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I too suffered a TBI 32 years ago. I too do not remember the car accident. Luckily, the worse of it for me was losing teeth and the tip of my tongue. I couldn't run a straight line but that soon went away. I still have moments of impulsivity and anger, but I have been able to navigate my way through life. I am grateful everyday for my family and the ability to work as an registered nurse for 20 plus years.

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Chris, that is great about your improvement. I too work in the healthcare industry and I just have a question. The other day I was on the nyc subway and I saw an ad for an “accelerated nursing program” I know there is a shortage of nurses in America but do you think these “accelerated nursing programs” do more harm then good? My mother is a retired nurse and she did her training at Bellevue in the 1960s. She told me that in the 1960s there were no nurse assistants and to become a registered nurse you had to graduate from a 4 year program. Now one can become a nurse in 16-18 months. That is insane. From your perception what do you think?

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I think most of these programs provide direct patient care rather than classroom education. You have to experience someone yelling and swearing at you vs the people who truly appreciate the care that one provides.

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Norman, I was once hit by a car myself when I was in junior high so I can relate to the pain and fear you were going through but my experience when I look back at my trauma what really bothers me about this is how the medical establishment operates especially when it comes to brain injuries. As John Maynard Keynes said in 1942 in the midst of ww2 ““anything we can actually do, we can afford” Now it took me sometime to figure out what that meant. I was reading on the national institute of health website that : “frogs possess the astonishing capacity to regenerate lost cells in several regions of their brains” Now the COVID-19 vaccine proves that state finances aren’t not like household finances. They are limitless the U.S. government proved that with the coronavirus. Here was something we as humans never encountered. But pharmaceutical industry was able to find a vaccine for COVID pretty quickly and U.S. government paid for all the research and development of the COVID 19 vaccine (there were no fund raising) why can’t we apply these limitless resources to brain injury research?

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