TUSTIN, Calif. — Tucked away in a home in the quiet residential neighborhood of Tustin, Wayne Anderson likes to take notes to record his daily activities. It reminds him what he does every day because he has trouble remembering.
“I was racing motocross in 1993, was doing a triple jump and didn’t quite make it,” Anderson said. “Landed on my head. I was wearing a helmet.”
The accident left Anderson with a traumatic brain injury, or TBI, which happens to about 1.7 million Americans every year according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, resulting in 53,000 deaths.
Anderson has short-term memory loss and experiences seizures every few weeks. His grandparents took care of him for many years before he moved in with his mother.
“I lived with her for seven years or something like that, and she knew she couldn’t handle me anymore because of my seizures,” he said. “They were just too hard on her and so she looked for years to find this place.”
Anderson moved into a group home run by the nonprofit Ryan’s Reach several years ago, living with four other traumatic brain injury survivors. Caregivers are on hand around-the-clock to help take care of the residents.
The home is operated by Mike and Lindy Michaelis, who started Ryan’s Reach after their son Ryan suffered a serious head injury in 2001. He fell through an unmarked skylight on the roof of his three-story apartment building.
Mike said Ryan is able to have a full-time caregiver at home, but many other survivors are not as fortunate. Family members must often take on the role of caregiver and it can be overwhelming, so survivors typically end up in elderly homes because there are so few group homes for brain-injured adults in the California.
“The mentality of a brain-injured person probably just doesn’t mix very well with the elderly,” Mike Michaelis said. “They both have different goals in mind or different living experiences so quite often, they are evicted. So a lot of times, brain-injured adults will bounce from elderly home to elderly home.”
Michaelis said about 2,000 assisted-living facilities in California will accept brain-injured adults but most of them are elderly homes and only four facilities are devoted to those with a brain injury.
The Michaelis run two of them.
Ryan’s Reach nonprofit raises money to help operate the homes but it also helps other TBI survivors to pay for rehabilitation, which can run several thousand dollars a month and isn’t typically covered by insurance yet vital to the recovery process.
Michaelis said Ryan’s Reach raises scholarship funds to send survivors to the non-profit High Hopes Head Injury Program for rehabilitation and therapy.
“It creates a social environment where persons are able to intermix and have friends through the community that they deal with and gets them out of their home,” Michaelis said.
The pandemic has kept many people at home this year and cancelled their in-person fundraising efforts – a popular golf tournament and charity run. But Michaelis said they’re pivoting to an online version of their charity run called Dove Dash on September 20th, in an effort to keep supporting brain-injured adults.
Despite the challenges this year, Michaelis remains committed to finding ways to help survivors like Anderson, who has found the stay-at-home orders difficult during the pandemic.
He’s used to venturing out to attend classes at a nearby community college and go to the gym. But for now, daily walks and taking notes fill his day.
Anderson still has a passion for motorcycles and watches Motocross when he can.
"This place has been great," he said. "It’s kept me going."