3 entries back

3 entries back is a piece on brain injuries and links, and my personal experiences.

The links are to wikipedia posts.  This diary was written AFTER my brain injury; it possibly may describe years of my coping with the brain injury, as I don’t often go back years later to edit my pieces.  Social inapropriateness and emotional problems have been my primary experiences; some of the private notes I’ve written can be considered inapropriate.

I am 48 years old; some of my problems may be more appropriately laid to my age.  I was 36 when I had my brain injury; it took me more than 4 years to recover enough to work.  There was a time when I could not recall things five minutes ago; this diary has helped me very much to recover memories and abilities.  I think the brain injury had a lot to do with my reaction to getting exploited as a worker.

If you, and Social Security (and they did not.  I got very little out of that insurance) don’t believe just how damaged I was and how hard I’ve tried to recover myself, c’mere, I got a baseball bat, and we’ll see how you recover.

One note:  I finished my college degree AFTER the brain injury, with no help, and on no disabled programs of any kind.  Lucky for me, I had done most of the "hard" work for the degree, and I did graduate with a 3.03 GPA… although in Community College, I had a 3.78 average, before the brain injury, and was on the Deans List almost all of the terms I was at PCC.

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from wikipedia:

TBI may cause emotional or behavioral problems and changes in personality.[65] These may include emotional instability, depression, anxiety, hypomania, mania, apathy, irritability, and anger.[101] TBI appears to predispose a person to psychiatric disorders including obsessive compulsive disorder, alcohol or substance abuse or dependence, dysthymia, clinical depression, bipolar disorder, phobias, panic disorder, and schizophrenia.[33] Behavioral symptoms that can follow TBI include disinhibition, inability to control anger, impulsiveness, lack of initiative, inappropriate sexual activity, and changes in personality.[101] Different behavioral problems are characteristic of the location of injury; for instance, frontal lobe injuries often result in disinhibition and inappropriate or childish behavior, and temporal lobe injuries often cause irritability and aggression.[105] In patients who have depression after TBI, suicidal ideation is not uncommon; the suicide rate among these persons is increased 2- to 3-fold.[106]

SSD paid me ONE year of diability, based on a personality change.  It actually took  more than 4 years to return to a normal working life and there are on-going emotional problems.  You wonder why I stay home so much?  It’s easier on me.  sometimes I have lost control of myself, I was a sailor and can burn you to the ground verbally, and ENJOY it.  Too bad, maybe, that I remember it later, because it’s depressing and horrifying, even if the other party deserves it.

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