Every so often, I find a great article that explains what I wish I could in a perfect way. This is one of those articles.
The parts that ring especially true:
- Your senses are muffled. Your sense of presence is gone. You feel you are not really part of what is happening around you. You can’t experience everything going on around you. (I often feel detached and introverted, both of which are new since the aneurysm.)
- You often just stare off into space with emptiness in your head and in your eyes. (This is especially true for me in the early morning!)
- You’re cold all the time, it’s hard to get up out of a chair or out of bed because you are so weak. (Cold all of the time is true! And I’ve gotten much stronger, but especially if I sit for a while, I feel the weakness and stiffness.)
- You feel fragile, broken. You feel damaged. How do you pick up all the pieces and make progress. (The prognosis was so bad, and even at Shepherd, my family was told I’d not be able to drive and/or take stairs. I can now do both, but I always worry that maybe they were right and I’m not doing as well as I think, especially when it comes to work.)
- There are more days now where I don’t think about it because I do quite well. I am grateful for the progress I’ve made and most people who didn’t know me before wouldn’t know the difference. But I know. I remember how I used to be. I haven’t gotten it all back but I’m still working on it. Like so many of you with brain injuries, I realize how strong I have been to have gotten through all this and I am grateful I am doing as well as I am. ( I do know. And while I am so grateful for my recovery, I miss the ease with which I used to do things like working out, speaking in front of others and just being me.)