Recovery and new friendships after brain injury

By Louise Kinross

Competitive swimming is a passion for Ipsha Maharjan. Over three years ago, when she was 12, she developed stroke-like symptoms at a swim practice and was rushed to hospital. Her brain was bleeding due to malformed blood vessels that had ruptured. When she woke from a coma, the first thing she said was “When am I going back to the pool?” BLOOM talked to Maharjan, who lives in Brampton, Ont., about the rehab she did at Holland Bloorview and her return to school.

BLOOM: Can you tell us a bit about your condition when you arrived here?

Ipsha Maharjan: I had no movement in my left side and couldn’t stand or walk. I was transferred from SickKids to Holland Bloorview—bed to bed. I had zero sensation in my left leg so I couldn’t tell where it was in space or on the ground. The first thing I learned to do was ‘sit to stand’ and transfers into a wheelchair. Then I practised walking on the treadmill with a harness on. Most of my therapy was physical and occupational therapy.

BLOOM: What was most challenging about being an inpatient?

Ipsha Maharjan: The transition from being able-bodied to having a disability and being bedridden for a long time, so I didn’t really see my friends from school. I was in the hospital for a long time.

BLOOM: For a child who may currently be an inpatient, are there any strategies that helped you cope?

Ipsha Maharjan: My favourite thing to do was recreation therapy. After all my therapy, the rec therapists would take us to the basement for activities and it was a great way to get to know people and socialize. I found it really fun.

I told my rec therapist Rachel that I liked to cook, and we started a cooking club every Monday where we’d make food. We made dumplings and cookies. I got to relate to other patients who liked to cook too. It was a nice social thing.

I also had a really big support team that were cheering me on. My family and my friends were always there to keep me going. I live in Brampton, so it’s a good thing we have social media, because that’s how I connected with friends.

BLOOM: What kind of care did you appreciate from clinicians?

Ipsha Maharjan: I felt like all my nurses really cared for me. My favourite was my head nurse Priyanka. Every other week she would come in with a new nail polish colour and paint my nails. We started doing that because I told her about how I saw a picture of my friends getting new nails, but I couldn’t do that because my left hand didn’t work. She would help me paint my nails. 

BLOOM: How is your functioning today, four years later?

Ipsha Maharjan: I still have my physical disability, but a regular person watching me probably wouldn’t notice it. I still lack sensations in my left side, but I’m a lot better at walking and my hand follows me when I want it to move. 

When it comes to basic functions, I’m pretty independent. The only time my disability hinders me is when I’m out on the street, because a lot of things in public aren’t accessible. I have to use a lot of extra effort to participate in things.

An example is the other day I went to Canada’s Wonderland. They do a pretty good job of being accessible for someone who can walk. But I can’t walk long distances, so I used a wheelchair there. I found the uneven roads and stairs that led to a lot of places meant it took longer for me to follow my friends around. I was grateful they were kind enough to wait. 

Sometimes I feel that using a wheelchair in public is harder than just trying to walk, even though walking is a lot more tiring for me. With my wheelchair there are lots of barriers.

I also have epilepsy now, which was caused by the radiation therapy I had to try to shrink my arteriovenous malformation (AVM). The epilepsy is mostly controlled by medication I take, but I get exhausted really easily.

Due to all these things, my parents are really protective of me, so I don’t do a lot of things I used to do, like walk outside by myself or take public transit. 

BLOOM: What was it like when you returned to school following your brain injury?

Ipsha Maharjan: When I got back to school I was relieved to see familiar faces, but a lot of people didn’t understand what it means to have a disability. I came back in a wheelchair and that wasn’t common for them, so they didn’t really know how to act around me. My school was very accommodating, but my friends didn’t treat me the same. They were more cautious around me, and they weren’t as giddy. They just didn’t act the same. It was like I was a new person in their eyes.

The first couple of weeks I felt a lot of guilt or shame in myself because I thought: ‘Why did this have to happen to me? Everything would be normal if I was normal.’ But over time I learned that I shouldn’t really use the term ‘normal,’ because there isn’t really a normal in our species. 

When I entered high school, I made a lot of new friends. I'm the only disabled person, so I feel like they’re really good friends because they became friends with me after my injury. They saw past my injury and still decided to hang out with me, knowing that I have these repercussions. I feel like I won the lottery. 

I was pretty smart before my injury, so going back into school wasn’t super duper hard. I would say that when you have a brain injury, school things always take a bit more time, and that’s normal. You can’t bring yourself down because of it. You have to face it. The fact that you even could get back to trying these things again means you’ve already made so much progress. 

BLOOM: You’re now swimming in para sports. Did swimming help in your recovery?

Ipsha Maharjan: I didn’t notice it at first, but I think trying to incorporate my movements into my strokes helped me figure out how to use them in a different way. So now my shoulders are really strong, and I have a lot of movement in my left shoulder. Swimming helped me gain a lot of strength and adapt to the changes in my body.

BLOOM: You participated in Holland Bloorview’s The Independence Program (TIP) this summer. Why?

Ipsha Maharjan: I’m getting older, and closer to the age when I’ll go off to university or college. I wanted to be able to prove my independence to my parents, so they give me more responsibility, like they did before my injury. 

The program was really fun. We went on a couple of outings in public and I think I’m confident about using public transit now. 

BLOOM: What are your hopes for the future?

Ipsha Maharjan: The path I want to go is medical school. I feel like with my experience in the medical industry I could help a lot of people. I’m interested in neurology or neurosurgery. During my stay in hospital I learned a lot about the brain and how it works. Any tiny injury to the brain can have severe consequences in the human body. I also learned about neuroplasticity and how the brain heals itself. 

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