Hey guys. It's me again. Just been trying to cope with PCS and checking the boards.

Sometimes trying to live a a relatively normal life with PCS can be a pain, sometimes it feels like there's going to be a long road ahead of me. Sometimes it feels like I have a lot on my plate and I can't comprehend the bigger picture.

But life is never too bad! Just celebrated Valentine's Day with my girlfriend, and I realize that there are people who still love me, and I'm lucky for that. Sometimes I think "Well, I lost my mind, but I found my heart."

Hmm, kinda pointless so far. Well, I got a question for you guys:

A lot of you have been dealing with PCS for a long time, I want to know that has there been times where you've woken up to realize you've gotten a little bit better?

Have there been times where you've done something, remembered something, that you wouldn't of if it was months or years ago?

Have you accomplished something great thanks to therapy?

Have you conquered any particular symptoms that plagued you?

Hey, Eddy! Just yesterday my 15 yr old daughter (6 1/2 months PCS) was working on some homework and said, "Oh...I get this now...duh" So I think that's a great improvement. And I'm seeing her quick wit and sarcasm coming back. She cares enough to be sarcastic, which I suppose is good. We aren't that far into it in comparison to lots of people, and she still has some headaches and concentration/memory issues, but I do see some improvements.

I love that you mentioned realizing that Valentine's Day with your gf was a great thing. I've seen new and beautiful friendships blossom for my daughter. Her old "friends" were mostly related to sports. They have sort of fallen away, but she's had a couple of new people, who I think will be life-long friends, step in. She and I are finding a few new, fun dimensions to our relationship. I would say she has also "lost her mind but found her heart" in some respects. Her own sense of compassion has grown immeasurably.

Mark mentioned to me some time ago to try to appreciate more simple things with her. At the time I was frustrated and it wasn't easy to take his advice. Now I'm seeing how right he was. If she wants to spend the afternoon building a ramp for her slinky, there's nothing wrong with it. In fact I've realized that kind of thing is allowing her brain to think in new and different ways than her pre-injury lifestyle would have allowed. She finds great fun in playing with our dog now, who she virtually ignored before.

So...short answer...no dramatic "I'm healed" moments. Just very, very slow and gradual improvements in all of her symptoms. We are insanely, giddily, over the top thankful for each and every one of those improvements. Right now my husband and I tell each other, almost daily, if she never gets any better than this she will still be able to live a full life. What else could we possibly ask for?

Many of the 'improvements' are due to us finally finding a new way to do something. When we have finally let go of the old self, we get an opportunity to experience the capabilities of the new self.

I have had many improvements in my condition. Most I believe are due to finding these new ways to do things. When I try to do things the old way, the symptoms/struggles pop up in an instant without an prior warning.

It is this 'change of ways' that enables the improvement to manifest.

Dr Schutz explains these brain injury moment fixes quite well. He suggests that they are part of a lifelong willingness to work with out struggles, not against them.

His book (available online for a free download at www.givebackorlando.comis a valuable resource.

Mark -

I've been reading the book you suggested, and it seems it is more geared towards memory losses. i.e. how to train your brain to find alternate ways to remember things, writing things down etc. However, he does not touch on the emotional and visual problems associated with TBI. You can't simply train your brain to ignore piercing migranes or extreme fatigue. Can the brain repair these things on it's own? What did I miss in this manuscript?

Baseball,

Therapies like neurofeedback, vision therapy, vestibular therapy, etc. aim to improve functioning in the areas you listed, plus they restore cognitive functioning as well. There has even been research that demonstrated a 60-70% reduction in symptoms after undergoing these therapies. So, it seems that with the help of various therapies, the brain is able to repair these things on its own.

About how long after the injury should pass before considering these options? Should it be started immediately, or wait and if the symptoms don't heal on their own, then look into treatment?

I have just begun to start feeling a bit more normal over the last month. (This is over two years after a concussion.) I am really feeling pretty good about it at the moment. It is a real relief to have got this far.

It isn't that I got up in the morning and felt better than the day before. I don't notice anything different on that time scale, but if I go back to this time last year then there has been a huge improvement. A diary can help you to notice the changes. It is natural the focus on what is still wrong and wish that remaining symptoms would go away, but if I look back then I can see that there are a lot of things that have definitely improved a lot.

To mention one symptom in particular, I don't feel dizzy anymore! At least hardly at all. There was definitely something wrong in that department. I had a tendency to veer off to one side when I was trying to walk in a straight line, and I felt dizzy. It improved steadily for about 6 months but then I seemed to plateau. I didn't think that there was any improvement at all for more than a year. But now, I definitely notice that I don't notice it any more. That is the nearest thing that I have to waking up one morning and being better. I suppose I was concentrating on other symptoms and thinking that the dizziness wasn't changing at all. But it must have been because now I realize that the dizziness has almost gone.

All my other symptoms have gradually improved as well.

Hey Guys,

On this website is a very good article of a recovery story of a girl who had had 4 major brain injuries. This is inspiration for us all! Feel free to read the entire thing, but her story is about 1/2 way down titled "Sharon's Story."

http://stonemountaincenter.com/site/...ment-modality/

Mark - thanks for the insightful analysis on these issues. It would seem from reading your post that my sumptoms are mainly physiological. I suffer from this weird vision symptom where everything seems like its momving in slow motion, combined with a lost sense of time (although no balance problems). Have you ever had any vision therapies? Which would you recommend?

Baseball,

I don't think Mark has ever tried vision therapy, so I'm not sure he would be a good person to ask. I have tried it and it works very well. If you are interested, check out these websites:

http://www.novavision.com/Home.html

http://nora.cc/content/view/93/86/

I would recommend contacting someone from the NORA (not NOVA) website. I worked with someone from here who was associated with them and she was very good and very comprehensive.

You may also want to look into vestibular rehabilitation as the visual system and the vestibular system work in conjunction with each other.

Most insurance companies will pay for visual rehabilitation but not without a hassle. Get the codes from the vision therapist and call your insurance company. If they say that they do pay for it, get it in writing. For some reason, insurance companies like to fight not paying for this even though the FDA has cleared it for reimbursement.

Vestibular rehab will definitely be covered though because physical therapists who specialize in this field administer the therapy.

Typically what happens is that once your physiologic symptoms begin to disappear, the psychological ones follow suite. This makes sense because for most of us, the physiological symptoms are what causes the psychological ones, i.e. depression.
And these therapies are not about finding new ways of doing something. They are about reprogramming the brain to operate at an optimal state. Some people even find that after doing the therapy, their vision/balance improves beyond where they were before the head injury