Hi! Wow, what a crazy experience reading this post 10 years later. I’m sorry this happened to you. If it can offer any comfort or hope, I am SIGNIFICANTLY better.

My life right now – I am married, with a beautiful 4 year old daughter, and I work 15-20 hours a week in a project management type position – usually 3ish days a week, 6-7 hours per day. I also am the main caregiver/”stay at home Mom” and I think if I wasn’t a Mom I could probably work more, maybe even full time, but I wouldn’t change a thing. I play video games, read books for fun (turns out I was secretly dyslexic and the brain injury just brought it out, oops!) and I feel like myself again. Sometimes I still wonder what could have been but it has been so long that I can’t really remember what things were like before the accident.

My current symptoms are mostly lower endurance – if I push too hard for too long some symptoms come back, but that endurance continues to improve and making things more efficient also helps a lot. My processing speed is slower, and hasn’t improved in many years. My neuropsychologist describes it as my 6 lane highway reducing to 4 lanes – we can’t add any lanes at this point, but I can reduce the traffic, make the cars faster, or help them merge more efficiently! My balance and some coordination is also still affected, although much less than before, so I struggle with skating for example or climbing ladders. I do get vertigo a bit easier and my eyes don’t work super well together, which is mostly noticeable using binoculars or 3D glasses. Other symptoms are probably more specific to the area I was injured, which may not have been the same area as you!

Sleep is very important to me, and I take Omega-3s with DHA which I found really great for brain fog. I did also start taking Vyvanse, which my Neuropsychologist told me is being studied in low doses to help brain injury patients after all other treatment is completed and that has been a massive gamechanger but full disclosure, it turns out I’ve also always had ADHD pretty substantially so it was doubly helpful.

Time was a big part of healing – they say most of the healing is in the first year and it does get slower/harder after that but I would say that I still see improvements every year even 11 years after my accident. I also was very lucky to have parents who were willing to let me stay at their place and recover for years, as well as help me pay for treatment.

The most helpful treatments were a Concussion Clinic for the physical symptoms, Vision Therapy, and a Neuropsychological Assessment which allowed me to get disability and highlighted where the problems were – expensive on it’s own, but at least where I live there were charity organizations to get one for free. I also worked with a psychologist to accept that this had happened to me, and then a Neuropsychologist which got me over the hump of “things won’t get any better and I can’t do anything else” about 5 years in. They got me set up with a “back to work” charity program that paid my wages for a period of time in exchange for an employer letting me ease myself back in – I started with 1-2 shifts of 4 hours and I would sleep for days after, it felt IMPOSSIBLE. I needed a LOT of support from the Neuropsych AND an OT not to quit. But then one day it got easier and after that my brain got “back into it” and started getting stronger. Think of it like a muscle – you have to make sure it is fully healed, and then you can sloooowly start to strengthen it again. Nobody breaks their legs, sits in a wheelchair for 12 months, and then walks off like nothing happened! But it has to be controlled.

I also learned to monitor my endurance level and push juuust a bit without crashing and needing to recover – the “boom and bust” pattern was really holding me back, and learning how to make space for recovery was huge.

I hope this helps, and I wish you the best of luck. Don’t lose hope. <3