Thanks for your welcome, Mark.
I feel I almost know you, for my part, because of the frequency of your excellent postings, which are a mainstay of this web-board, as regular readers (and occasional visitors, like me) will know well.

In self-intro, I've mentioned already my original TBI, from a horse onto farmyard concrete in 1991. I had most of a week's coma (and a large subdural haematoma, but was not operated-on). I'm living in Ireland now -- I sometimes liked to say that my blood is Irish, my voice is English and my brain is from an interplanetary visitor. I'm not fixed in Ireland and feel it's likely I will move again soon.

After my TBI, I had zero access to any rehab (in England at that time) and, without any self-awareness, I tried to go back to work immediately, which was a successful small business. My colleagues had difficulties with me, although I would still believe that their real and imagined difficulties were partly from their own lives, not only mine (but that is not at all to say all was well in my mind).

From that time I wandered. I lived in the US for a while, in CA. I had money, from which I was parted by my own folly sometimes, and by other people's outright deceptions at other times. I then wandered up to Canada and lived in Vancouver for some more years. At that time, Vancouver was terrific -- so beautiful and friendly too. I was in a fairly poorly state, I'd say, altho well enough disguised. In Vancouver I took part in a very good and (for me) re-constructive brain injury support group, and more time passed, with a large amount of stop-go-fail-restart fairly haphazard self-rehab.

After ten years I went back to England in a better state (altho dirt-poor, of course). I went to England because I thought I would seek out some qualification (in the country where I'd had my previous schooling) to do more and be more organised about helping other people with brain injury, who were stuck (being without effective rehab). I had spent some time in Vancouver progressed to where I found I could be helpfully effective in some people's diverse situations (varying widely, from being paralysed, mute and ignored, to being "invisibly" disabled people with constant day-to-day problems but not publicly known as TBI-ers).

So, back in England, I found it VERY straining at the start, (a very different densely populated environment from even big-city Vancouver), but I found I could get on academically, although I truly still cannot really understand how. Boastful-sounding, I managed to do two Masters and then a rehab PhD in London. Strangely, each component task was the immediate hillock just in front. I still alternate between absurd courage-bluster and being overwhelmed by really tiny non-challenges. Getting those degrees should give me confidence, but I know for certain, hour-by-hour, that there's less than a wafer between seeming success and complete nothingness.

However, both much more importantly and much more interestingly, it's a lasting puzzle to find how one can slot in somewhere to produce enough benefit for people (and families) who've had brain injuries. You yourself do very well, I believe, as a main NeuroTalker here. For the last few years I've volunteered in the Irish brain injury association, but I sorrowfully find it ineffectual, or "under-effectual" at least.

It's valuable to have the insider acumen for living as best we can with brain injuries, I hope and believe (and have found too, to sound more positive), because medical and therapeutic outsiders have poor insights still, unfortunately, scandalously and wastefully.

Thank you for what you do, for me and for many others here. It's a pleasure to read you -- and a large benefit too.
Be best.
Paul