I, too, have a frontal lobe injury. I don't like how I feel after an anger outburst...my symptoms increase drastically. I dislike the uncomfortable feeling so much that I've learned how to control my temper. It took me 6-7 months to develop that tactic...hopefully you guys can come up with a way to prevent an outburst as well. I wish you luck...it was a hard thing to do.

If I can do it, you can do it....and that's coming from someone who was a ticking time-bomb before the injury.

I identify with a lot of these posts.

It was a long time before I could admit that ANYTHING good could come from all of this!

In a really weird way, I'm less stressed about bad things happening in life. If I can survive all this, I'm pretty sure the rest of my life is gonna be survivable - good or bad.

This is a really good question. I have found life changing in various ways, but one in particular sticks out.

When I first got the knock on the head, I didn't think much of it and it was several days before I started to equate my symptoms with having a concussion. Nearly a week later, things got suddenly worse to the point that I ended up in the E.R. just to make sure I wasn't having a major brain bleed or something (had seen my doctor that morning and was coming out from having a CT when I realized I was getting worse in a troubling way.) In the beginning of the E.R. experience, waiting there in that room alone, I felt like I was seeing my life pass before my eyes. I know not all are religious but I am and I felt like God was asking me, "Do you want it to end this way?"

I found myself having to face hard questions like, Have I loved like I should have?

Do my friends and family really know?

Not just in the casual sense that we laugh and have a good time and are there for each other and such... But have I really stopped and spent time with them just to cherish them as the gift they are... Just to spend time not rushing around and racing from one thing to the next in life, but to just treasure the chance to be together and have that moment in time invested not just spent...

I come from a situation of abuse and have gone through a long journey of healing (still not done, but I've come a long way!) so it can be hard for me to say "I love you." For a long time, those words were empty and seemed more like an insult than something special. To say "I love you" meant someone would go through some of the motions but turn around and hurt you deeply and treat you horribly. So, the "lesson of pain" I've had to unlearn was that "I love you" only let pain in. If someone said it, they didn't mean it; if I said it, it made me vulnerable. Either way, it seemed certain to end in pain.

With my head I learned this wasn't true, but my heart seemed slower to catch up. But now, after really experiencing how frail this body really is and how fleeting this life is, I found myself faced with a thought that comes head-to-head with those old "lessons of pain" in my heart; is protecting myself worth the cost of not fully loving those around me? Is it worth me dying (or a loved one dying) and realizing too late I never entirely loved them like I should have?

Not to sound too corny but I suppose this whole head-concussion has been instrumental in leaving me with a heart-concussion that I don't think I want to get over. A part of me resists the whole concussion experience (and sure, some of those symptoms are not fun) but even so, I'm thankful God let this happen to me. He certainly knew I needed it!