Post Concussion Syndrome

It’s time for me to get a little personal with y’all.

About a year and a half ago while travelling between the US and UK I suffered a traumatic brain injury. It took a few days for me to fully understand the extent of the injury because I chalked up a lot of the weird things I was saying/doing to jet lag. I definitely had a headache, but when I called my GP upon landing in the UK he just told me to take paracetamol.

A couple of days later, after wandering around the house in a daze for hours, I tried to make a cup of tea and ended up putting it directly into a cupboard. I was unable to form coherent sentences when my husband asked me what I was doing so he rushed me to the A&E. Even though I was barely functioning, I brought a book with me out of habit but kept reading the same sentence over and over unable to understand what I was reading.

I was eventually diagnosed with Post Concussion Syndrome and was told that there was no timeline on the prognosis. I may have symptoms for weeks, months, years, or forever. When I spoke to the doctor about how hard everything was seeming, she told me, “It’s going to feel like you’re trying stream videos using a computer from the 80s.” It was a pretty great analogy because it felt like everything I was doing was constantly buffering.

One of the hardest parts of PCS was I couldn’t read. I could still recognise the words, but none of them made sense and it would take hours for me to get through a chapter if I could get through it at all. During my three decades on this planet, books have been one of the most important parts of my life. To not be able to do the one thing that has always gotten me through good times and bad was devastating.

It took six months for any sign of improvement, but my short term memory was shot and I lost the ability to multi-task, symptoms I still struggle with. And good god the headaches.

Reading has become easier, but I found I had to take A LOT of notes to help me along. Luckily for me, reading and note taking was my jam in university. It’s useful with reviewing books, too!

So why am I telling you all of this?

A couple of things happened recently that really shook me. While I’m better than I was, I did suffer a serious injury that still affects me and may do so indefinitely. One of the most difficult things about silent illnesses is it’s hard for other people to take it seriously or understand how bad it is. With head injuries, sometimes YOU don’t even realize it. The brain is tricky like that.

Going over some of my previous posts, I saw some typos and a few other mistakes. Typos are normal, but it still made me feel really crappy. I proofread my posts but these still slipped through the cracks.

I was beating myself up a lot about this, but cheered up when I saw an audiobook I requested was available at the library. I listened to a couple hours of it before I decided to update my progress on Goodreads. That’s when I saw I had already read this book- the exact same library audiobook no less. I couldn’t remember it at all. I thought surely it must have been a mistake till I saw the date I had read it: it was about two weeks after the head injury.

I listened to the audiobook right to the end and it only vaguely seemed familiar. I fully understand why I don’t remember it, but it doesn’t make the whole thing any less scary.

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So, seriously, why am I telling you all of this?

Basically what I wanted to tell you, Readers, is that I apologize for any mistakes I’ve missed or may miss.  Even though this blog is a lot of work, I get so much joy and fulfillment out of it. Plus I’m sure it has the added benefit of helping my recovery. To have you all reading, commenting, and following means the world to me. For that I thank you from the bottom of my nerdy heart. ❤ Also can we give a shoutout to my incredibly supportive husband David, who not only has helped me through all this but has started proofreading my posts, too?

Hopefully I’ll recover more from PCS as time goes on, but until then bear with me: because no amount of head knocking is going to keep me away from books.