Thanks guys. You guys are really helpful. What would your guys advice on attention problems? Its really hard for me to read sometimes. My eyes tend to bounce around and I cant really understand what i have read. Will further reading benefit me? I get tired very easily after sustaining a long conversation or reading. I hope this goes away...

supreme,

Your screen name makes me think of pizza. LOL

The reading problem is common. Try to determine if you have more difficulty with different types of reading material. I cannot read fiction, especially if it has very descriptive writing. Too much information to try to hold in my memory to make the story make sense.

I also struggle with long line lengths. My eyes get lost trying to keep my place, and even more lost trying to find the start of the next line. Try using a blank piece of paper to help you follow the line you are reading. You may even need to cover the text you have already read if it distracts you.

Long conversations can exhaust my brain. I had a one on one meeting that lasted almost two hours. I was finished for almost a week recovering my cognitive strength.

Try pacing your conversations. You may even do better if you avoid conversations in a room with others talking. The back ground voices can overwhelm you brain.

The important objective is to avoid overwhelming or exhausting your brain. This slows recovery. If you start to get 'spacey eyed,' your time is up. Do something else, even if you have to excuse yourself from the conversation.

Hope this helps.

My best to you.

this will likely not go away huh... :/

thanks
 

wow thanks for asking the questions and for all the answers too from everyone i got alot from it all
i learned about what i call 'bothies' what is the symptoms from stress and brain injury can be exactly the same so keeping stress down however you do it really has been helping me...
i am so happy to have found this place , i have tried to explain to my family what it is like for me but well i guess i need not tell you how difficult it is....
:)

Concentrate on Concentrating
 

I just went to see a neurologist and he said to spend at least 15 minutes a day focusing on focusing on a chapter of a book and testing yourself afterwards to make sure you are remembering and then later make sure you still remember. He said it doesn't matter what you remember as long as you do remember some stuff.

Yeah! Mine is constantly trying to blame it on something else and sending me into tons of docs who all just kind of say yes you have PCS and no there is nothing to do about it.

Family is the hardest. When I am at college on my own I can handle being ill because I can just hole myself up when it is really bad and I can just get away. At home I cannot get away! And they know me so well that they know when I am feeling really sick so I can't just ignore it as easily. Also it is way too easy to get ticked off at family :(

poulsp and Margarite,

If you will post your email address or send it by PM, I will send you the doc file of Dr Glen Johnson's TBI Survival Guide. It is great to have family read it. They will have many ah ha moments as they recognize your symptoms.

If you post your address in a a public post, use "AT" instead of "@" to protect your address from Spam bots.

My best to you,

keeping the stress off does really help, I feel that not challenging yourself might lead to worst effects. I believe that the key to healing is challenging yourself at a pace that you can actually handle. However, I still have major problems with MEMORY and ATTENTION. I really hope this heals even if it takes a decade... I am patient....

supreme,

From what I have read from others and from my own experience, the challenge to take on personally is much simpler. Challenge yourself to find new ways to do the stressful or difficult things. These are the work-arounds and accommodations I often speak about. As the stressful tasks become easier by using work-arounds and other accommodations, the PCS subject tends to slowing return to the old ways of doing the stressful tasks.

I find myself taking on tasks now that I could not have even considered early on. Sometimes, I will notice I am hitting my limit and need to revert to using my work-arounds, etc.

Having other ways to complete a task makes it possible to attempt those tasks without frustration. You may find that you can be 100% during your best times, then need to revert to using work-arounds during your bad days. Either way, you have access to a fuller life by combining the good days and bad days assisted by work-arounds.

In the end analysis, the things we have to put off or avoid completely can be replaced by other activities and skills. The re-invented NEW you has just as much access to a full life just in a different way.

The muscles need to be exercised to get stronger. The brain has a different system of recovery and strengthening. Exercising the brain to fatigue is counter-productive. The best Brain Training companies have found they need to limit the amount of time spent doing a specific brain training task.

A simple way to look at how the brain works is this. It only takes three incorrect processes to create a bad habit. It takes seven correct processes to overcome the bad habit.

If we train the brain until it fails, it remembers the failing processes. If we train it and stop while it is still processing correctly, it remembers the correct processes. Whether it is muscle memory or cognitive memory, this system of training is highly effective.

Think of it this way. If you spell a word wrong, you can either focus on the mistake or focus on the correct spelling. Focus on the mistake and the mistake will likely be repeated. Focus on the correct spelling and you are likely to get it correct the next time.

For those of us with PCS, we often make the mistake of trying to do too many things at once. We used to be able to multi-task without any problems. This can cause mistakes in all of the multi-task. If we break the tasks into each single task, we can better preform each individual task then add the next task. All of the task get done successfully. It may take longer than if we did multi-tasking, but it took less time than attempting to multi-task and failing and needing to correct the different tasks.

btw, I started typing 'taks'' instead of 'task'. Once I started misspelling task, I have misspelled it throughout this post. Lots of red squiggles to go back and correct. Just an example of how quickly the brain develops bad habits.

As you work at reading, try to find the type of reading that is easiest to do. It will keep some of your reading function working. Then, as you get stronger, you can start to introduce the other types of reading. Have you had your visual system checked? Horizontal nystagmus (the eye jerks as it tries to move side to side) is common with PCS. It can make reading difficult. Also, some have found they need a prism correction prescription for glasses. This helps the eyes converge properly on the target object. These problems can also make depth perception difficult.

There can be eye muscle control issues or the brain can have a difficulty 'stitching' the two images together into a continuous image or a bit of both. This stitching takes a lot of brain processing. When I am fatigued, this is the first thing to go if I do not put an effort out.

I hope this helps.

My best to you.

I was finally approved by the school physician to go talk to a neurologist to check my eyes. I do get extreme double vision once in a while depending on my stress level. I was also wondering if you have noticed a flat personality. I cannot hold conversations anymore. This is the part that saddens me the most because I can't hold anymore small talks, flirt, etc.