Trying to read Ghost in My Brain.

I can force myself to read pages but then I develop headache and have a hard time keeping focus on the page. I end up reading a short section then stopping with fatigue, coming back to it later, reading another short section, having problems, and stopping. It is a cyclic form of progression.

I am not sure I retain much of what I have read.

The author’s injury sounds both similar and very different to mine. I have this sense of recognition, that “I know that, or I did that too,” and then there follows a description of events which seem totally wild, and completely outside of my experience. I have joked with a friend about a new form of therapy which might turn her into a Frankenstein. But in the period immediately after the accident, I was a Frankenstein, clumping around, lost and uncomprehending, attempting to reach the offices of the leading local high tech employers. This sense of a Frankenstein clumping around lost in the city matches closely with passages in the Ghost in My Brain.

I appear to be experiencing eye problems which I did not have prior to book reading. My eyes lose focus or I have trouble maintaining focus on the page. I appear to trigger a headache much more quickly.

When I read text on a computer display, I do not seem to trigger the same headache. Because of this, I thought I was ready to read a book. This inability to read is very frustrating. Over the past week I have felt I was stepping outside of the injury, that I was returning to a degree of normalcy, to the prior sense of me. This was a surprising, heady, very welcome, exhilarating experience. I am now forced to acknowledge that all of that experience may have been due to little more than wishful thinking.