Hello!

I've just signed up to this forum so that I could seek some advice. People on here seem very helpful. You may have to bear with me though as I'm unsure about what details are pertinent so I may overdo it!

Anyway, my situation is that thirteen months ago I was involved in a road cycling accident. My bike randomly collapsed into two pieces as I was cycling down a hill and I landed face first on the concrete. This resulted in four fractures to my face, including a crushed cheek bone, and a further fracture at the top of my spine/base of my skull. I lost consciousness for a few minutes. Somehow I avoided any brain hemorrhaging which surprised the doctors given the state of my skull. This unfortunately happened the day before I was due to start my second year of university.

For some months I had issues with powerful fatigue, concentration, conversation, memory, anxiety, aggression, slurred speech, headaches, dizziness, etc. I tried to stay at university within this period despite advice to suspend my studies for the year but due to my condition I was unable to appreciate it was the best idea. In hindsight I also think I was very difficult to deal with regarding my behavior toward the university. In the end I did have to suspend for the year. At about four months I was mostly dealing with lots of fatigue, loss in social confidence, depression, headaches and cognitive issues. I was signed off for the year from work by my doctor to allow me proper time to recover because if I tried to complete a day of it I tended to be exhausted for about a week. By eight months I was starting to feel much better. I was still prone to fatigue but I could do days of work here and there and had begun to read again in preparation for uni.

This brings us up to now or six weeks ago, which is a year since my accident. I returned to university thinking I was essentially fine. However, I quickly discovered that the rate of study required of me left me feeling extremely tired such that I would have to force myself out of bed after ten hours sleep. Some days I have had to spend lying in bed and walking up and down stairs is exhausting. I've had a headache every day since the first couple of weeks of university. This has all affected my dexterity and I became very clumsy, falling up the stairs, dropping drinks, etc. I've even had nausea again. Furthermore, I discovered that although I could follow a lecture at university I was unable to move into my own thinking if I had been listening to somebody else for a while. In seminars if more than once person spoke I could not keep up. It's like I get stuck in a particular mode of focus and I can't change to other modes quickly enough to keep up. I am also unable to multitask ideas such that if I try to relate one to another I forget the previous one very quickly and get lost. I can read course material and confidently comprehend it but in trying to write an essay and organise myself according to the varying parts it's like there's an absence in my "mind space", so to speak, where before there was previously some directing thought or feeling. It reminds me of after my accident when I was sometimes unable to converse with people. Normally in conversation somebody says something to you and it spontaneously evokes a feeling that guides your response but at that time in place of the feeling was its absence; just a void. Today though I've started reaching the point where I can't even process people's speech which was also previously a problem. I just end up hearing noises if they start expressing more than one idea.

Basically, I've been falling behind in my work and missing lectures. My uni have said this is my last chance and aren't being especially sympathetic because I told them I was fine at the start of year. Probably my previous behavior has made them reduce me to a problem rather than a person with problems. I may end up getting kicked out.

I've seen my doctor who has referred me to a specialist unit regarding "cognitive rehabilitation" or something like that but I have no idea when that will be. My experience of my doctor was, as always, vague. I have little sense of whether what I'm going through is attributable to my accident and, if so, whether I could do myself more damage given how ill it's making me. I guess I've often found resources about health aside from doctors to be very useful and so I've ended up here. I was just hoping somebody could tell me whether it sounds like what I'm going through is probably from my accident and also was wondering if anyone has advice on how to approach it if that's the case. It's just that a year seems like a good amount of recovery time and it's not like my brain hemorrhaged, I was in a coma, etc. so I'm suspicious.

Having to leave university for good will be very disappointing. Furthermore, it suggests I would struggle with full-time work and England is becoming increasingly worse for people with disabilities that mean they can't work. I'm a mature student, single with little or no family or finances to fall back on. It's quite a frightening prospect.

Sorry if this is overly long or incoherent. One of the problems I have these days is recognising whether I am communicating too little or too much information and also whether I'm maintaining sense! I've erred on the side of lots of information today though. I feel quite spaced out from writing so much actually, haha

Thank you for reading!