Tammy Boebel

My name is Tammy and I am the mother of Chad and was also his caregiver for 16 years after his Traumatic Brain injury accident. He recently passed away as a direct cause of that accident oh so many years ago. He may be gone but the effects will stay with our family forever. A TBI changes everything and everyone that is involved. It has a ripple affect that continues. His brothers, his friends, his daughter, all these lives altered forever. He left home on Halloween 2006 one person and came back Jan 27 ,2007 a completely different person who had to relearn everything. We had to learn how to relate to this new person who couldn’t understand or communicate very easily. I’m not even sure he knew who we were when he came home. I feel we were more able to deal with this because of my background in nursing on an Alzheimer’s wing. I couldn’t imagine having to deal with all of this with little or no nursing skills. No one could even tell us what to expect at any turn in our journey because they all are so different. My son was lucky in lots of ways. Over the years he made great stride’s in his journey and we figured out many ways to help him with some of the deficits the TBI left him with. He passed away last year. His body just had enough. It was a hard journey but oh so worth it. We had him for 16 more years and I will treasure them forever. I wish there was more help for families to deal with these sorts of injuries. We found none.