MD / CLCP A Bridge to Recovery

A Guide to Life Care Planning & Finding Your Way Back After Trauma
1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5445-2329-3
Verlag: Lioncrest Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet/DL/kein Kopierschutz

E-Book, Englisch, 160 Seiten

If you or someone you know and love has experienced a traumatic injury, immense physical and emotional challenges may have overtaken your life. You now need a roadmap out of the darkness-a path to help you get from where you currently are to a better place with less pain, less struggle, and less worry. You need a Life Care Plan (LCP). With the help of a certified professional, this document will provide you with the best recovery possible from a financial standpoint and a perspective of better overall well-being. A Bridge to Recovery is the go-to resource to help you formulate that Life Care Plan. Written by a man who has been on both sides of trauma-the physician and the victim-this book will help you to realize that no matter what you've suffered, a better life is possible.

Autoren/Hrsg.

MD,

CLCP,

Leseproben

Introduction “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning how to dance in the rain.” —Vivian Greene (author) Every year, millions of Americans suffer traumatic injuries. I am one of them, and I’m deeply sorry if you can relate. If you’re looking for answers after going through this type of experience, you’re not alone, although I know it might feel that way. This book is written for anyone whose life has changed because of unexpected trauma. It’s also intended to be a guide for those whose loved ones have undergone this kind of life-altering experience. Perhaps this trauma was unexpected and its results immediate. For example, maybe you were in an accident or otherwise suffered at the hands of someone else’s negligence. Or maybe you suffered from this kind of trauma, but the ramifications did not immediately present themselves as a serious threat to your quality of life. It was only later on that you realized the injury you sustained would forever change the way you live. Either way, this experience might have caused you to incur permanent losses—physically, psychologically, vocationally, or socially. Now you need answers to questions about what your recovery looks like and how you will acquire the necessary resources to make that recovery happen in the best way. You likely now find yourself lost in the darkness of fear and uncertainty. You feel trapped in a reality you never asked for—one in which every day requires you to manage extreme physical challenges, not to mention a myriad of difficult and complex emotions. At least, that’s how I felt after my injury. Only after my mindset shifted from anger and bitterness to gratitude and determination did I arrive at a much better place. That’s what led me to find the assistance of a few special medical professionals, as well as a new direction for my career, one that is geared toward helping others who find themselves in the same situation I was in. Even if your situation is much worse than mine was, which included a variety of physical injuries and a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). This book can help you to live a much happier, more fulfilled existence. Perhaps a good place to start is to tell you who I am, what I do, and all about my experience with trauma. An MD, CLCP (Certified Life Care Planner), and Survivor of an mTBI (Mild Traumatic Brain Injury)
My name is Santo Steven BiFulco. I received my medical degree from the University of South Florida College of Medicine in Tampa, Florida, and completed my residency in physical medicine and rehabilitation at Nassau County Medical Center in East Meadow, New York. I began my private practice as a rehabilitation physician in 1990, specializing in the treatment of chronic disabling musculoskeletal, orthopedic, and neurological disorders. Many of my patients came to me with intolerable acute and chronic pain. Although I always made a sincere effort to listen to their needs, I couldn’t possibly have understood the magnitude of what they were going through, until years later when I became a patient myself. My life changed forever one night in mid-December 1999. At the time, my marriage of thirteen years was in a state of conflict, which caused me to have restless bouts of insomnia. Most nights, I fell asleep as early as 9:00 p.m., only to wake up a few hours later. On this particular night, I decided that 3:00 a.m. was the perfect time to move my Jet Ski a few miles from our house to our condo. I still have no idea why that urge came over me at that time. Fully awake and ready to get things done, I hitched the Jet Ski up to the back of my Jeep and pulled out of our neighborhood. A few minutes later, I stopped to take a left turn from the turning lane of a four-lane divided highway. Of course, there were very few cars on the road at this hour, but I noticed a pair of headlights in the distance, weaving wildly from one side of the road to the other. It’s strange how slowly time seems to pass in life’s most pivotal moments. Although the car was coming pretty fast, I still had time to consider my options. My first thought was that the driver was probably coming home from a holiday party and severely impaired. I considered hitting the gas hard to make my left turn as quickly as possible and get the heck out of his way. Unfortunately, with that Jet Ski in tow, such an evasive maneuver seemed nearly impossible to make in time, so I really had no other choice but to wait. As the car got closer, I hoped to be lucky enough that the driver would weave around me, instead of through me. As it turns out, luck was not on my side that night. The car hit me head-on. The crash itself seemed like a slow-motion movie sequence, but when it was over, everything moved quite fast. I was stunned but fully conscious. I looked around and realized that, luckily, I was okay. Surely I had some injuries, but nothing seemed too far out of place, so I got out of my car and tried to figure out what to do next. The driver of the other vehicle also got out of his car. His objective, it turns out, was to argue with me about how I had caused the accident. He didn’t get far into his speech before he fell facedown on the pavement in a drunken stupor. Luckily, an off-duty officer from a local sheriff’s department witnessed the accident and its aftermath. He picked the guy up and tried to get him to sit inside of his car to calm down, but the drunk driver took offense and acted belligerently. The off-duty officer called for assistance and waited until a tow truck, ambulance, and his fellow officers arrived on the scene. The police gave the guy a field sobriety test and he failed, so they took him away in handcuffs. I felt shaken up, but not incapacitated, so I declined transport to a hospital. There was some pain, but it wasn’t that bad yet, probably because I was still in a state of shock. I told the paramedics that I was fine and I insisted on walking home. A bit battered and bruised, I trekked back to my house and got ready to go to work. At the time, I didn’t realize this was a big mistake. That workday was physically painful, mentally taxing, and vastly unproductive. After a few hours, my body let me know there was much more wrong with me than I had initially believed. Remember how I said there are two groups of people for which this book was written? I am part of that second group: the group that sustains trauma without immediately realizing the impact it will have on their lives. In the immediate wake of the crash, I never imagined that my life was about to start spiraling downhill. I walked around the office that first day with a horrible headache, a stiff neck, an aching back the likes of which I had never experienced before, and a strange numbness in my left hand. The pain in my back was particularly bothersome. It started on the left side, around the middle of my back. At first, it felt like someone’s thumb was pressing down hard on me. Within a short amount of time, it felt more like a hot knife cutting through the entirety of my back. The pain became so intense that I couldn’t properly focus on anything else. If I was talking to a patient, my attention was divided between listening to them and gritting my teeth through the increasing pain in my back. If a staff member approached me with a problem, I projected my pain onto them by reacting with impatience. Unfortunately, that pain didn’t just last for the duration of that day, nor was it limited to that week or even the next several months. In addition to managing chronic pain, my thoughts were foggy and my memory and recall were not as sharp as I was accustomed to. Whether it was the distraction of the pain or another problem I wasn’t yet aware of, people around me were pointing out that I was forgetting basic routines and skipping standard processes and procedures. That became incredibly frustrating. I had always taken pride in being conscientious. At that time of my life, I was not only a devoted husband, loving father, and practicing physician, but also a student pilot on my way to becoming a helicopter operator. I was in charge of a large medical practice and managed many employees. In the wake of my injury, keeping all of those balls in the air became nearly impossible. I began to wonder what my identity would become if I could no longer fulfill those roles and responsibilities. Losing my grip on all of those things I’d always been able to do well began to overwhelm my mind, but that wasn’t my only worry. To make matters worse, my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer and my ability to attend to marital conflict diminished, ultimately leading to the demise of my marriage. Life was proceeding, but my ability to manage it was impaired. Through my own experience and those of many patients I’ve spoken with, I’ve learned that serious trouble usually comes in bunches. That was definitely the case for me, as I found myself fighting a storm of problems on several fronts in my life. With work becoming more of a struggle every day, I decided that it might be a good idea to delegate some of my responsibilities to the people around me. In the wake of my father’s diagnosis, I began to spend more time with him and my family in South Florida. I knew his pancreatic cancer did not give him good odds for survival. Sadly, I was proven correct not too long after my visit. His death hit me and my family hard, and it only compounded the multitude of challenges I was dealing with at the time. The challenges I faced after my injury did not relent; they were merciless....