Gees! What a ride!

Eight Years Later

It has now been almost eight years since my “concussion.”

For a long time, I fought to keep going. With the help of medication, I managed to work a 30-hour week. I was determined not to let my brain injury define me.

But about three years after returning to work, things started to change.

The migraines became more frequent and more intense. I began getting a strange sensation that the floor was giving way beneath me. The nausea returned with a vengeance. Some days I couldn’t even brush my teeth without vomiting.

Fatigue became impossible to ignore. I had to completely restructure my day just to survive. I’d start work early to avoid conversations while my brain was at its best, leave early to sleep, then return later to make up the hours I’d lost.

It wasn’t living—it was surviving.

My daughter inevitably took a back seat. I barely had enough energy to work, let alone do the household jobs that needed doing or be the mum I wanted to be. I felt like my brain was failing… and because of that, I believed I was failing too.

As my workload increased again, I asked for fewer hours and less pressure.

Instead, the opposite happened.

More was expected of me. More responsibility was placed on my shoulders. I was stretched thinner and thinner, and I felt like I was being used.

I couldn’t understand what was happening to me.

It honestly felt as though I’d been hit in the head all over again.

My symptoms weren’t improving—they were changing and getting worse. I was becoming physically and mentally unwell.

There was conflict in the workplace. Safety concerns were ignored. The pressure never let up. Colleagues were leaving, and those of us who remained were expected to simply carry on.

At the same time, life outside of work was falling apart.

My aunt was dying.

My nan had become seriously unwell and required constant care.

I was emotionally exhausted. Physically exhausted.

Completely depleted.

And then…

My brain gave up.

I simply didn’t have the strength to keep carrying everything.

The symptoms that followed were unlike anything I’d experienced before.

I struggled to speak. My words became slurred. Anxiety consumed me and never seemed to switch off. Fatigue kept me in bed for days at a time, and pain spread throughout my entire body.

Blood tests came back normal.

“Everything looks fine.”

Yet my pulse was racing, and my blood pressure was elevated.

My body was screaming that something was wrong, even if the tests couldn’t explain it.

Then came the head tic.

It started as a forceful blink.

Within a few weeks, it had turned into a repetitive nodding movement. I joked that I’d fit right in at a heavy metal concert. 🙄

Humour had become one of the few ways I could cope.

By that stage, all I could think was…

“Of course. What else is going to happen?”

Then my aunt passed away.

Not long after, my Nan did too.

And I resigned from my job.

My life had crashed.

My brain no longer functioned the way it once had.

I couldn’t keep pretending I was okay.

I had to hide.

I had to retreat.

Isolation became the only place where my brain wasn’t constantly overwhelmed.

It wasn’t giving up.

It was survival.