Ptsd And Traumatic Brain Injury

[goingonhope]

Cactus jack, I just found your recent comment in this thread, but I'm unable to read it just yet, so I'm just gonna go ahead and like it because I trust it's something worth liking, just a bit to hard to read right now. I paused at the words: "They do get worse, and stopped at "alzheimers."

Take care.

 

[mamachick]

goingonhope thank you very much. I enlist my humor, that saves me everday. I have always had the ability to laugh at my own mistakes, now I laugh alot

 

[Deleted member 487]

I have to correct myself. They CAN get worse, but not always.

Goingonhope, I know of "specialists" that will claim that a TBI does not get worse. And I, as a recipient of TBI, can tell you they don't know a thing about what they're talking about. It does not always get worse, but it can. It can even get better, though not by far. There are so many factors they cannot even consider considering, until it happens you likely won't know.

I will say that until you have been "officially diagnosed" with a TBI, don't even consider it. I don't care what you have been through. Until a doctor tells you outright (I have documentation to verify mine), then AFAIC you don't have one. I know of people that thought they could fake a TBI, or just "claim" they have a TBI, and for what? Seriously? For...."answers", perhaps? What good are answers if the answers are for questions that you cannot ask and that do not apply to you?

It really annoys me as it has been commonplace for people to comment about how easy I have it. And yeah some people think they can fake a TBI. AFAIC anyone that fakes it, needs one. If they think it's easy, let them live with one.

Why don't people start diagnosing themselves with cancer? Why not self-diagnose for AIDS or Hep C? Somehow TBI's severity is so misunderstood or just plain ignored that people think they know what it involves.

What does your brain do?

Your brain controls everything in your life. There are the autonomic responses like how your liver, kidneys, lungs, heart, glands, eyes, ears, nose, and sensory nerves work. Having a TBI can affect those. I cannot smell things I once could. Same with taste. Hearing, my ears are just fine, but depending on factors involving my spine and brain, I can hear somethings really good and other things not at all.

Because it involves my glands, my body has replicated issues like diabetes, only to get "kick started" by stuff like Chromium Picolinate. Because the pancreas (IIRC) that makes the natural insulin needs it to work, and the part of my brain that makes the stuff the pancreas needs, doesn't make it. Or it's in minimal quantities.

Or like my sexual genitalia refusing to work. Nothing worse than having a hot chick naked in the sack with ya, wanna "get down" but no matter what both of you do, your "friend" wants to stay hidden.

And then the pain. Times when I can't think straight because the pain is literally "that bad". Constant headaches, rarely less than a 3 on a 10 scale. Since Dec. 30th 2006 I have had only 3-4 days without any pain. That was because the best anti-inflammatroy meds around, that I was using, I'm also allergic to. I ended up with my mouth full of canker sores.

And now, when the pigs find out I have a TBI, I end up with a bullseye on my butt. They need someone to take their anger out on, they pick me. No one believes when it happens and then if they do believe it, they usually don't care. I'm considered a "worthless eater". A worthless eater that has been a productive and successful businessman in the past, having a history of starting small businesses and either selling them off or closing them down so I can try something new. I have been successful in my volunteer projects, having received a number of awards for them. Projects ranging from spearheading a Thanksgiving meal for the indigent that fed 18 people free Thanksgiving meals, people that would have had nothing to eat; to spearheading a volunteer mapping program and creating the administrative protocols for using it, using a new technique called "digital cartography". That mapping system is now used nationwide, and has been taught to foreign dignitaries for potential use in their regions. I personally spent a month and a half instructing men and women holding masters and doctorate degrees from UNESCO. Some people you have to pay large sums of cash to do it. Me, I volunteered my services for that. Because I love my country. You know what I earned from it though? I now have an honorary doctorate. So technically I'm a doctor. Not sure what of yet! Maybe a Doctor of Volunteer Studies? I dunno. It's a menial thing to many people, they make fun of it, and they insult nd ridicule me for it. Oh well. I earned that degree. I earned a lot of respect.

Now, dealing with TBI #3, it's all gone. Mostly. I might get a little bit of it back, but I'll never be the man I once was.

And people think I have it easy. Hmph.

 

[mamachick]

Cactus Jack, I know about being a target too. For the first year or so after my TBI, I could not verbalize and communicate as I once had. I was inneffective and therefore frustrated. Often if I thought it, it came out my mouth. I pissed some cop off because of that. I learned to pause and consider the relevance in responses because I said too much.
When I was 49, 2 years post TBI, I was re-learning to assert myself. I weighed 115 pounds, have 2 herniated cervical discs and stenosis, fibromyalgia, TBI and ptsd. I spent the past 10 years working for a domestic violence agency and am totally opposed to violence. I have taught -NO EXCUSE FOR VIOLENCE. Worked with abusers, victims, and children and taught parenting and lifeskill, anger management etc.

I asked a boyfriend to leave my home. He called the police. There was no violence on anyones part just an arguement that was going nowhere. The boyfriend wanted to go in my bedroom and see if he forgot anything and I said no, if he left anything I would get it to him.

The cop wanted to know the details of the arguement and I didnt give him answers fast enough. Actually I told him that it was about nothing. There was no crime being committed and I knew the law, it was my home, boyfriend has his own. Cop assaulted me. He pointed a gun in my face in front of my 20 year old daughter. I made sure the situation/arguement did not escalate and the cop escalated the entire situation. He slammed my head, injured my arms, I think he kicked me. My legs went numb and they had to take me to ER. They called the charge obstruction, which was eventually dismissed and expunged. Cost me psychologically and financially.

Dept of justice investigated but said it was not criminal. I never had any desire to off myself. Following this police joyride, I attempted suicide and had to be hospitalized two times.

I want so much to prevent this from happening to others, at least work on issues to educate public and contribute to it. I wouldnt know how to begin because of the TBI. When I have anxiety-I try to figure origin. Could be ptsd trigger, could be TBI, or menopause. Since TBI-changes in BP, developed twitches or tics in face and foot (mostly around my sister) severe allergy to medications, bunch of little stuff.

Im not sure how you came to be a target to cops but I know mine came early on. I initially put myself in situations that were out of character for me(not illegal activity). At times I just wish I would have died in the accident, it would have been better for me and my children. I didnt though, so I guess someone up there wants me to do something else and I dont think its all about me, I think Im suppose to do something to contribute to a bigger change.

 

[goingonhope]

I will say that until you have been "officially diagnosed" with a TBI, don't even consider it. I don't care what you have been through.

Cactus, as for me personally all I’d need to reconsider is the medical information that was given me sometime between 1988 and 1992. By this time I had had either one, likely two head MRI’s both showing much old scarring from what Neurologist said was previous head injuries, as well as showing lesions in a different part of the brain, and a sheathing elsewhere, that considered possibly suggestive of MS.

So again, all I’d need to do is reconsider what I’ve previously been told, denied, was unfit to accept and remained afraid and ignorant to.

Just part of what led me to acknowledge that I was living with Ptsd, eight yrs. after having been diagnosed (1993 or 94) with it, and having forgotton that I really still had it (2001) besides it’s symptoms remaining, .......was having lost nearly an entire decade to a very vague and seriously lost memory. That decade began just following some most severe head injuries in 1986.

This amnesia like experience was entirely too too uncomfortable for me. My God, in my teens I had had photographic memory of anything I read or saw, also by 2001, I could nearly remember all of and even its details, of any of several traumas and life experiences prior to 1986. But not so in the number of years to follow. Well that was like one big amnesiac clump or mass of wtf is and just happened to me. And that time was very low functioning for me, having acutely become unemployable, and lost by many, many neurological symptoms that I couldn’t even begin to keep up with let alone communicate well enough. Besides the fact, that the neurologist didn’t particularly like me and likely due to my low communication functioning then (in comparison to his) and his frustration resulting.

My god, he was looking at a beautiful young lady who maybe by first appearance didn’t appear to have a f’n thing wrong with her. Why was I being so uncooperative? And, why miss some of his appt.’s. - His conclusion: I wasn’t cooperating. Well guess what Mr. K.. ......I was powerless. Some people just don’t understand true powerlessness to they experience and live it.

I use to have the need to generalize and state that I drank that decade away, but truthfully this is far less then honest. Ya’ I went on benders but they were generally few and far between and only could last a few days, sometimes a little bit more, maybe a week. And, then not so for another many months, 1or ½ yrs. Sometimes 2 yrs. in between. My point the drink was never really directly connected to all those many symptoms.

For now, skipping way ahead and beyond many a neuro-physiological /bodily symptoms that no where do I read about with PTSD. Some of these symptoms still bring back far too many feelings of utter helplessness, lonliness, fear and despair.

Now, turning to these last 19 months. One psychologist recommended that I continue neurofeedback with him in addition to EMDR. According to him the brain has an amazing capacity to rewire itself, (I guess expedited) when provided neurofeedback, according to him.

According to the neurologist that did the last MRI on me he not only saw scarring from injurues and lesions but he compared them to previous MRI’s and saw progression and recommended another MRI 6 mo.’s from that time. But my lumbar puncture reads beautifully.

The psychiatrist I then started seeing as well wanted a battery of neuropsychological testing as he claimed that there was something seriously wrong with the way my brain was then working, as well as, confused by the way my cervical MRI read, and these tests were supposedly to help discover more.

Stopping myself, ………I am so uninterested in writing a book here in one post that I will try and wrap this up by saying that the ER experience which followed meeting with that psychiatrist, which led to hospitalization last yr., resulted in a diagnosis of Affective Traumatic Brain Deregulation.

WTF, clinically that means I still don’t know for sure, but I wonder if it has something to do with what the man who came to assess in 2009 our then totaled vehicle, and he responded when I asked him why the airbag didn’t go off, and he stated something like: …the airbag would’ve gone off if the seatbelt was on ......(which is a mistake in my understanding due to the yr. of that vehicle.)

......And then he pointed to the windshield and started telling me of how well that glass was constructed, (some details on and on, it was way too much), and continued stating that the amount of tonnage that would’ve had to hit that windshield to cause that damage would have been great. Well that was my forehead, hey thanks dude, for all that information.

But all this is just some facts about this and that, leaving out my whole entire experience of experiencing life with what’s left working properly fromo within my brain, and leaving out mention of me later receiving full insured medical amounts (car insurance) due to my head injury, it’s needs and it then putting me at too great risk of developing early alzheimers.