I'm Working on it

January 1st, 2013 is right around the corner, which marks year 3 of the accident. TBI recovery has been in the news a lot the last couple of years. The many men and women returning home from war has brought a lot of attention to the subject. TBI's caused from football injuries have also been under close scrutiny. I come across new information every month. Information I wish I would have had 3 years ago. So much of what I have found has just validated exactly what I have tried so desperately to put into words. My friends see me as I've always been, but my family knows different. I still see a therapist every couple of months. It's very therapeutic to be able to openly discuss the changes without feeling judged, or doubted. I describe it as being an actress playing myself. I draw on what people expect from me and I am constantly striving to prefect my performance until it is no longer a performance. A few months ago, I was telling my therapist how much I missed the old me. She asked me what was different, and what I missed about the old me. These are the things I miss about who I was before.

The emotional connection I feel towards others. Most of the time I still feel very emotionally detached. There are times when connections surface, but for the most part, there is just an empty space where emotional connections used to rule.

Communication is very stressful to me.I can't explain it, but pointless talking is very difficult to handle. I cannot tell you how much of a problem this is. The old me was a Chatty Cathy. If you wanted to talk, I'd sit and listen, that is if you could get a word in edge wise. For the most part, I now have very little to say. There are days when I get a little more chatty or hyper, but for the most part, I'm just here. I don't understand this change and I certainly don't expect anyone else to understand it. And it may seem like a tiny thing, but trust me, when people around you are used to you being very chatty and then suddenly you just aren't, it causes problems. This has been particularly hard for my husband. He and I have totally reversed roles in this area. He used to be the quiet one and I rattled on endlessly. Now, he is the one constantly trying to engage me and it is a struggle. From my end it feels like I'm trying to pull myself out of a hole and I just can't quite get all the way out. Yet when I have something to say, I have no problems. The idle chitchat part of me is seems to be completely broken. Not only do I have have a hard time making idle chitchat, I also have a hard time listening to it.

I miss my predictability. I never understood how much of a comfort it is to be able to predict how I will react or respond to things. It's something you just never expect to disappear. 

I miss the ease of interpersonal relationships. I still have A LOT of difficulty with interpersonal relationships. I used to actively seek friends. I used to engage people and attempt to make them feel comfortable. Now, it's something I make myself do. Some days I'm more successful than others,but it is something I continue to work on. Strange that it used to come so natural.

Stimulus overload is always standing in the shadows. Sometimes it sneaks up on me and causes me to withdraw. Stimulus overload happens when a combination of fatigue, being in unfamiliar surroundings, lights, noise all come together for a perfect storm. Sight, sound, and other forms of stimuli, feels like an assault to my senses. It causes social anxiety and can hit when least expected.I have A LOT of difficulty having a conversation when other conversations are going on, or when other noises are going on. I have gotten brave enough to actually ask friends I'm with to please turn off the TV, or the radio while we talk, because it's like my brain just can't funnel and route the sounds and the words. When I'm in a room with multiple conversations going, I become very withdrawn, I totally just zone out. I usually pick up my phone and start playing a mindless game that for some reason has become my hiding place. It's weird, it's just weird. The Tinnitus (ringing, buzzing in the ears, I call them crickets) hasn't decreases one iota. The crickets are still as loud as the when the accident happened. The Tinnitus makes hearing difficult, so when you factor in the funneling problems,it all comes together for that perfect storm. Noise just bothers me more now, probably because of the Tinnitus. There is a constant racket going on so everything else gets piled on top of that. One solution I've come up with is to carry wax ear plugs in my purse. When I become distracted by talking going on in another part of the office, or when I'm in a group, I pop in my ear plugs which helps me from reaching a full blown panic attack.  During the first year of the injury, buying groceries was almost impossible for me. First of all, my fatigue level was so severe, there were several times I came very close to having to have my husband come pick me up before I was had finished the task. Navigating around people, the lights, the music, trying to think, was just too much for my system. I don't have as much of a problem with that now. The constant fatigue has passed and I can do my shopping without much problem, but when I'm done I am usually highly irritated and ready to get out of the store, but a lot of people who haven't had head injuries feel the same way. I did my first mud run a couple of months ago. It was 47 degrees and cloudy. I was exhausted at the end of the race and probably a little hypodermic. When we started home, I had a full blown shut down. I could think the words I wanted and needed to say, but the words couldn't make it to my mouth. When I got home I lay in a dark room for hours, just listening to the silence. Later in the evening I was able to function, but not at 100%. But the next morning I was good. For those few hours I was thrown back to how I felt the days and weeks after the injury. Since doing a mud run was a new thing for me, I had no way of anticipating my reaction. A month later I did another mud run. This time I was prepared for a shut down and took measures so not to be blindsided by it. I took my wax ear plugs and when I felt a shut down coming I put them in, put on my sunglasses and laid in the back seat in total silence. By the time we arrived at the restaurant, I was feeling much better. 

On a positive note. A good thing changed , is my lack of fear. I used to be afraid of everything. I don't really have a sense of fear which isn't necessarily healthy but it is very refreshing.

Another good thing is My Reynaud's Syndrome, which bothered me a lot before the accident, never bothers me now. In fact I still have a disconnect (for the most part) to the temperature of my surroundings. Although I do still get cold, it's just that the cold doesn't register with me unless it's mentioned. Before the injury I would have never have been able to do a mud run that required me to swim in a pond in 48 degree weather.... It simply
would have happened.

In essence I miss the nuances of my old self. I liked the old me. I understood her, I could predict her.  I liked the compassion she felt for others, I like her thoughtfulness, I liked how she embraced new relationships with ease and how eager she was to be involved. More importantly, I trusted her and loved how comfortable she was in her skin or her own psychic. This new me, I just don't know. I haven't quite figured her out yet, but I'm working on it.

Simple as That

http://sweetlife4me-jp.blogspot.com/2012/08/as-simple-as-that.html

18 Months Later

I feel great. I haven't had a headache in a long time. I have episodes of dizziness but nothing I can't handle (I just hang on tight when they happen). Some things I've just gotten used to and every once in a while something reminds me that I'm not who I once was. Yesterday I attended the funeral of a co-worker's baby. I was surrounded by sobbing people and I sat stiff as a board without a tear stinging my eye. I've just become so used to not feeling anything that I forget what it's like until I'm around others who do. I've had a few times where I have been moved, but I could count them on one hand. I do laugh, but I really don't get excited and not a true since of sadness. I rely on the memory of my feelings more than anything. It's very hard to explain how weird it is to feel empty...

They're Back - Dreaming 15 months later

15 months and counting past the injury. It's super odd how the pieces just keep coming together. things I didn't realize were missing until they suddenly reappear. In the last month I've been deluged with dreams. I hadn't realized I had stopped having them until suddenly they came back. It's as if that part of my brain is now in overdrive and trying to make up for lost time. My dreams are different than any dreams I have ever had, and at least one part of them are re-occurring. I've had several very vivid dreams where I can't tell if I'm dreaming or if I'm awake. Over and over again I find myself trying to wake myself up from a dream only to find myself waking up in a dream state. I've explained before, probably in my blog on sweetlife4me-jp.blogspot.com, that for a large part of last year I felt I was trying to swim up from the ocean floor, yet wasn't getting very far. I call it "swimming in glue". My dreams now are a lot like swimming in glue. Maybe a part of me wishes it was all just a dream, maybe a part of me is afraid the recovery itself is just a dream. Although the dreams have not been scary in nature, the inability to ascertain reality from fantasy in my dream is very disturbing. In a way it does describe how I felt for a large part of last year. I felt like I would take two steps forward, to fall five steps behind. Recovery was a lot like taking an escalator to no where, and wearing myself out trying to get there.Finding new pieces is like opening a gift every few weeks. I like getting things back that I've lost.

Missing Pieces

Since the TBI, there have been things return that  I didn't realize had been missing until they came back. I may have been told they were missing but I couldn't see that they was missing (I'm pretty sure this is only going to make sense to those who have experienced at TBI or similar event). The last couple of months I have been pleasantly surprised to find some of the missing puzzle pieces return to the picture creating a closer resemblance of my former self. Having struggled with an overwhelming amount of guilt and sadness during the last year, I have found those emotions have faded extensively. Yes, I still have sudden feelings of sadness, but it is a controllable sadness. Most often I can distract myself enough until it passes. Also, I have found that I am once again moved by sappy commercials and disheartening movie plots. It's been a long time and I couldn't wrap my mind around why that was a big deal until suddenly I sat and cried over a plot on Grey's Anatomy. I have always been a very emotional person, so to have those emotions literally knocked out of me was weird. It wasn't weird in the sense that I missed it, it was weird in the sense that I didn't miss it and when I saw other people moved by something I kind of felt like they were weird for feeling something I didn't (weird huh?). Another missing puzzle piece came in the form of music. I have played the piano since I was a child. Until April of last year, I played the keyboard at church (but to me the keyboard is totally different than playing the piano). The piano was something I've always used to calm myself or to pass time while waiting for someone or something. It's always just been automatic with me. Sometimes I played a little, sometimes I played a lot. Since the accident I had not played at all until a couple of weeks ago. Christmas came and went without me playing a single Christmas Carol. With great hesitation I sat on the bench a few weeks ago and although it was rusty, it was still there. I've been finding myself at the piano in my living room, more and more often. It wasn't until I saw the look on my husbands face when he entered the house one night while I was playing, that this was yet another piece that had apparently returned. Another strange thing is he says my playing is a little different than before, that's odd to me. I have also noticed in just the last few weeks that I am less hesitant to engage in conversation. Maybe I'm more confident that unwanted colorful language is going to jump out, or maybe it's just that my mouth and brain are beginning to be more synchronized (I'm not meaning that in a funny way).I'm not sure if me talking more is a good thing or something that should have remained "knocked out of me", but I do recognize it as being more like who I was before. Little by little things are returning, like tiny grains of sand being swept ashore, little pieces of me I haven't seen in a year are beginning to show up.   Now I'm beginning to truly look forward to the future to see what I might find that I had forgotten was lost. I feel like a child when I realize something that was lost has been returned. It's like opening a tiny gilded jewelry box that holds an heirloom from the past. It is a most precious feeling and gives me hope beyond hope that eventually I will be whole.

That Was Then, This is Now

It's been 14 months past the injury. Just reading through the journey is stressful because I live through all of those emotions. Today I can say I am in a much more stable place. I'm still somewhat isolated as I have little desire to socialize even with my closest friends. This is a little hard to swallow because I miss them, I miss the laughs, it's just weird. My moods have leveled out a lot!! It's hard to determine if they have leveled out or if I have just learned who, when and how much I can subject myself to. I did have a stimulating possible volatile encounter the other day and I managed for my head not to spin completely off my body and I did not end the conversation in the tone of that of a basketball coach. So just that alone tells me maybe I'm handling my most difficult relationships a little better. I have, of course, built quiet a fortress of protection around myself. It's invisible but it's there. I have learned to control when and if I subject myself to situations that might make me edgy or just down right mad. Every thing seems to be holding. I have an actually feeling of happiness that eluded me for most of last year, I'm actually experiencing dreams at night which had been completely shut down, so I believe that my brain is currently functioning on a much higher level than it has in months. My continued prayers is that every day God will tweak it just a little more until I actually recognize the person I am as the person I was. I think I will always be a tad more jaded than I was before, but I'm not complaining because things are so much better now than they were even 2 months ago.

The First Day of the Rest of My Life

For weeks I waiting anxiously for New Year's day to arrive. I had some pretty brutal months over the last year but December was pretty close to the worst of the worst. I believe I actually realized how close I came to losing everyone I loved, and how close they came to losing me. I'm a fix it kind of gal, so my New Years resolution was to mix and mingle and to try to get back in the loop. Our new years gathering was at a different home this year with no boobie trap doors, no rabbit holes. I was somewhat subdued, still wasn't 100% comfortable being around a lot of people regardless of how much I loved them or how much they loved me. When you can't hear well, it's hard to keep up with multiple conversations so I tend to mentally go to a calm place and not participate so much in the conversations. My daughter and her boyfriend was home from the Navy as were most of the other kids in our group. We played spoons, battle of the sexes (which was kind of lame) and watched football. I determined in my mind that I would make this year a very different year. My quirks were getting fewer and I could just fake the things that needed to be faked until they didn't need to be faked again. Most of the anxiety I had in December stimmed from my fear that a year would come and go and I would still be struggling with some of my major issues. Just the stress of knowing I was on a time line had me drowning in my own fears. Once New Year's Day past without incedent I seemed to settle down and settle in. Little by little the little things that were still hanging on were becoming easier to anticipate and avoid or control. Some things won't be rushed and healing happens to one of those things.

The Last Part of the First Year

Each day things began to improve. My headaches would cluster together for a few days and then I would go a few days without them. The time between clusters began to increase. I continued going to therapy. My therapist suggested I asked my husband to point out nuances he noticed in my personality. Making me aware of certain changes made me able to work on fine tuning things that I could change and bring an acceptance to the things I could not. My husband and I celebrated each and every milestone. At night when we lay in bed I would ask him how I was doing... "Am I almost back to normal?" I felt like a little child needing approval. "You're getting there." He would say. There were times when I could almost physically feel my brain beginning to fuse together. That's the only way I can explain it. I knew healing was taking place, it was just a very slow process. At the beginning of December I had my last appointment with my therapist. She was moving out of the state but thought I had come far enough along that I did not need to transfer my care to someone else. She warned me that sometimes the anniversary date of an incident can cause an onslaught of emotional distress. Like usual, I sloughed that off because I was doing so much better. A couple of weeks later anxiety swooped over me like a hawk over prey. To add to the anxiety, the social isolation had taken a toll on my long term friendships and I felt the world come crashing down on me. The last 2-3 weeks of 2010 were as bad as it gets. I had come so far, only to fall into a pit of despair... One I wasn't sure I would be able to pull myself out of. I felt like a total failure and I felt like I had let those who loved me down. I can't say I wasn't warned, but I will have to admit that it still caught me off guard and totally unprepared. I had spent months trying to put the pieces of my life back together without being a constant burden to those around me. I didn't want to come across as self-consumed, so I shied away. Little did I know that my efforts to not be a burden had done nothing but put distance and suspicions between me and my friends and co-workers. I found myself trying to mend wounds I didn't know existed and rebuild bridges I didn't know had been burned. It was one of the lowest points of 2010. I was miserable at Christmas. I was saddened by the direction my relationships had taken and I was anxious about the future. I  told my husband that I was afraid I would have to build all new relationships from scratch, get new friends. "What would I do if no one liked the new me?" I was afraid that there would be no one left from the friends that knew me before the injury. Try as they may, they didn't understand what I was going through, and in reality I was too emotionally drained to defend myself or explain the process. It was a very bleak period and for a short time, I saw no hope in the eyes of the person staring back at me in the mirror. Thankfully that was about to end. A would come when I would see light at the end of the tunnel and although it was rocky, my friends have stayed true (confused but true).