The complication I mentioned in my previous post is called increased intracranial pressure or iicp for short.

It may have further damaged my brain after the initial injury.

After the initial injury I was able to walk, but not as fast as I was before the injury. After only a few weeks or a couple of months (I can't quite remember, but I have it all written down in an extensive journal) I was unable to walk without assistance and even that was very arduous. I remained that way for several months until the iicp was relieved with a spinal tap six months after the accident that caused it to occur.

Then for several weeks I had to walk with a walker and used work-arounds I was taught in the hospital to maneuver stairs, curbs and the like. (The spinal tap wasn't done correctly and caused more complications and because of it I was hospitalized for almost two weeks.) I think my muscles all atrophied from the several months of not using them and I was not expecting that. You see, the iicp caused me to be in such severe pain for so many months and that's a part of why I think I was degrading and unable to walk - I thought once the pain went away that I would be able to walk with no problems, but I wasn't able to at all. I was also very dizzy and had a lot of trouble determining space - like a room seemed a lot larger to me than it actually was and that sort of thing - so it was hard for me to reach for things and that sort of thing and that went away after the spinal tap too. Although the dizziness remained and comes and goes, it's nowhere near as bad as it was.

But even though I'm nowhere near the person I was before the accident, I'm still doing a lot better than I was just a year ago. And I'm hopeful that I'll continue to improve. My Dr. recently gave me a very good prognosis, but she wasn't able to do that until recently and the accident I was in was 20 months ago! Brain injuries just take a long time to recover from.

Before the accident, I was a very independent, practically hyper-active and very healthy 33 year-old. So I had no use of a walker before the accident.

So, who knows what cause you to need to have walking issues... it could have to do with the damage in your brain from the bleed, or the PCS, or maybe the bleed caused iicp and that made you need a walker or ... ? have your Dr.'s explained to you why you need a walker? Have you asked them?

Anyway, other people have walking issues too. Every head injury is different, but at the same time, we can all relate with one another and our symptoms are similar.

I've had a great deal of speech trouble since the accident I was in too - I even went to months of speech therapy and that helped me. It's been getting better on its own too.

As has everything else. It's just painfully slow for me. I am not a patient person and I had 33 years of being a very capable person so this has been very difficult for me. I imagine your path of recovery won't be a day in the park either.

Just try to keep calm and carry on.