Patient Stories

Laura: A Factory Worker Gets a Second Chance

When Laura was in her 30s, she was in a car accident and suffered a traumatic brain injury. At that time, she was a single mother of three children and was employed in a factory of a multinational company as a production coordinator, where she had the reputation for a strong work ethic and was a valued worker.

It’s worth noting that Laura had a challenging life. She had her first two children as a teenager, and the fathers were not involved. She left high school early to begin working to support her family.

While Laura had more than proven her talents at work, homemaking had never been one of her priorities. This proved problematic when the cognitive rehabilitation program she entered after her accident focused on tasks such as dishwashing and sorting laundry—tasks Laura would be first to say she didn’t do consistently before her injury, and a far cry from the more complex tasks she routinely handled on the job. As a result, she failed to master the homemaking skills the rehabilitation program required, blocking her from advancing to prevocational and vocational work, and effectively curtailing her ability to support herself and her family.

Fortuitously, her employer’s local management believed in coming to the aid of people in need. Consequently, her case was handled by a rehabilitation nurse who was familiar with what Neuro-Hope could accomplish with difficult cases.

Intake was performed in her home, and Internet services were made available to her home. A computer that could be customized and maintained from Neuro-Hope’s offices was installed for therapy sessions. Therapy concentrated on prevocational skills necessary for Laura’s work.

At work, Laura’s job required her to gather about a dozen materials for each order, and then schedule the production run before a due date. This required substantial executive functioning skills, such as planning, organizing, and follow-up, as well as effective communication skills. In addition, her desk was on the busy factory floor which had the usual noise level of a fabrication plant. Her work tasks were far more difficult than her homemaker assignments.

Laura had been away on medical leave for nine months when she returned to the plant and begin working on a limited basis; just a few hours a day, a couple of days a week. On her first day back, she sat down and began going through the files and the schedule, and consulting with others who needed to prepare acomponentpart for the job. Her performance that first day was remarkable, and after several weeks, Laura was back to working full time.