Brain injury teenager | BLOOM Online

Bloom magazine: Helping Kids With Disabilities Grow

The journey from “whatchamacallit”

When a ruptured brain aneurysm takes her ability to speak, walk and read, Irene Tran holds on to her upbeat attitude.

Two weeks before the end of her Grade 10 school year, Irene Tran — a bubbly teenager who excelled academically and was an accomplished pianist — was rushed to hospital with a ruptured brain aneurysm.

When she came to Bloorview for six months of rehab, she was paralyzed on her right side, struggled to speak and had problems with memory and cognition. BLOOM talked to Irene about the challenges of adapting to new disabilities.

What were the greatest challenges you faced?

The physical challenges surfaced first – relearning how to walk and then run and balance, and working on my weak right side. But the most difficult challenge for me was one you can’t see – language. I had difficulty saying what I wanted to say and word-finding and at the beginning everything was a “whatchamacallit” or a “thingamajigger.” I had a communication book that I hated using.

After my oral expression improved, it was difficult to realize that I had lost the ability to read and write. I had been an avid reader but at the beginning I could only read simple nouns and I had great difficulty with little words like: “at, the, and.” Getting what I wanted to say on paper was painstaking. It would take me three or four hours to type a little paragraph.

I used to be a fast typist, but now I had to scan every letter to search for the one I wanted. It was hard to believe that it was possible to lose skills like reading, writing, spelling and math!

Did you ever get depressed?

No, but I remember one really difficult point about halfway through my rehab at Bloorview when I realized things weren’t going to be the same by the time I was discharged. I started to recognize the challenges I’d have to face. I couldn’t even read a novel or do math like I used to – how was I going to graduate from high school?

What happened when you left Bloorview?

I did go back to my school but I was in special programs with intensive support from an education assistant. So I didn’t get to see my friends and go to class with them. I wanted things to be like they used to so it was really hard.

I’d missed so much when I was at the Hospital For Sick Children and Bloorview and my friends had gotten a lot closer without me and it was impossible to catch up. I felt really out of it and left out. I got to spend some quality time with my friends over the summer and I hope to work out a new system at school that works better for me.

What advice would you give other kids in rehab for acquired disabilities?

You have to adapt to so many changes: being in a hospital, not seeing family members, friends or pets very often, learning how to do things that you used to be capable of. It’s a huge change. The most important thing is to keep a positive attitude, to see the glass as half full, instead of half empty.

It helped me to think about how far I’d come – that I had been in critical condition at SickKids and now I was in rehab and getting better. It’s good to meet other inpatients at Bloorview who are going through similar things. There was one girl who I had a lot in common with and she had such a positive attitude that it made me feel like I could too.

Why are you volunteering at Bloorview now?

I wouldn’t be where I am without the help of all of the people at Bloorview. It’s nice to give back and have a way to connect and come back. In the summer, my resource teacher Anne Stewart asked me to volunteer in her class in Bloorview’s summer school.

It was nerve-wracking at first because I thought: how can I help other students when I’ve had so much trouble with language and I was just a patient the year before? But it turned out to be a great opportunity that made me realize what I was capable of now, compared to a year ago. I was able to help the students with their work and explain things to them. I think it helped them to talk to someone who had actually been a patient.