ABSTRACT
After a collision in a football, or soccer, match results in disturbing symptoms, the author’s diagnosis is changed to post-concussion syndrome and the timeline for her injury to heal itself is extended to six weeks. The author is advised to remain off work to allow the acquired brain injury (ABI) to heal and struggles to live with her worsening condition.
The author explores common symptoms of brain injury from a patient’s perspective and provides vivid descriptions of living with dizziness, imbalance, nausea, tinnitus, cognitive fatigue, auditory and visual hallucinations, and memory and brain fog problems. The author then seeks further information via publicly available sources. She describes a simplified version of the mechanism behind a brain injury as understood by a patient with such an injury. She learns about traumatic brain injury (TBI), acquired brain injury (ABI), post-traumatic amnesia (PTA), concussion and eventually discovers she has a Mild traumatic brain injury.
As the weeks drag on, the author suffers the effects of her isolation and loneliness. She details how these effects manifest through depression, anxiety, learned avoidance behaviours and daydreaming and fantasy worlds. Finally, the author finds advice which will be familiar to those with a brain injury, that most healing occurs in the initial weeks and months after the injury.
