Question:
The neuropsychologist concluded that my cognitive disabilities...failure to process speech of others; wordfinding difficulties; paraphasia; saying one thing without realizing it, when I mean something quite different; stammering; etc. are NOT due to brain injury. He insists they are due to anxiety, depression, perhaps early senility, or hints at malingering. In addition to the devastating and depressing news, I found he had done a butcher job on the history, with (I know it sounds impossible) 83 errors of fact, making me into, on paper someone unrecognizable. The final blow was that he failedto get the full medical records, and thus downplayed the significance of my 3 on the Glasgow Coma Scale whilst I was in the first hospital. He referred to the score obliquely, and said he "should have" gotten the hospital records and ambulance attendants' report, but what the heck eh? What's a 3 on the Glasgow Scale got to do with anything?????

Answer: There is a delay in diagnosis between the accident and the actual diagnosis of traumatic brain injury. Careful review of pre-diagnosismedical records will usually reveal that the person has been complainingof various signs and symptoms of traumatic brain injury, but withoutappropriate diagnosis. The injured person gave different factual versionsof exactly what happened in the accident. It is generally recognized thata person with a traumatic brain injury is a very poor historian of what happened.

The person claims a hearing loss or vision problems, but ear and eye examinations show that the ears and eyes are normal. The problem is in the brain, in the processing of information, not in the equipment gathering and conveying information to the brain.

It is just post-concussion syndrome or post-traumatic stress disorder, and these are gentle ways of saying traumatic brain injury. Only the person's attention and concentration abilities are affected, but attention and concentration deficits are signs and symptoms of damage to the frontal lobes of the brain.

First, foremost, and most importantly, lawyers, doctors and lay people should know that neuropsychologists and doctors involved in the diagnosis and treatment of the traumatically brain injured agree that a person canhave a serious, permanent and disabling injury.