An important news update about Carla Gay Dickson, who has been hospitalized since May 11 following her second brain surgery of 2014 (and totally unrelated to the first!). On Monday or Tuesday she will be going to a brain injury treatment facility called Mentis in San Antonio, where she is going to get very intensive therapies with the goal of returning to independent living. Please go see her this weekend if you can, shes in Room 310 at St. Davids Rehabilitation Hospital on East 32nd Street. Id like her to see that she has a life to return to and she can use all the encouragement we can give her. Ive told her its like going off to college again, shes headed to Brain University. I hate sending her away and she certainly hates the idea of going away but I think her optimism about it is slowly growing. So help it grow. She can have visitors in San Antonio, too, evenings and weekends. We can even take her out on the town a few hours at a time. So plan on doing that if you can. She will appreciate it. If you wont get to see her before she goes, youre welcome to try to reach her at (512) 554-5856. I will tell you that shes been bloody awful about answering and returning phone calls and reviewing voice mail messages, but I sense that this is just slightly improved with a little help from a really good occupational therapist, and you just might get her on the phone. Try texting as well. Carlas transfer to Brain University has been made possible by the Texas Department of Assistive and Rehabilitation Services, and Id like to say something nice about them. To begin with, I had no earthly idea that the State of Texas had money set aside to cover or subsidize post-acute brain injury treatment. Guess what? And the really amazing part, there was almost no paperwork for me to do, absolutely no bureaucratic bullshit for me to deal with (Social Security, for example, has just denied her SSI application because they included one of MY bank accounts in her assets), no delays or hangups or snafus or backlogs or waiting lists, the entire DARS approval process took less than a week from intake to approval. I will be writing a letter or two to a budget writer to express what it means for Carla to have this opportunity....particularly while no other person at any department or level of federal or state government has lifted a finger to help her. DARS totally rocks.
Posted on: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 20:08:13 +0000