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Strange Jobs: Head Trauma
Topics: Head trauma, head injury, tragic accident, strange jobs, bizarre jobs, dirty jobs, Bakotopia, NL Belardes, Citizen Journalism
Posted by thenovelist Thu Jun 11, 2009 15:46:13 PDT
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In the early 1990s I worked at a head injury clinic. It goes down as one of the most bizarre jobs I ever had.

The head injured walk in a fog, literally. I often see local rehabilitation assistants walking with clients (Where I worked they didn't call them patients) down a busy Bakersfield street, or in a nearby park. They don’t often get very far, though a few head injured have been known to run down the street, evading their caretakers.

I doubt if some clients even know where they’re being led, or what city they’re in. Most take lots of meds and have struggled on life support for some time after horrific accidents. Some are disfigured. Others develop strange personalities and behavior disorders. Many get mistaken for mentally challenged as clinics helps rewire brains in everything from walking, learning to talk, taking a shower and brushing teeth.

It’s hard to force a grown man who once had a normal life to learn to brush his teeth. Such a man may be prone to fits of crying and anger. He may be deep in a head-injury fog, and barely able to think about why he should be shoving a toothbrush in his mouth, or why people have invaded a bathroom he doesn’t recognize, and are forcing him into the foggy concept of social independence.

Recently, Delia Chavez, 54, was attacked by a head injury patient, according to the Bakersfied Police Department. There’s a tragic twist of fate as she was critically head injured by a rehabilitating victim of a head injury. Assaulted at a clinic filled with many head injured no less.

There is no worse fate that I can imagine after having worked with the head injured myself in the early 1990s. It’s a high stress job. You have to have quick reflexes. At times you feel like someone might be trying to kill you because there’s so much anger, so much resistance as people in their delirium flail at a world around them they didn’t ask to be a part of.

Yet, sometimes the head injured are terrifying. The first time I ever saw one he was screaming madly as if in severe agony. His eyes were filled with a strange hatred.

Lives everywhere at the facility were like tragic movie scripts. A motorcycle cop suffered a horrific head injury. His lovely wife dumped him after realizing his head injury would affect him the rest of his life. He would never be the same. He was polite, kind, even though he couldn’t communicate very well. You could see the pain in his eyes, though not all of that suffering was from his injury.

A college professor seemingly loved by all became unloved and abandoned after transforming into a silent shadow. Looking at old photos of him was tragic. He just stared.

One of my co-workers was asked to help teach a former lumberjack named Dave relearn to shave. Of course I can’t remember Dave’s real name. What I do remember is he was six-feet, five-inches tall, and he used to be a lumberjack until a drill went into his forehead while working in the Alaskan wilderness.

Of course the co-worker and I were both around the same height: around five-feet, six-inches tall. Dave was strong, incredibly so. His problems included balance and incredible bursts of violent behavior. He could control one side more than the other. That was an advantage to us short young athletic guys.

When he was angry he would raise his arms and come after us in a hobble. He had a real Frankenstein quality. I wouldn’t let him corner me. That could be deadly. His slow movements were often mimicked by workers as they found ways to deal with their work stress.

I nearly flinch thinking about it. But when we taught him how to shave, he lunged at us with his razor. Why the clinic would determine that this dangerous man should have razors is beyond me. He literally lunged for the throat with his powerful arms. My co-worker barely caught his arm one time. It was like some kind of samurai movie. The stress level that day was incredible.

We weren’t paid enough money to risk our lives.

This behavior was typical of some of the sufferers of head injuries living at the facility in the early 1990s. One wheelchair-bound man would throw anything he could get his strong hands on. And he was strong. He could easily rip cupboards apart. And he could have just as easily jabbed a knife into someone’s skull. I don’t know why he didn’t. He was angry enough and had to be restrained a lot. In fact, he was restrained so much that he gave himself stress fractures. The experts of the facility said it was because of all his screaming.

Another man enjoyed vomiting on himself when he started to get violent and was restrained by workers. When his behavior went off the Richter scale, staff members would take him down. Smart staff members would make sure his mouth wasn’t near them as he upchucked.

Dave was by far the worst I worked with, and now that I think back, is the perfect example that those who are head injured always fall into an angry fog. That fog often gets displayed in violent ways—thus the physical assault response training workers had to learn in order to do takedowns. We also learned how to get away from grapples and even someone biting at you.

I remember when Dave broke a window. One of the workers (I think it was a young female) was cornered by him. I think he was just asked to put his shoes on. Anyway, the shoe went flying through a front window. Another worker went to the front door but for some reason, Dave had been able to lock it.

It was pure adrenalin that took over after that. For some reason I remembered the sliding glass door to Dave’s apartment was sometimes unlocked. The quickest path was over a six-foot wall. I hopped that and ran around the back and snuck through the sliding glass door. Sure enough, Dave was hobbling, towering over the staff member. He looked like he was about to kill.

Luckily I had spent a few years wrestling in high school, so knew just enough to grab him by his waistband and use his momentum to fling him to the ground. I then ran and unlocked the door. Afterwards several of us restrained Dave.

I would never do that again in a million years.

Now the Bakersfield Police Department is interviewing the head-injured 18-year-old man who assaulted the staff member. That frightens me. The people I worked with who were head injured rarely knew where they were or who they were. One man claimed the cavalry was after him and that arrows were flying. He also thought he was at a bus stop. He wouldn’t believe he was at the facility even when we showed him a newspaper and its printed date.

Others, who had a better sense of self, still dealt with anger, memory loss, social integration issues, personality dysfunctions. Many of their coping mechanisms appeared broken.

I can’t imagine a police officer understanding the head-injured person they would be interviewing or vice versa. I can’t imagine a head-injured person in a jail cell. And yet, I can imagine each one is a powder keg that can explode in the direction of the nearest staff member with such raw fury that they could destroy a life.

I hope Chavez recovers fully from her life’s irony. But as someone on Twitter said to me the day of her injury: “Maybe she has a purpose to fulfill?” I hope not. To be in those shoes would be a curse. I’m guessing any head-injured person who has miraculously recovered would agree.
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NICK BELARDES turned TV/online journalist after blogging his way to success. His articles and essays have since appeared on the homepage of CNN.com and other news sites across America. His book "Random Obsessions: Trivia You Need To Know" is due to hit stores in August 2009. His Twitter novel, “Small Places” is the first original literary novel on Twitter and has been featured in the Christian Science Monitor, Mashable.com, Metroactive.com, Bohemian.com, NPR and more. He has also written "Lords" about the Bakersfield urban myth Lords of Bakersfield. His new homepage at nickbelardes.com offers weird true stories and more.

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Comment From: matt

Truly bizarre and real. I know some people who have the same job. It baffles me how they're personality doesn't match the occupation. Comment From: thenovelist

At the time I was a history major and just needed a job. So I said on the app that I was interested in psychology... I had a high rating while there. Goes to show you that work ethic is important, even in something you're not prepared to do. Though no college student can prepare themselves for head injury patient rehabilitation. It's a bizarro world of its own... Comment From: jenniferjuniper

Check out my blog- it might be interesting to you! jennifer