u/FinIey42

I have a 72 year old father took a fall, that left him unconscious for a couple minutes, had a brain bleed, requiring emergency craniotomy and craniectomy.

He spent 2 weeks in a rehab where he got basic therapy. Hour a day of speech, occupational, physical.

He's coming up at the one month mark and I'm worried about what's permanent and what's going to recover. I have that disturbing thought that giving him the surgeries saved his life but may have set him up for years of suffering...

Left side of his body is weak but it's moving. He sometimes has to pick his left leg up if he's tired. He's able to use a walker for the most part albeit slowly. And he's able to do everything he needs to as far as eating himself, etc...

The speech issues seem to be the biggest problem, voice has changed a little bit, and for the most part he avoids talking unless he has to...he can put out a sentence, usually "i have to go to the bathroom" but I don't think he's talked much past a single sentence.... His personality seems to be intact but he just doesn't want to talk much. We have hired a speech therapist to start next week on him.

I've been doing everything I can to help him, keep him active, talk to him, playing boardgames, while encouraging him to solo some things.

Still having issues where he pees otw to the bathroom and at times he goes to the bathroom and nothing happens (is this normal for TBI?)

The last 3 weeks have been a total nightmare, completely exhausting for me and my mother.

Anyways, looking for similar stories and knowledgeable people to tell me what I should expect realistically, is he going to be disabled the rest of his life or can he recover from all of this and become independent again?

My 72yo father took a bad fall a few weeks ago, had a brain bleed, subdural hemorrhage and intracerebral hemorrhage. Went to the hospital, needed emergency surgeries, craniotomy and, then a couple days later, a craniectomy because of the swelling.

Amazingly he's made it to rehab. He's about 3 weeks from the injury itself.

He's been mostly awake outside of the anesthesia, but he does take a lot of catnaps throughout the day. He's able to feed himself, and do simple tasks and he's aware of immediate surroundings, has some trouble following things on tv and conversations somewhat, his short term memory is weak, but long term memory is intact. He's been able to walk with the walker a bit. Still needs some help getting to the bathroom and back, but slowly getting better in areas.

Just wondering if anyone who has been through this has a general timeline for this kind of thing, like when he'll regain his wits, personality, energy levels. Will it likely be 3 months, 6 months, or years? At what point do you end up saying, welp I guess this is just how it is now.

Thanks for sharing in advance.