming…day in and day out…because the brain needs a consistency that equals a full-time job. The need for respite care—a time away from the high stress and physical demands involved in caregiving for the brain-injured—is crucial. A “day care drop-off” or weekend “brain-injured hotel” would serve to give a frazzled family member the chance to re-coup and re-group that they so desperately need.

Although Matt’s doctors are truly impressed with his progress, they say his lifelong recovery process will be very long and slow. Matt has a level of short and long-term memory loss, but can pull obtuse things out of his mind at the worst moments. He has no “off switch” when it comes to his thoughts and feelings, sounding like a 3-year old in his 28-year-old body. Many days I am reduced to tears by the time Matt leaves on the bus for day care. My new goal at this point is to get myself to work on-time everyday again.

I am writing this to encourage you to be supportive and to pray for the parents of brain-injured children. We are ordinary people who have come to extraordinary circumstances. I want so much to see affordable, long-term independent care and brain-injury rehabilitation group homes to care for our brain-injured loved ones. I can honestly say that I have learned what “trust the Lord” means; only God is big enough, powerful enough, and loving enough to give me hope and help in the midst of a mother’s nightmare, and give Matt a quality of life in the middle of this very challenging place called “brain-injured.”

©2008 Robin Yaros