Greetings of peace and salutations. I’m close to my 2 year survival anniversary of my dual; subdural hematoma ruptured annie. I’ve found that paxil helps with the anxiety…aroma therapy helps ( a little bit) wirh the uncontrollable muscle spasms and nothing has eased the sparatic insomnia. I also have areas on my left side that are “dead” numb while others constantly hurt and cramp and spasm. Irratability is my new name. Things I used to tolerate or wasn’t bothered by before now are pains in my behind. I discover more and more holes in my memory every day. I lose words I know I know midsentence and It either irratates me or embarrasses me. I’m no ray of sunshine…yet I am thankful every day to be alive. I also have moments where vertigo and imbalance nearly topple me to the floor. I also stay afraid…my maternal aunt succomed to an annie at age 43 in 1994. I was 42 when I suffered and survived…I was 2400 miles from home and spent 16 days in a neuro ICU of which the first 3 days are a blank.
Hey Miki! It takes time for a brain to heal, a lot longer than say a broken arm or leg. Whats happening is the nerves were damaged and cannot send messages the exact way. I’ll post a YouTube video from UCSD at the end of this for a better explanation than I can provide.
For me, each time they put in any contrast dye, it set me back numerous months. I have noticed with the decreased imaging and angiograms, my brain is not going backwards as it once did. That’s a huge step in the direction I want to go!
I still have areas that haven’t healed to the point it was prior to SAH. I may never get those exact areas back, but there is definitely a noticeable improvement. So there’s word loss, I could provide the definition, but not the word, crazy right? At least it drove myself and my friends nuts. They used to try to give the word I was looking for and if it wasn’t the word, I would lose all my words. Then we made it a game, and all of us calmed down.
Sometimes I just have a bad day when my attitude needs to locked up. I don’t always understand the triggers. And triggers can be confusing, for instance, we have a coffee cup that just seeing it makes me angry. Its worse if I was given that specific cup and I would just lose my temper. We figured out it is the spotted pattern on the cup. We also figured out not to give that cup to me. If I feel the anger coming on, I can keep it in check, calming down when I do some relaxation breathing. Breathing deep and slow gives my brain more oxygen and it instinctively calms everything down.
A few years ago Ron (Hey old friend, I’ve missed you and the others) did a post on keeping your home organized, neat and clean. This was one of the things that affected a lot of us. He is further along in his recovery and his SAH was really not good. That man knows a lot of tricks to help us.
Here’s the video, I highly recommend it
Thanks for the video!