My son suffered a severe brain injury in Feb of this year as a passenger in an automobile.  He was officially out of a coma in July.  I have read Bob's story and of course knew of him from ABC news, I know your foundation is for military and that is great.  Can you direct me to any help for civilians?  Justin has been in a rehab hospital since June 25, we are fighting medicaid to get approval for him to stay, they are saying he would benefit from outpatient rehab... that would be so hard on him to travel back and forth, we live in a rural area.  He can't walk or talk yet, he is slowly coming back but these weeks in rehab are bringing him back, cognitively he is forming words and saying a few words, reading and typing with a pointer.   What does it take in our country to help a 20 year old kid with the rest of his life in front of him?  We've worked hard all our lives, have health insurance which only paid for 21 days of inpatient rehab, now we have to rely on the government to help and it's not happening.  I am so frustrated with this it is unbelievable, I can't figure out how we live in a country  that won't help my son.  With the number of TBI cases continually climbing SOMETHING has to be done to realize the help is needed now,  bring them back NOW.. early rehabilitation....

Good afternoon. Finally, I see someone in our situation on this message board--I have posted a few times during the summer and this is the first of anything new I've seen. My 34 year old step daughter is a RN who was severely beaten in a Domestic Violence attack Aug.6, 2007. She is at about the same stage of progress as your son, i.e., in terms of getting help--she has been fortunate to be strong enough to have been at home since Oct.'07, but the only caregivers have been her Mother and Brother(his support has diminished), so it's really 100% on her Mother now as she and I are divorced(we are very close and neither have ever remarried). I live in Miss.and they are in Ala., so my support is primarily financial---we need money too!!!! She really wants to go back to work but needs Rehab--she is speaking better but struggles with partial paralysis on the right side. We were fortunate enough to find out about a Caregivers Conference via the computer. It was held in Dallas early June and I was able to attend since it is relatively close from where I live. This was sponsored by The Brain Injury Association of America and I left with a lot of reference materials and got to visit with others in our predicament. Their website is www.biausa.org. Lee Woodruff was the keynote speaker to open the conference and had a book signing prior to her address. She was gracious enough to talk with me directly and I gave her copies of emails I had sent to their foundation and a picture of my step-daughter. She told me at the table that they simply did not have the manpower to work beyond the military, but I told her to please pass along my info.to anyone/group that they know of that could help. A few weeks after the conference I did receive an email from "Bob & Lee" that restated their position but it was titled "A Little Hope", so that shows they are classy people and made sure I got a response. I responed back that if Bob was ever near to us we would make a special effort to bring our daughter to meet him and I would not be surprised to hear from him one day. Anyway, please look up the BIAA website and get started with them--there is a toll free phone number listed there and they will be happy to talk to you as well. If you feel you would like to contact me post a message here and I will send some contact information. Also, another group that responed quickly to me with information is The Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation--let me know if you need help to locate their website.