Today is a day in which the world collapsed in on me.
I do not fully understand this. My current experience seems so out of line with the positive sense I had on completing yesterday’s complex and wordy post.

I did not sleep well and was up in the middle of the night. Part of this waking period was devoted to a search of the web. I wanted to investigate the salicylate issue further and provide a link to a page I had found which described this sensitivity and also identified it as an outcome of brain trauma.

That page was not found. But I did find a series of pages describing brain injury and patient outcomes. These pages describe me. They speak to my own experience in a way that I am reluctant to accept.

What I have learned is that the degree of recovery at the two year mark is likely typical of all that will be achieved (the exception is for young people who may continue to show improvement). That many victims of brain injury struggle with insurance companies and doctors and finally give up the effort and simply withdraw into a fatalistic acceptance of their injured state and seek no further progress. I learn that over time even doctors become frustrated as they desire to interact with patients who demonstrate improvement. When there is no improvement the doctor’s attention flags. I discovered that what I have experienced as social isolation is very typical and acts to impede recovery. Of greater concern is the fact that the entire topic of brain injury is a relatively uncharted area in medical science. The relevant tools and intervention techniques are rapidly evolving but there is much that is not yet known.

In the early morning hours I went back and reviewed all my posts to date. I realize that there is much that I have left out: the fatigue, the headaches, the sense of being overwhelmed, the inarticulate silence that accompanies my conception of my future, the dying hope of a full recovery.

I had wanted to make this blog a positive experience for others and feel I am failing in that. My apologies.