Uncertainty. It’s the one thing that anyone can grab onto when struggling with a concussion. A concussion is a form of a brain injury. It may sound silly for me to state that as an obvious, but I think we hear so much about concussion that the phrase is associated only with athletes or with students and we lose sight that yes, it’s the head, but it’s the brain. It impacts every facet of you because ultimately, the brain controls the body. So, when you have a concussion, it is one form of a brain injury.
And the only thing you can be certain about is that you will wonder about this ticking time bomb inside of you. Does it have an expiration date of when, one day it will just be magically better? That you can return to who you once were? That one day, you’ll wake up and you’ll feel miraculously better and everything will be a bad dream of the past? Doctors say that you will likely be better between 1 week to 3 months. Does that mean that there will be a magic switch when things get flipped back to normal?
If anyone has ever broken a body part - a bone, etc., does the bone heal back the way it was before? If you have surgery on your knee, does the knee bend as it once did previously? Are there lingering signs or symptoms you might feel if the weather flares up or perhaps if you step in an odd way? It’s no different with the brain. You can heal, but you may be struggling with life-long symptoms or even symptoms that last six months to several years before you reach a close to normal version of yourself. Or, if you don’t and you recover fully, you are now more susceptible to having a head injury happen more easily if there is a next time you have your brain slosh into the side of your skull causing another brain injury.
Uncertainty. Reflecting back upon the first few days and weeks of my concussion(s), uncertainty filled every part of me. Unsure if I was accurately describing everything to the doctors, yet desperately not wanting to leave out any details in case they had an answer on how to “fix” something. Uncertainty if they really understood or were listening to what I was describing and if they were truly “getting it.” Or was I being written into a series of check boxes on a form? And, if you’ve ever had a concussion, you can’t think quickly or clearly. You probably don’t even fully realize at the time that your processing is slow or not even fully grasping everything that is happening to you, so trying to complete a form is taxing and challenging in ways I don’t think the medical community fully appreciates. I understand their wanting to have a form to help compartmentalize the symptoms, but concussion symptoms are wide-spread and different for everyone, thus more uncertainty.
Rest. It’s the other thing certain about a concussion. You will need lots of it and then some more, and you need to test your boundaries too. And meditation is maybe one of the most incredibly healing things, I found while recovering. But I digress. Uncertainty. When you are first concussed, it’s terrifying or can be, of not knowing if you are okay. Or if you will ever be okay again. And no doctor can tell you this. They don’t know either. No one can see inside of your head or see what you are feeling but you. There’s a total sense of vulnerability that can happen with this loss of sense of self, and yet you likely feel so incredibly crummy at the time, you can barely process the thoughts of self. It’s a feeling of weight in your head, and potentially a throbbing if you’ve accidentally overdone it (which could be as simple as something like brushing your teeth). Perhaps your body wasn’t ready to be upright, to feel motion, to see busy pattern on sheets on a bed or a busy pattern of the bathroom floor tile because it’s too taxing for the brain to figure out at what it’s looking. Or perhaps the movement of trees outside your window is just enough that it throws your whole equilibrium off. And all you are trying to do is to make it from one room to another to go brush your teeth. You don’t know what is going to set off your body, what is going to be too much for it to handle, but you will know immediately when you’ve overextended it. Your body will tell you.
And, if you happen to be like me, I wanted to do research to figure out what was going on. To know if what I was feeling was “normal” and did other people feel these things? Yet, I couldn't look at a screen, tv, or my phone. And if I did, I felt like there was a burning sensation inside of my head and I was killing off tons of valuable little cells I needed to get better every time I looked at one. I found a way to have Siri read for me in the moments I felt well enough to try to figure out if the uncertainty I felt was normal or not.
This post and the one prior to this were kicked off because someone asked me to provide some resources to a friend that I had found to be helpful within the first few weeks of concussion. They were trying to help their friend, because the spouse felt as though they weren’t sent home with much information from the doctor office on what to expect and felt uncertain. I have done a tiny amount of googling to see what I could find and was not able to find much either. Don’t get me wrong, there are tons of articles sharing tons of links of symptoms and recommendations to get seen by a physician if any of them are being experienced by someone. But what next? Sure, once you start to piece together what your symptoms are there are some resources and articles out there, but there doesn’t seem to be much in between. However, I’m certain that there must be other resources out there, blog posts, etc. I’m collecting those on my prior post, so feel free to share any helpful links below here or on that post.
But in writing my post of what to expect within the first few weeks of concussion, it occurred to me that there is tons to discuss. One of those things is uncertainty. This post isn’t close to covering the myriad of thoughts I have of how uncertain everything was in those first few weeks of figuring out my new normal. So, I will likely sharing more thoughts about this. I’d like to keep those thoughts somewhat shortened as not to write a novel, which is definitely something that I could not have handled reading when concussed. So moving forward, I hope these nuggets can be helpful to someone and to know that YOU ARE NOT ALONE. Concussions are super scary. There’s so much uncertainty about them. But there are also silver linings.
For me, it was the uncertainty of when I’d be able to run again. When would the pressure in my head would subside? When would I be able to see normally again? When would the ringing in my ear go away? When would I be able to ride in the car for any amount of time without wanting to feel like I was going to vomit? When would I be able to handle watching motion or movement pass me by (whether that was watching someone walk past me, the trees swaying in the wind, a group of cyclists wizzing by on the street, the blur of the trees as I had to sit in the car to get to a dr. appt.)? When would I be able to look at a screen again? When would I be able to listen to a podcast and not have it overwhelm me - ie, it was too much to focus on and would make my head begin to throb. When would I be able to take a shower again and be able to handle the sensations of the rain drops from the shower head without each sensation being too overwhelming for my system to manage? When would I be able to handle standing upright for more than 30 minutes? I will say that for me, the thought of when would I be able to go out with friends, drive a car, and things such as this weren’t even in my horizon of thinking initially. I was focused on just little things and wondering how long they would last before I’d be able to do them again.
But with all of these feelings of uncertainty, there was also an immense feeling of gratitude. Gratitude that I had been able to feel and experience all of these little things that had made up my life before. So many little things that we take for granted or at least, I did. Little things like being able to lift my arm and have it know where my mouth is to brush my teeth. Gratitude for having once seen “normally” out of both of my eyes (and a drive with it to figure out how to get them better again). Gratitude that I could still move all of my body parts. Gratitude for the days when I didn’t feel as crummy. Gratitude for having known how to write. Gratitude for zoning out in a meditation. And so when I was able to start doing little things, I mean really minute things, I celebrated joyfully within to see glimmers of hope.
And so, my friends reading this, if you have a brain injury, celebrate the little things. Celebrate taking those first steps outside. Walking to the house next door or two houses down or even around the block. Test your limits slowly, but know that your system will fatigue. There’s certainty in that. But there’s uncertainty what your brain is relearning how to do, so be patient with yourself and maybe even excited because your brain IS relearning things. The moment you feel exhausted or like a headache is beginning, listen to your body and immediately stop. Or, you will likely face a tremendous headache of your body having overextended itself. And while it will be uncertain how long that headache will last, there is certainty that it will likely subside if you lie there long enough waiting, meditating and letting your system relax. So, be gentle on yourself. Think about children and how many years it takes them to learn things. Your body is having to relearn many things it once knew. There is certainty that you will likely improve from where you once were initially, though there is uncertainty with how much. But with the uncertainty, there is a beauty to not knowing, it gives us hope and inspiration to continue to improve. Through vulnerability, we learn so much that we would never have known before and there’s silent strength that lies within. So, despite the uncertainty, keep hope and faith that with positivity, you will continue to grow in ways you never would have dreamed about. Stay positive as there is certainty that it will help!