Brain injury fails to halt college dream

JOAN SOLON is realising her dream of going to art college, four years after a brain haemorrhage nearly put an end to her life.

The former nurse from Loughrea, Co Galway, played a leading role in developing a website so that people like her could understand the challenges of an acquired brain injury.

The website, acquiredbraininjury.com, launched in Dublin yesterday by the Minister of State for Disability, Kathleen Lynch, was developed by Rehab and led by people using Rehab’s Quest Brain Injury Service in Galway.

Ms Solon, 54, was a nurse in University College Hospital in Galway in June 2007 when she suffered a brain haemorrhage.

“I collapsed over the operation room table. There was an anaesthesiologist in the room and he took care of me,” she recalled.

Her sister, Yvonne, also a nurse, trawled the internet while she was in hospital looking for information on acquired brain injury and found it was not specific .

“She told me that, unless you were clinically aware of what you were looking for, the information could be very scary,” Ms Solon said.

She retired from nursing because of her brain injury and, for a time, lost all sense of self and confidence.

With the support of her family and Quest, she took the first steps on the road to recovery and is learning to accept that she was not the person she was before the brain injury.

“I was lost for a long time and I had severe depression. When I joined Quest, it was being part of a family – they understood me and had no expectations. I have a lot to be thankful for now.”

She was recently accepted as a student at the Limerick School of Art and Design and begins in October.

The new website, made possible through a donation from Covidien, a healthcare product provider, features a 3D brain, video diaries of survivors of acquired brain injury and other useful information on the brain.

The site, which will develop over the next year, also offers a set of interactive exercises, memory tools and brain resources to support people with acquired brain injury in their recovery and to trace their progress.