After landing in Beijing, China for a business trip, my grandfather was on his way from the airport to a meeting with a potential client, when his driver missed the exit on the highway and then decided to reverse on the highway to make the exit. That's when the car was hit by a box truck. My grandfather and his vice president were sitting in the backseat and bore the brunt of the impact. He was not knocked unconscious immediately. In fact he was alert and upset about missing the opportunity of the meeting. He wanted to continue on to the client's office. They went to a local hospital because the vice president, of his company, was complaining of concussion symptoms. As they entered the hospital, my grandfather felt very dizzy. About an hour later he was throwing up and then had a seizure. These three symptoms when combined are signs of internal bleeding on the brain. The trauma of the impact was not immediately evident. Shortly after the seizure, he slipped into a coma. The MRI revealed a significant traumatic brain injury in the form of a severe subdural hemorrhage. An MRI can diagnose severe brain damage, an MRI is a very high powered x-ray. Once diagnosed, the doctors can assess the best course of action. In some cases there is nothing to be done. It will take time to heal. Sometimes the doctors sedate the brain so much that it is in a medically induced coma to allow it time to heal. In some extreme cases there is so much bleeding that the doctors need to extract the blood off the brain's surface. This was the case for my grandfather. .
The first thing that my grandfather suffered from was a subdural hemorrhage, which was caused by the traumatic impact. A subdural hemorrhage is a collection of blood in between the brain and the skull. Traumatic brain injury often will cause brain swelling. Swelling is a typical response our body uses to heal itself. But, because the brain is in an enclosed space, the skull, a usually a protective environment for the brain, it impedes the healing process.
