PROGRAM AIMS TO CUT BRAIN INJURIES

Far Too Many Young People Are Getting Hurt Thanks To Fast Vehicles,
Drugs And Alcohol, Says Local Doctor

Imagine you're flying over a forest in a helicopter.

Looking down, you see that all the maple and pine have been clear
cut, but the birch still stand.

It looks like chunks have been bitten out of the forest.

That's what the chemical soup made up of street drugs does to the
human brain. It eats away at the white matter.

The technical term is "demyelination." The myelin sheath in the brain
is like the insulation that covers electrical wires. When it's gone,
the electricity doesn't work.

Dr. Wayne Matheson, a rehabilitation psychologist with the Sudbury
Regional Hospital, offered another analogy: "Remember the ice storm
that took down some hydro poles but left others up..." he said.

It doesn't matter that some have been left standing because the
system as a whole no longer works.

"There is an inability to generate brain power," Matheson said

Drugs, alcohol and vehicles - these three, by themselves or combined
together, are contributing to serious head injuries, especially among
the young in our community.

There are only five beds allocated for patients who have suffered
serious brain injuries at the hospital. The beds are almost always
full, he said.

The cause more often than not is that their occupants have either
consumed too much drugs or alcohol, injured themselves while in
vehicles or have been assaulted about the head, with drugs and
alcohol playing a role.

Matheson added a little known fact about head injuries is that they
are worsened if a person suffers trauma to their head after consuming
drugs and/or alcohol. Their brains are just not able to recover the
same way had they been sober.

"These serious head injuries come from making bad decisions and
taking risky chances," he said.

Matheson spoke to a group of College Notre Dame students on Tuesday,
taking part in the PARTY program (Prevent Alcohol and Risk-Related
Trauma in Youth), about the types of head injuries he has seen and
still is seeing. The talk coincided with Brain Injury Prevention week.

Matheson told a number of stories about local kids:

A volleyball player, who had a bright future at an American
university took street drugs, including cocaine, at a graduation
party. She made it home. But just because you've made it to your own
bed doesn't mean you're safe, Matheson said. During the night, she
choked on her own vomit. When her parents found her in the morning,
she was unconscious and blue.

"She'll never be able to go to university now," Matheson said. "She
partied a little too hard."

A quarterback, who was the school valedictorian, was in the passenger
seat of a half-ton truck. He decided to climb into the box while the
truck was still moving to party with his buddies in the back. He
didn't make it.

"He smashed his head on the pavement," Matheson said. "He no longer
can ever imagine playing football again."

Then there was the case of the soccer star who heard a bunch of punks
breaking into a vehicle. He came charging out of the house to rescue
his packsack. They fled. He followed. When they realized his friends
were no longer part of the chase "they stopped and pounded him to
smithereens," he said.

"He's never going to play soccer again," Matheson said.

His body and brain are no longer able to do many things they used to.
When he tried to go swimming at the pool, the soccer star almost drowned.

"His brain forgot how to swim."

There was the case of the youth attacked with a hatchet over an
unpaid drug debt. He lost his arm and had his skull smashed open.
Unpaid drug debts have been the cause of several brain injuries
Matheson has seen.

About four or five young people have also ended up in his care due to
drinking too much at a bar and behaving inappropriately. Some of them
flirted with people they shouldn't have or insulted another through
their uninhibited behaviour. After they left the bar, the offended
parties jumped on them. The result: head injuries.

"We take our skulls for granted," Matheson said.

There are four main types of brain injuries. To illustrate the point,
the doctor took an apple and dropped it onto a desk.

"It looks normal but inside there's bruising," he said.

So, with this type of trauma, there may not be any outward appearance
of injury on the skull, but there's bleeding caused by the brain
colliding with the sharp little bones of the face.

Sometimes a piece of skull is removed and put on ice for a couple of
months while the swelling and bleeding in the brain goes down.

"While you look kind of funny with part of your skull missing, we can
pop it back in after several months," he said.

The second type of head injury is caused by an object penetrating the
skull, such as a bullet. This time, Matheson jammed a pen through the apple.

He has seen penetrating wounds such as the young man who had been
stabbed in the head with a knife over drugs.

"Don't pull it out yourself," he cautioned, as the knife may be
stopping you from bleeding to death.

The third type is caused by the brain actually spinning around in its
casing. This torquing of the brain results in "all kinds of little
holes" and subsequent bleeds.

It's the type of injury that can come from fighters punching each
other in the jaw or from an accident where a vehicle spins out of control.

But the fourth type of brain injury is the one doctors and other
health care professionals worry about the most. It's the one he first
described with his helicopter and hydro poles analogies - the eating
away of the white matter by a chemical soup of drugs a person has
ingested, combined with oxygen deprivation.

"It's the actually eating of the lining of the neurons," Matheson
said. "If you take drugs and fall asleep or pass out, the danger
hasn't passed. They can eat your brain while you're sleeping."

It's not drugs like marijuana that pose the biggest risk, but rather
the harder drugs like cocaine, ecstasy and speed, he said.

"It's a dangerous world out there with booze and drugs and motor
vehicles," he said. "I hope I don't see you."