Pubdate: Fri, 09 Mar 2007 Source: Sudbury Star (CN ON) Page: B8 Copyright: 2007 The Sudbury Star Contact: http://www.thesudburystar.com Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/608 Author: Lara Bradley 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." - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom