Good News/Bad News at the Brain Injury Doctor Today

Today I went to see the Brain Injury Doctor.  As you can imagine from my last post, I had lots of questions and concerns.

My concerns:

*The emotional disconnect I was feeling from my family upon my return
*Short term memory issues
*Processing issues
*The return of headaches, nausea, dizziness
*The return of concussion induced insomnia
*With the headaches returning with exercise activities and dancing, can I continue
*Could the return to altitude be the cuplrit

Well, I'm not certain I liked her answers.  First and foremost, "Concussions only get better.  They do not go from getting better to getting worse to getting better again."  So then, how do we explain the return of symptoms?  Her answer, "A mild depression that comes with a change of routine coming from Florida to Boise.  There's a pill for that."  I'm not a fan of taking another pill for these symptoms.  She wants me to take a very mild anti-depressant until I can get over this slump.  The thing is, I don't FEEL depressed!  C'mon, if you are friends with me on Facebook, you see how un-depressed I am!  *laugh*

The emotional disconnect she agreed was an adjustment period and also the return of PTSD symptoms, which she also believes the anti-depressant will help.  HOWEVER, she also has me referred to the Eye-Rest Program at Elks Rehab.  As best as I understand it, this is a form of meditation treatment that is given to head injury clients, especially returning soldiers who have been injured and deal with PTSD.  THIS, I like!

Since I am not sleeping, which she believes is part of the "depression"

11 1/2 Weeks Post Head Bonking.....

After spending 5 weeks in Florida, I am finally home in Boise, Idaho!

I had a fantastic trip that was filled with lots of family time, beach time, walking time and actually getting out and moving and running again!  In the 5 weeks I spent in Florida, the concussion did a bunch of healing.  I was able to run/walk for an hour without significant increase in symptoms.  I was able to run up and over the Melbourne Causeway and back again; I actually did that THREE times while I was there!  I did experience some significant memory issues, especially when I was stressed, but once the stress was decreased, the brain worked better.  I continued to work with the Lumosity.com  games and saw my scores increase.  I even managed to get my mom's taxes done; boy was that difficult!  We filed a 1040EZ for her, and it was still a huge struggle for me to understand what was going on.  For the big finale of my trip, I went with my 2 kids to Earthday Birthday 20; a huge all day rock festival.  I danced and partied all day long!  By the end of the day, I was pretty beat.  I also learned that head banging is NOT good for a concussion.  I stopped as soon as I felt the issue. *laugh*

For my flights home, I did not use the wheel chair and I managed checking in, going through security and getting to my gates very well.  I was pleased with that.

Now that I am home, I am experiencing something completely different and I need to blog about it because I need to express it in some way.  

The whole time I was in Florida, I did some major emotional healing.  I felt so free and happy!  It was an amazing experience. And I couldn't wait to get home to my family.  I missed them so much.  As soon as I walked into my home, I felt awkward.  I wasn't sure where I was supposed to sit, what I was supposed to do or how I was supposed to feel.  I felt completely out of place.  It didn't take long for me to be home before Tracy started talking about his concerns with the kids while I was gone.  I started feeling completely overwhelmed.  Where do I fit in?  How do I deal with this?  How did I deal with this before I left?

Tracy and I got all of our stuff together to go for our backpacking trip to the Yurt.  We were leaving the day after I returned home.  So I wasn't sitting still for very long after my flight.  On our little trip up to the yurt, there was not mention of the concerns with the kids; it was just the two of us.  We had a beautiful time and the head handled the difficult backpacking hike up to the yurt wonderfully.  

We were only gone one night.  We came home the next day, feeling happy and exhausted.  But once we were home again, I started feeling strange again.  

I came home on Tuesday afternoon. Today is Friday, and I feel awkward.  Everyone I see has asked me how my head is doing.  And the best I can come up with is:  Right now I feel as though I am at the stage where I just have to learn to live with the challenges the brain is giving me.  I need to learn to live with the memory loss, the processing delays, and such.  But more importantly, right now, I feel just odd.  The best way to describe what I feel is this:  I feel like someone who had some kind of accident that rendered them unconscious and when they "came to" they had amnesia.  They were declared physically well enough to go home from the hospital, but they do not remember their lives before the accident.  They walk into their home and do not remember where they sit, or how they fit into the lives of the people around them.    That is kind of how I feel.

I remember my children.  I remember my husband.  I remember my friends.  I remember being happy with my life.  But now that I am home after being one for 5 weeks, the way that I am feeling does not match what I felt before I left.  To be honest, this scares the heck out of me.  

While I was in Florida, my husband kept telling me how happy I looked in the pictures I was taking.  He kept telling me how happy I sounded on the phone.  I KNOW I felt that way while I was there.  I found something while I was there, and it felt amazing.  I was truly hoping I could bring this bit of change home with me.  But now I just feel lost.  Things that I was excited about before I left, do not make me excited now.  Things I liked before I left, I do not necessarily like now.  

I feel like a stranger dropped into someone else's life and expected to pick up right where she left off...not just day to day activities, but emotionally as well.  

Nate keeps asking me "what's up with attitude lately?"  I have no idea.

I do not know if this is a case of being gone for 5 weeks and just having to readjust to being home.  Or if it something more..if it has something to do with the concussion.  Before I left, I spent 6 weeks doing pretty much nothing other than letting the brain heal.  I went from running and cycling and training hard to NOTHING.  Then 6 weeks of nothing. Then traveling to Florida where I had to deal with the concussion, the stress of my mom's accident and recovery as well as other stressors from home through phone calls.  I had to deal with other things in Florida like my mom's church ladies friends going off about Same Sex Marriage and totally upsetting me.  I found healing through all of this and was feeling great.  Now I'm back home and feeling "off" and not sure what to do.  Tracy talks about people I should know about, and it takes me a while to remember who they are.  Some of this stuff is coming back to me, but I feel like I left here in haze and while I was gone things changed and now that I am home I barely recognize myself or how I fit into this life here in Boise now that I have changed and it has changed all at the same time.

How does all of this work?  Do I just need more time to adjust?  I don't know.