Days after my head injury, I didn't know what was going on with me. I knew something was different about me, but there weren't any physical signs to back up my feeling. The medical experts that I was told to see didn't believe me and focused on my injured neck--which was also injured from my accident. It wasn't until I insisted that I wasn't feeling well that a neurologist requested an MRI and found atrophy in the area of impact, which he dismissed as a real issue. I went home and had my wife look up the causes of brain atrophy, and we found that a violent impact can cause it. We found a new doctor who took the time to give me another MRI/CAT and he found a multitude of issues that resulted from my accident. They all amount to what is known as TBI--traumatic brain injury--which comes with many life altering side effects.
Discovering these side effects has not been fun, or easy. My TBI comes with physical and mental complications that I am still trying to cope with after 15 months. I was lost. I wasn't sure where my life was heading, until I decided to look for support groups on the internet. I found three Facebook groups that welcomed me and listened to my stories.
Traumatic Brain Injury Healing & Recovery Support Group
I found out that all of the symptoms I was dealing with were common for TBI victims. There were people who felt exactly like me and that in itself took a lot of weight off of my shoulders. I got to the point that I thought I was just making everything up, and so knowing that I was not alone was such a relief.
I decided to use the many years of experience in podcasting to share my TBI story. I call the podcast Living With TBI. I don't upload episodes as often as I'd like because of mental fatigue. The podcast helps me with cognitive skills, and keeps my brain active throughout the process. I am very fortunate that I am still able to podcast, and so I decided that I will use my podcast as a way to reach out to more TBI victims in hopes of helping them the same way the TBI community helped me.
Here is a link to my latest episode called Why Community Matters
BTW, I like to include a photograph that I've taken with my blog entries. Each photo that I post represents different mental states that I often experience since my injury. Here is one of my most recent photos:
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