Junior Member
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Join Date: May 2007
Posts: 96
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Junior Member
Join Date: May 2007
Posts: 96
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Longer than longer: Longest
Just for the record Applesap, your english is perfectly fine (sadly, you write in english far better than most Americans). You don't need to keep apologizing all the time!
In response to your questions...
For the first two years of my PCS experience, I was in college and remained there, eventually getting my bachelor's degree in 2005 (my grades didn't slip after my accident, but I'd gotten decent grades through my first 3 years of college without studying at all... for the last 2 I had to study all the time to keep up with my former pace). After I graduated I had a nervous breakdown, then started working 5 or 6 months later (doing mindless stuff, like answering phones or filing papers). I'm still doing these mindless jobs from time to time, but I'm seeing therapists twice a week so it's really hard (actually, impossible as far as I can tell) for me to find work that can accommodate my schedule.
I had really bad pressure headaches for the first 2 years that I had PCS, as well as constant dizziness for the first 3 years. Anxiety and depression came on at the 2 year mark for me and have stuck around until the present (though my anxiety's nearly completely gone and my depression is about 10% of what it used to be). I still have days where I'm really irritable, but I've learned to just stay clear of people when I'm in that kind of mood... I have faith that the irritability will go away when the rest of this injury is cleared off. I have odd vision problems that I can't exactly describe, but they aren't crippling at all, they're more just annoying. I also had a disconnection from reality problem, as a lot of people have brought up on here, and that only went away for me (it returns for an hour or so every now and again) a month or so ago, but man was it ever nice for that to go away! Yeah, so I'm not doing as well as I was before all of this happened, not yet anyway, but through good therapy I'd say the problems I'm having now are about 5% of the problems I was having through the first 3 years after my injury. I also have PTSD, which raises a multitude of social problems, but I won't get into that here.
As far as the suicidal stuff goes... I don't blame people for being suicidal within this condition, especially when a doctor may tell you that your condition may be permanent, "so you should probably learn to live with it" (leaving you to say "oh great, every day for the rest of my life is going to be a living hell, fantastic!"). There have been plenty of times that suicidal thoughts have come into my mind during this regardless of whether I actively invited them in or not, though I haven't gotten to the point where I've attempted suicide, or even strategized about how I would do it. Personally, I feel that being completely honest with yourself is the best way to get through any brain-related problem... within this mindset, I realized about a year ago that if I didn't beat this PCS and PTSD, I would end up killing myself, and really it wouldn't matter whether I lived 1 month, 1 year, 5 years, or 50 years before I did so, because as long as I had this condition I wouldn't accomplish anything within that time anyway. I'd leave absolutely no imprint on this world. I wouldn't find a rewarding job, I wouldn't find love, I wouldn't have a family, I wouldn't have anything, because no matter how long I happened to live I would spend every moment of every day psychoanalyzing myself and wishing that all of this had never happened. To me, that's not a life worth living, so I wouldn't live it. But coming back to where you were before your accident? Oh wow, that'd be sweet... I think it'd be better than living a life where "none of this had happened", because you'd have such a stronger appreciation for it. There have been times recently where I've felt it... I'm just an inch or so away from feeling just like I used to, and it feels amazing.
Of course, I've been feeling really good for the past few days that I've been writing on here, so I might not have such an uplifting tone once I start writing on here while I'm depressed, but that'll all pass (it's one of the things about the therapies I'm doing... the therapy makes you feel FAR worse for a few days, then you come out the other side feeling better than you felt before the therapy).
Crap, I've gone and written way too much on here again. My apologies.
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