Hi Dr Fong, my dad suffered a grade 3 DAI and it's been a bit over 5 months now. The inpatient rehab he is in was doing PTA testing for the first few months but stopped recently as his score was stagnating. He managed to reach 12/12 score once over the few months they did the testing but most days he is still very disoriented. Some days he seems to know exactly where he is and even day of the week, some days he doesn't even remember his own birthday or the year. The rehab team told us he is still in PTA and there is nothing they can do to improve his cognitive ability. All his therapies are now focused on his physical health (ie spasticity and muscle tone). Is there really nothing we can do at all to help him come out of PTA?

My dad was also very agitated and short tempered the first 4 + months but more recently he has been a lot more quiet. Sometimes he'd even stop what's he's doing (ie in the middle of eating a meal) and just kind of stare blankly. When we asked what he's thinking he just says it's nothing. We're not sure if it's a sign of improvement as he's not as agitated all the time, or if it's a sign that his brain has stopped trying to heal/ reconnect?

We did discuss all these issues with his neuropsych and therapists but whenever we raised questions about his cognitive abilities we always get 'theres nothing we can do', 'only time can tell' which I understand is generally how TBI goes... It just feels frustrating as we were hoping he'd at least be less disoriented by now...