nwsmith,

It sounds like you are caught in a stress and anxiety loop. The stress and anxiety cause the other symptoms to manifest and get much worse. The more you are anxious, the worse they will get.

It would be interesting to try to find a trigger from the past few days.
Did you do anything exciting or stressful?
Did you consume anything unusual?
Did you have an argument with anybody?
Did you have a good day and overdo it?
Did you have a long conversation with anyone?
What changes have happened in the past few days?

Learning how to identify triggers helps us to avoid them in the future. The more you can avoid triggers, the longer your OK periods last, the more healing your brain gets.

It is likely that the weight of making a decision to cancel your tuition and school plans has overwhelmed you. This was a big decision to have to make.

Regarding your sleep. Rather than worry about waking up retarded, you need to realize that your brain needs good sleep to heal. It only heals during REM sleep. REM sleep is the deep sleep when your eyes move and you dream.

Your brain will not heal during times of stress that cause you to not sleep deeply.

Keep in mind that stress hormones and other stress chemicals pollute your brain. That leaves you brain in a deficit that needs to be cleaned up before your brain can move forward to heal.

Try to understand and accept your symptoms, at least for the time being. When you have a hard time finding words, it is a combination of your injury and stress causing this symptom. If you are more willing to accept this symptom as an injury symptom but NOT A DEFINITION OF WHO YOU ARE AS A PERSON, you will likely do better. Your injury can define some of your symptoms but it does not define who you are.

If you have concerns about things you do not want to post, PM or email me and we can discuss them privately. I have a wealth of experience from both my injuries and from making a few bad decisions. Maybe I can help.