Gees! What a ride!

MTBI… “Mild”??

The symptoms started with relentless head pain. Then came the nausea, the light sensitivity, the burning, itchy eyes that refused to focus. My vision became unreliable. I was dizzy. My balance disappeared. And that was only the beginning.

I lost my internal clock. I couldn’t tell how much time had passed. My directional hearing was gone. My memory became frighteningly unreliable, and my emotions felt completely out of my control. Sleep was and still is impossible without pills!!!

The curtains stayed closed because daylight physically hurt, eyes itchy and strained. Fatigue became my constant companion. Even the smallest household chore left me exhausted, needing to rest afterwards.

Appointment after appointment, I kept hearing the same words.

“That’s unusual.”

“You should be feeling better by now.”

“Are you feeling better?”

No, no, no I didn’t….

Nothing was getting better.

And nothing seemed to help.

But I felt bad saying what they were doing wasn’t helping…..

I even completed a driving assessment to make sure I was safe to drive. I passed. But deep down, I didn’t feel safe, and I told the assessors that too.

Even driving 80 km/h on the open road overwhelmed my brain. Everything moved too fast. There was too much to process. Whooshing in my ears, ringing and then full shut down….

How was I supposed to return to work when simply driving felt impossible?

Conversations became exhausting. I would lose track halfway through a sentence, forget what was being said, or completely lose my train of thought. It was embarrassing, frustrating, and isolating.

Pain, nausea, and poor balance became my constant companions.

My vision looked like the surface of the ocean in big swell—always moving, always shifting, never still.

Then there was phantom movement. Imagine seeing something shoot past you…. But nothing is there. It is terrifying when you don’t know what’s happening. Your brain is simply sending the wrong signals, but in the moment, it feels incredibly real.

I also developed visual snow—a constant haze, like looking through a veil. Sometimes it felt as though I could see multiple images layered on top of one another. Trying to explain it to someone who had never experienced it was almost impossible.

I faithfully completed vestibular rehabilitation exercises, hoping they would help. Instead, they often made my symptoms significantly worse. Glasses were of more help, but if I was tired during the appointment, the glasses would be too strong when they arrived.

Seeing a psychologist was valuable. It helped me begin to understand that I wasn’t just recovering from an injury—I was grieving the loss of the person I used to be.

But that grief didn’t disappear after a few months.

It stayed with me for years.

Rather than healing from it, I buried it. I medicated it. I convinced myself I was coping.

Looking back now, I wasn’t healing…

I was surviving, pushing thru, changing and adapting.

In the end I gave up on help, I changed occupation, less hours, appointments like the physio etc was much more exhausting than work…. Nothing helped so life had to move forward, I had a 6 year old to provide for a mortgage to pay etc… TBC….