Damage Control : Head-Injured Help Each Other Toward Independence

In a clear, strong voice, Michael Olson tries to explain what’s wrong inside his head. A lifelong athlete, he moves with an easy grace as he describes the skiing accident that hobbled his mind.

“Memory is my biggest problem. I can’t keep track of things,” says Olson, 32, one of 60 head-injured members of the Clubhouse, a Santa Ana program designed to prepare them for renewed independence. “And sort of putting my mind together, that’s the problem.” As Olson walks away across the noisy recreation room, program director Cathy DeMello reveals a few other problems that plague the handsome, articulate Orange man. “He still has seizures. And his memory is really bad. . . . In five minutes, he won’t remember meeting you or that conversation. None of it.”

Those types of hurdles make a daunting task of helping the head-injured recapture some semblance of their former lives. At The Clubhouse, a spacious recreation center housed in a converted seafood restaurant, the approach is repetition and, most important, responsibility.

The facility, operated by the Anaheim-based Dayle McIntosh Center for the Disabled, is the only one in Orange County exclusively for the head-injured and one of only two in the state that allows clients the autonomy to organize their own therapeutic environment.

Every member has a job at the Clubhouse, whether it is making lunch, landscaping, keeping records or making handicraft items to raise money for the club. The goal is to prepare them for jobs of their own.

“It gives them a focus, and it gives them a reason to get up in the morning,” said DeMello, whose 13-month-old program has placed eight members in the work force. “Without that, there’s no way to bring them back.”

About 50% of the Clubhouse’s members were injured in car or motorcycle accidents, a statistic that mirrors conditions nationally. About 70,000 Americans survive severe brain injuries with permanent damage each year, according to the National Head Injury Foundation. About 10% of them are in California. The impact and torque of a car crash can have devastating effects on the soft, floating brain, as it rebounds inside its protective shell, the skull. Executive functions--such as cognition, judgment, decision-making--located just behind the forehead, and senses such as sight at the brain’s rear middle, are frequently damaged areas.

The severely head-injured often lose basic skills such as walking, talking, writing and reading. Emotional problems are almost universal. Full or partial paralysis is not uncommon, nor is blindness or memory loss of varying degrees.

Clubhouse member Darren Stump’s memory of everything leading up to his car accident at age 15 is clear. But the 32-year-old Hacienda Heights man’s days and years since have often been a muddled jumble of forgotten names and places. Good-natured and mischievous, Stump makes jokes in a halting voice about his difficulty in remembering things and organizing his life. In a more serious tone, he recounts the day 17 years ago when his friend’s 1966 Volkswagen spun out of control.

“It was bad,” said Stump, who lay in a coma for three months after the accident. “But I am getting better now. I just kind of expect my problems, so it doesn’t bother me as much.”

Stump has improved to the point that he works three days a week with a landscaping crew, an achievement he attributes to DeMello and the Clubhouse.

“This place is a godsend,” he said. “The best part is having friends who are going through the same thing. We help each other.” Among his friends are James Rook, 46, of Orange, a horse trainer who has spoken in rambling, loosely connected sentences and suffered seizures since he awoke from a coma after being kicked by a horse. And there is Vicki Skinner, 44, of Anaheim, who lost a leg, much of her sight and some of her cognitive abilities after a diabetic coma.

One of the true tragedies for the severely head-injured, DeMello said, is the way the trauma leaves intact clear memories of the way life was before the losses. That, and the common impairment of the judgment centers of the brain, can cause victims emotional trauma that matches their physical disabilities.

“They become frustrated because they can’t do what they used to do, and they are less able to control that frustration or their emotions,” she said. “They get beat down by it all by the time they reach us.”

It’s lunchtime at the Clubhouse, and the members working with crafts take a break, as do their peers doing woodwork atop a bench in the sprawling kitchen of the former Jimmy’s Restaurant.

The 6,000-square-foot restaurant on Grand Avenue, replete with wide-screen television, gym equipment and a pool table, was perfect for the fledgling program when it debuted in June, 1992, but now the operation needs a new home, DeMello said.

It’s also likely, she said, that growing numbers of head-injured people will create a need for additional Clubhouses. Nationwide, it is estimated that there are as many as a million head-injured people. While medical advances and the honing of quick emergency care make it possible to save more and more head-injury victims’ lives, DeMello said clinical and rehabilitative care have not kept pace.

“People think of accidents and they think you either live or die, but they just don’t realize there’s this whole group that return home and don’t just go on living their lives,” she said. “We have to put it on the map, so people know. So they know what can happen to them.”