Originally Posted by Tom from Queens

I wanted to thank you for this post. My experience, too, has been definitely one of hope and healing, though I've given up thinking about how I was before my brain injury. I just "celebrated" my 1-year anniversary. Looking back on my year of recovery, it was one of growth—I was able to remodel my apartment, and my relationship with my girlfriend was deepened.

June and July were absolutely horrible. Things now are no longer horrible, though I do have to watch myself, and if I get too tired or stressed, my PCS symptoms get worse.

My medium-term and working memory have mainly recovered, though I still have what I call "glitches" in my immediate short-term memory; yesterday, for example, I have a memory of my work supervisor talking about leaving for the day, but I don't actually remember him leaving for the day. I also seem to have a slight learning disability—it takes a little bit longer for me to understand how things relate to each other as I'm learning them. Right now, I'm trying to learn the rules of a new game with three rulebooks, and it's taking longer than it would have before. But, even in the past year, I've learned new things.

The positives outweigh the negatives: I can read fairly quickly with fairly high levels of comprehension (I only was able to read 7 books all of last year; this year, I've already read 5), my writing ability seems to be back, and, through it all, I've been able to keep a job that requires a great deal of high-level thinking and information synthesis.

So, though I might not be fully healed, I am very thankful.