One of the great ways I found to boost my recovery was to really look at how much time my brain injury was actually consuming each day. By targeting those prickly, stubborn symptoms, I was able to reduce the amount of time I spent ACTIVELY being brain injured.
We begin these brain injury journeys in shocking places. Sometimes in an ER, sometimes in our homes or work places. On the ground under a large tree. On a sports playing surface. At the hand of a an angry domestic partner…
Brain injury is like some big, thick blanket of darkness at the beginning. It encompasses everything, seemingly. It affects all of our routines and work/play lives, our thinking, our financial situations, our loved ones, our choices.
As days turn to weeks and then months, most of us find that our injuries are very isolating. Our people move on, needing to. The acute emergency of our injuries falls back some, replaced by new news and developments, world events and the twists and turns of our loved ones’ lives.
It is difficult to maintain momentum when, often, answers are spare and therapies are, at best, just a little help. For many of us, we don’t even realize that we begin to recover BECAUSE we fail to heal. We begin to recover because we need or want to do something and it is important enough to execute in a new way, a different way than before.
Successful recovery ends up our ability to reduce the hours when our injury is befuddling us, taunting us, frustrating us and breaking our hearts.
My recovery has been successful because I reduced and reduced until my injury no longer kidnapped my days. To be honest, I don’t think of it much any more, especially in terms of how it prevents me. I am like my old self because I fail and succeed, I soar and fall, I choose wisely and not so wisely…I am like my old self, just a different version. Fatter, surely. Ha. But better in so many ways!
As you navigate your own recovery, see if you can pinpoint how much time the injury actually gobbles up of your day and target that. It might be emotional outbursts and impulsivity. It might be the short-term memory challenges. It might be the headaches or the cognitive fatigue.
If you can target each time-stealing part of your injury, like a fire to put out, you will claim back more and more of your days. Instead of thinking of your injury as this gigantic monster that ruined everything, try to think of it as smaller, as only able to damage/challenge parts of your whole. Then pick one for Spring and do your brain injury Spring Cleaning. 🙂
As we Spring Forward on our clocks, let’s Spring Forward in our recoveries. This is our time. Our precious time. Whether you can tackle the emotion outbursts by choosing therapy and talking with your doc about any new med possibilities…or whether you might finally stop relying on a faulty memory system and get your schedule into a day planner…or whether you might rearrange your schedule and begin to insert naps and downtime to help stave off cognitive fatigue…
Spring Forward! Let’s take back some hours each day where brain injury has been holding our time hostage. It’s precious time. Our time.
Kara Swanson's Brain Injury Blog 