palmi: 0:00

Welcome to our podcast When Life Gives You Lovements. I'm Kevin.

Kevin: 0:06

And I'm Palmy. We consider ourselves disability advocates and intend to highlight some disability issues and things we find interesting that we frequently encounter when we're out and about. Also, some history on disability that we find interesting. This year we're going to include more of the interviews of the people that the disability affects. We hope you enjoy it. And I'm Palmy. Welcome to 2026.

palmi: 0:56

What a year it's been so far.

Kevin: 1:00

It's been pretty crazy. Our life has been up and down.

palmi: 1:04

It's been really hectic.

Kevin: 1:07

So we are back um a little later than we thought we were gonna be, but we're here. Uh, and our first topic is traumatic brain injury. We're gonna refer to this as a TBI. Is there a reason why we chose this?

palmi: 1:23

Um over social media. I've been talking to some people, and they suggested this as a topic.

Kevin: 1:34

I think we have an interview also with somebody that has experienced it, haven't we, don't we? For a second interview in conclusion with this one.

palmi: 1:43

Part two is good of this episode is going to be an interview with the person who has direct traumatic uh TBI.

Kevin: 1:52

We're gonna try to do that uh with most of the discussions we have this year, is try to have um personal experience added in, not just the definition and outline of what the injuries or the um disease is, but to have a personal um definition, you know, conclusion on someone's life and how it affects their lives. So we're gonna try to do that with everything we look at this year.

palmi: 2:17

Sometimes uh to get a more complete picture, you really need that personal perspective.

Kevin: 2:24

Right.

palmi: 2:25

Not just stuff that's written down.

Kevin: 2:27

It makes it more interesting and it's more personable. Sure. Yeah. Okay, so let's go ahead. Um, the definition um of t of TBI, again, that's traumatic brain injury, uh, is an injury caused by an external for force dispute disrupting normal brain function. My can result from a blow, a jolt a jolt, or protruding object. Penetrating object, sorry. Uh classified as mild, moderate, or severe. And then Kevin, you're you're gonna tell us the symptoms of it. Right.

palmi: 3:02

And the first symptom is uh, well, of course, they're all physical, uh, headache. Am I gonna read them all?

Kevin: 3:13

Yeah.

palmi: 3:14

Nausea or nausea and vomiting, dizziness, fatigue, balance problems. Sounds a lot like ataxia.

Kevin: 3:29

Yeah.

palmi: 3:30

Sensitivity, delight, or sound.

Kevin: 3:34

And these can be confused with concussions also. Um, also, uh, so another symptom of it is cognitive. So that was physical. So the second um symptom is cognitive, which is confusion, difficulty concentrating, memory issues, feeling slowed down.

palmi: 3:56

And then you get into the emotional symptoms, which irrationality, anxiety, and mood changes.

Kevin: 4:07

And then it affects their sleep too. Uh trouble sleeping, falling to sleep, sleeping more or or less than usual. And then it's classified, there's several classifications um uh for TBIs, uh moderate to severe.

palmi: 4:24

And so um, and it's based on Yeah, these were all the mild physical the symptoms for mild.

Kevin: 4:36

Moderate to severe.

palmi: 4:38

So now we're going to talk about the moderate to severe symptoms.

Kevin: 4:44

So uh so physical is the loss of consciousness, minutes to hours, worsening headaches, repeating vomiting, seizures, dilated pupils, clear fluids from nose and ears, weaknesses or numbness, and loss of coordination.

palmi: 5:05

The cognitive behavioral symptoms include profound confusion, slurred speech, agitation, or unusual behavior.

Kevin: 5:20

And then severe outcomes on a moderate to severe TBI is coma and vegetative state.

palmi: 5:30

Then the end stage of that is brain death.

Kevin: 5:35

Right. So let's talk. Let's I have kind of have a story. Um we're talking about these are the moderate the symptoms. So when I lived in Hawaii, um I rented out um I had a condo and I rented out several of the rooms. That's kind of what you do in Hawaii because the rent is so expensive. I had two extra bedrooms in my condo, and so I rented them out. Um and one of the women that uh rented from me had was a vic um was a she did have a TBI, and she was in she had a car accident, uh severe car accident. She would have been in a coma, so she was considered um severe. She had a severe TBI, and she had been in a coma for like a month, I think, um, and then had come out of the coma. And uh she experienced all of these. Um she had it was really hard to um deal with her because she was very erratic. She had a lot of anxiety, she uh she slept weird hours. Um, she was uh we have also had another person that lived with us, and the other person she was uh obsessed with how many showers the woman took, and um like she was taking too many showers, and or um, she was just very eventually she had to move out because she just was um I could see where living with someone like that would be very, very hard. Um, she had difficulty concentrating. She'd asked us to turn off the TV at certain points, she asked us not to play music, and all this she said was because of the TBI. So, and she had been living in a halfway house type uh treatment center for a long time, and this was her first move out was into in you know into a normal living situation. And I think when she moved out of the the rental situation, I think she might have gone back because I think she found that it was just too difficult to live in a normal setup like that, where people did their own things and and um she just found it very hard to live like that. So I think it's a lifelong situation. So the most common causes of TBI are falls, uh leading cause, especially in children and older adults, vehicle uh collisions, cars, motorcycle, bicycles, and pedestrians, violence, gunshot wounds, domestic violence, child abuse, including shake and baby syndrome, uh sports injuries, football, soccer, boxing, hockey, skateboarding, and finally military blast injuries, uh, pressure waves, and shrapnel. So that leads us to treatments, Kevin.

palmi: 8:32

For mild TPI, okay. I guess we're uh done just like we did before talk about mild TPIs, rest, general return to activity, gradual return to activity, over-the-counter pain relievers, and monitoring for worsting systems, symptoms.

Kevin: 9:01

Umerate to severe TBIs is emergency care, maintaining oxygen and blood pressure, preventing further injury, uh, medications, anti-seizure drugs, diuretics to reduce swelling, common coma inducing drugs to reduce brain oxygen demand, surgery, removing blood clots, repairing skull fractures, and stop bleeding, relieve intercranial pressure, and rehabilitation, uh, physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, psychological support, and vocational counseling.

palmi: 9:42

I'm sure a lot of the uh care for TBI is uh categorized as therapy and support in the aftercare, not the immediate care, but the because as Fabi said, I think a lot of people just have or default fixations on things and don't cope well with normal life. So footloose and fancy-free normies, if you will.

Kevin: 10:15

Yeah. She she had a hard time dealing with anything out of the order and area. If um everything had to be planned, she wanted to know exactly when her bills were due and and what day every week that we were going to do something, or if something was required of her, she needed at least a week's notice uh in advance to to deal with it. And I think that's where sh when uh a lot of in Hawaii, I don't know about over here because I don't know anybody with a TBI. Maybe that'll be one of the questions we asked the person is if there's uh houses and homes like that where it's kind of like a halfway house, so you you learn how to do these things before you're exposed to it in the real life, you know. Kind of like rehab, like my dad went through, where you're still getting therapy, but you're living a day-to-day life.

palmi: 11:12

Okay. Um, one of the reasons we're gonna make this into a two-parter is so we have lots of time to talk about housekeeping, new season, new way of doing things. And I was hoping to get some of your opinions before we uh launch off into uh permanent changes, if you will. One of the things I was looking at during the off season was adding a web page right now. Our web page is hosted by our podcast hosts, which has been fine. The only deal only thing I don't like about the way that is, is we have to conform to everything as they design it. So we have absolutely no input as to what we put on the page, less it falls into one of their categories or what the page looks like. So I thought we'd design a page as we have before as many listers as we do now, and uh go for their sometimes, believe it or not, a description just does not capture the uh image as well as the picture does. For example, our first very first episode was about realtors. We had some darn weird descriptions to read, but absolutely no pictures to post. So I'd like to remedy that uh especially when we get into things like uh uh the future of uh some of the treatments as they see them, for example, every year we do a update on uh neural link and all that. It'd be nice to include pictures of things that we have a hard time describing, just so we're clear about these kind of things. What else can you think of, Paulmy?

Kevin: 13:44

I think that covers it.

palmi: 13:47

Okay. Uh right now the uh fan mail feature is part of our uh podcast host service. So as long as we're at where we're at and it looks the same to you, and fan mail is an option, just bear in mind that's only for US people. If you don't reside in the US, they charge you for standard investing to the US. So you can always uh save a few bucks and send us email and say you would send it fan mail, but they charge you to do it and we'll treat that just like you as fan mail. Fair enough. If you don't think it's fair, let us know. We've been uh relying quite a bit on the two social media in bits that we get the most are from the Accessible Go community site. So I want to give a shout out to Accessible Go. They've from the first year been very been both a very valuable resource and been very good to us by allowing us to contact their community members and ask questions. Uh the other area that we started last year was a Facebook page. And that's kind of spotty. Uh there's a lot of uh non-English speakers on that page. That might be why it's so spotty. They don't really uh they don't really get into the topics that we talk about unless it's something they recognize in English. For example, the conditioner or disease they may have. They're not really uh into the awareness of the other disease as much as others are on the uh circle site. So for future reference, our website is and will always be www.whenlife gives you lemons.net. That's the domain we own. And right now it's g points you to our podcast host where our website is hosted. In the future, if we change that, it will still be the same address. www.whenlife gives you lovens.net and that about us it for this week. Unless you have something else to add, dear.

Kevin: 17:06

Nope.

palmi: 17:08

Okay, we'll see you next time, folks.

Kevin: 17:11

I'm looking forward to the uh the interview though.

palmi: 17:14

Uh so as we always ask at the end of our uh uh episodes, what do you do when life gives you lemons? Dear, do you want to answer that?

Kevin: 17:29

You turn it into lemonade. Exactly.

palmi: 17:33

Or in your key sourdough, T T sourdough.

Kevin: 17:38

I was at a vendor selling my sourdough, and the lady asked me, Why don't why don't you have lemon sourdough? So I'll have to add that to my new. I do do a lemonade um cherry sourdough, so maybe I'll have to keep doing that on an ongoing basis just so I don't get asked that question on and on.

palmi: 18:01

Yeah, it might not be a bad idea for your business.

Kevin: 18:05

To at least have one s lemon product in there.

palmi: 18:09

Yeah.