What Concussion? with Pam Treischel
Show Notes:
We know our bodies better than anyone else does, and that’s why it’s so important that we advocate for ourselves. Today’s guest, Pam Treischel, is a scuba diver, underwater photographer, and ambassador for the Inland Ocean Coalition who suffered a concussion she had no memory of after the fact. Following the injury, Pam found herself at an all-time low, before being referred to a functional chiropractic neurologist who still works with her to get her in shape to continue her life’s passion, which is diving.
Pam shares how her injury has impacted her work and personal relationships in a big way, including the guilt she feels about gaps in her memory and a reduced capacity for connection and involvement. In closing, we explore why it is so important to take responsibility for your own healing journey. Join us to hear her story today.
Key Points From This Episode:
● What you get when you join Concussion Connect today.
● Introducing today’s guest, Pam Treischel, scuba diver, underwater photographer, and ambassador for the Inland Ocean Coalition.
● The story of how she sustained her injury on a dive.
● How confused she felt to see no evidence of the injury when she saw her reflection.
● The ongoing headache she experienced after having been injured.
● How she developed a fluid-filled lump where she was hit.
● What an MRI revealed: hematoma and cyst-like tissue.
● How her memory returned to her during a dream.
● What it felt like to remember the incident: validating!
● The second ultrasound that pointed her in the direction of surgery.
● How the hematoma broke down on its own.
● The low she reached where she found herself writing a suicide note.
● How she was referred to a functional chiropractic neurologist.
● How, when you’re facing a concussion, there’s a lot you can’t keep track of.
● Why it is so important to her to get diving again and why she can’t just yet.
● How the concussion has changed her relationship with work.
● The difficulties of working for someone who once worked for her.
● The guilt she experienced around her home life.
● Why post-concussion people often isolate themselves.
● Why it is so important to advocate for your needs when you are suffering from PCS.
● How she found Bella via a tag on Instagram.
● Why Bella believes we know our bodies better than anyone else.
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Transcript - Click to Read
[INTRO]
[00:00:05] BP: Hi. I’m your host, Bella Paige. Welcome to the Post Concussion Podcast; all about life after experiencing a concussion. Help us make the invisible injury become visible.
[DISCLAIMER]
The Post Concussion Podcast is strictly an information podcast about concussions and post-concussion syndrome. It does not provide, nor substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician, or another qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice, or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast. The opinions expressed in this podcast are simply intended to spark discussion about concussions and post-concussion syndrome.
If you haven’t joined Concussion Connect yet, I really hope you do as this month’s theme is communication. We understand how hard it can be to communicate with those around you, including medical professionals and friends and family as you’re dealing with something so invisible. Make sure you join concussionconnect.com today and join in on our conversation.
[EPISODE]
[00:01:30] BP: Welcome to today’s episode of the Post Concussion Podcast, with myself, Bella Paige, and today’s guest, Pam Treischel. Pam is an avid scuba diver, underwater photographer and ambassador for the Inland Ocean Coalition. In November of 2020, while getting ready for a dive, she took a significant blow to the left temple that she forgot within minutes of impact and proceeded to dive as planned. As the days and months past, Pam suffered from a number of unexplained symptoms. She tried to blindly navigate the medical system and effort to determine the cause of her symptoms. But as her symptoms grew, so did the confusion surrounding of why. It’s difficult to pursue answers when you don’t know what happened. Six months later, her memory returned and so many things finally made sense, but it wasn’t over yet. It took another five months before Pam learned she was suffering from post-concussion syndrome. Pam is still very early into her own recovery journey, and hopes by sharing her story, she can encourage others to engage help and support early on. Welcome to the show, Pam.
[00:02:38] PT: Hi. Thanks for having me, Bella.
[00:02:40] BP: To start, as I always like to start, do you want to tell everyone a little bit about your unique concussion experience? I say that because it is definitely a little bit different than most, to be honest.
[00:02:56] PT: It is all different. In November of 2020, I was getting ready to go scuba diving, and my buddy got stuck in traffic and was running late. As she was finishing getting ready, I was kind of sitting there on my tailgate and I thought, I haven’t checked my backup dive mask in a long time, just making sure it’s in good condition trying to do the right things. I open my dry suit pocket, which is just like a Velcro flap, and I grabbed the mask and I pulled it and it was stuck. I thought it was because I was sitting on the tailgate, so I slid off the tailgate, and I was still pulling on the mask and it was still stuck. I kind of got agitated, I pulled a little harder and at the wrong time, looked down to see why it was stuck and I saw it coming out at me. It was like that split second of. “Uh-oh! I’m in trouble.” The mask hit me in the head so hard. I instantly had this almost vibration and this blaring sound in my head along with what it would call a whooshing sound. I immediately thought I killed myself. I immediately suspected that I had some blood vessel, I was bleeding out. I just thought, “The end is near.”
Everything went dark. I had no vision, and so I laid over my tailgate, and I just laid there and I remember these crazy thoughts, like my daughters are going to be mortified that their mother was killed by a scuba mask. These crazy thoughts going through my head. Then I saw this little bit of light in the corner, I immediately thought, “Don’t go towards the light. Don’t go towards the light. I’m not ready yet.” Then I realized the light was coming at me and it’s like, I was just – all these crazy thoughts going through my head. The next thing I know is, my vision came back. I was like, “Wow! That was significant hit in the head.” I kind of prepared myself for blood, and I got over right where my first aid bag was, and I went to get that and I saw my reflection in the window of the truck. There was no blood, no nothing. I looked in my mirror, and not only was there no blood, no cut, no bump, no bruise. There is nothing. You would have never known I was hit.
I immediately thought because I had all this diving plan for the week, I thought, “Oh, thank goodness. I can still go diving this week.” Then I thought, “Oh, no, no. I need to go talk to my dive buddy. She needs to know what happened so we can have a good conversation about whether or not we proceed with this dive. As I walked over to her, which was, I swear probably less than 20 feet. I stood there and I didn’t know why I was there. She just looked at me and she says, “Well, I’m almost ready to put on my tanks and we can get diving.” I’m like, “Okay, great.” I went back to my tailgate and I saw my mask sitting there stuffed in my pocket, put my gear on and we went diving. I’m walking down to the dive site, and I always knew when my symptoms first started, because I had this funny little moment where it was so brief. I had to kind of go, “Did that really just happen?” But I went to step and I couldn’t see my foot for a moment.
I got down to the water and I just kind of like did a real check like, “Am I okay to dive? What was that?” It was, I said, “No, that was just a shadow. I feel fine.” We had this amazing dive. I actually saw a giant pacific octopus laying her eggs, stringing those up in her den for the very beginning of her end. But I got out of the water and I had this headache. By the time I got my gear off, the headache had gotten worse. I thought, maybe I’ve gotten a little bit of a sinus squeeze. I had so much diving planned for that weekend. I just I asked my buddy, I said, “I know we were going with this group, do you mind if I bail because I had this headache. I want to nip it now so I can do the rest of my diving for the weekend.”
I did and the next day I went diving again. Same thing after one dive, I was hurting. We didn’t do a second dive. I continued to dive. Actually, did accounted and there’s nine dives. The last one I did was, we call it Lumpy Land. We’re only about 20 feet deep, and we’re looking for Pacific spiny lumpsuckers, these little tiny cute fish. I figured, if I can’t handle 20 feet, I need to stop diving. Something’s not right. Sure enough, my head hurts. That was it. That was like November 22.
Then, I progressively started getting worse. I knew the symptoms were not just because of diving, I was experiencing things. My heart was racing for no explained reason. I stopped drinking coffee altogether. The headaches, the tiredness, the dizziness, just didn’t want to get out of bed. I could just lay there and cry. I had no idea what was happening. We were down at my daughter’s for Christmas, and what had happened is I developed this lump in the area that I got hit, but it was a unique lump and that it was fluid filled. If you went to touch it, it would disappear. It was really hard to show somebody what was happening if it wasn’t just at the right moment. It happened while I was down there over the holidays. I told my daughter, “Feel this.” She did and she just kind of like, “Whoa! Mom, that’s not right. You need to go get that checked.” It wasn’t until the first week of January, I could get into the doctor’s. The first thing she said to me is, “Did you hate your head?” I said, “Well, no. I would remember that.” She’s like, “Unless you don’t.” We were so close, right there, that I’ve like made this logical explanation. I said, “Well, no way. If I had hit my head hard enough to not remember, there have been some type of bump, bruise, lump, something” I said, “Other than this fluid thing, I don’t know, there hasn’t been anything.
She kind of went down the path of, “This could be temporal arteritis” and she had me in a surgeon’s office that afternoon and I was scheduled for a biopsy two days later, because the fear there is that you lose your eyesight. I remember the surgeon taking the stitches out and he said, “Well, the good news is it’s negative. The bad news is, you still have this headache, and this discomfort, and these weird feelings and you don’t know why. We’re going to need to you know refer you on to a neurologist.” So then I began the whole merry go round of the medical system, trying to get a referral, didn’t like my insurance. But literally, it took me, I want to say, just over two months before I actually was being seen by a neurologist.
I know their forte was really to address headaches. I always felt like it was something more than just a headache. But she asked me if I’d had any type of imaging, I said, “No.” So she got me in for, I believe an MRI at the time. She was great about calling me in the day of the MRI when she got the report back. She said, you have a hematoma, and cyst like tissue in that area. She goes, “A hematoma would indicate that you were hit in the head.” I’m like, “No, I wasn’t hit in the head.” Then we had to do – she had an ultrasound done as well, just to really better understand what that hematoma was doing. Then my next appointment with her was probably by that time, with all the imaging, it was middle of April, and they decided to do an injection of steroids into the area to break up that hematoma. That in itself was painful, because you already don’t feel good and now they’ve put a bunch of fluid in your head.
For the first week, it was just this horrible additional pain on top of that, but it helped break the hematoma. The sad part was, it would make me physically ill. There was one night I was literally just throwing up, but I felt my temple and it’s like, “Oh, it’s going down. I guess this is a good thing.” It was one of those nights that I had been sick and gone back to bed, and I just like had this most vivid dream and I just sprung awake. I was like, “Oh my gosh!” I remembered all the pain. That was my dream, all the pain, everything going dark in the crazy thoughts about my daughters being mortified their mother is killed by a scuba mask, all these details. I was like, “Oh my goodness. I was hit in the head.” It wasn’t maybe a week or so later, I was moving my scuba gear and that mask was sitting on top of my dry suit. I saw the mask and I just dropped everything. I’m like, “Ah!” I picked up that mask and it was like, I’m just looking at it like, “I was hit with this.” I didn’t know how. I didn’t understand you know what transpired at that point. I just knew that mask had hit me and caused all that pain.
When I went back to the neurologist and explained that to her. That was really the first time I heard the words post-concussion, and whether it was symptoms and I don’t remember, but it was post-concussion. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard anything like that. She said, “Well, now that that hematoma is gone, hopefully your symptoms will disappear and we’re on the right track.” I felt really good with that. However, about a week or so later, again, I was getting sick in the middle of the night. I felt my head and I’m like, “Oh, no. No, it’s coming back.” Sure enough, the hematoma had come back, so they sent me to have another ultrasound, which again, this is during the pandemic. It seemed like everything took forever to get to a doctor, twice as long as it did originally.
[00:13:32] BP: Oh, no, it’s all good. I say it’s unique, because you didn’t remember. I think it’s tough because the first few months of you trying to recover and figure out what was wrong, yu were really missing the biggest piece to your puzzle, was that you had suffered from a concussion, you had hit your head. It’s hard because you didn’t know that. There is instances where people have blacked out and completely forgot it happened and then you just carry on that day and then all these symptoms occurring. I think it can be really challenging when that happens because as humans, we like to know why. Like, why is this happening? What is going on? Answering that why question of knowing how you got hurt, I think it probably helped a lot. How did it feel to remember what happened to you?
[00:14:29] PT: Oh my gosh! It was extremely emotional. I remember seeing the mask and it was déjà vu, it was emotions coming at me. But it was also this realization that what happened was real. I wasn’t imagining it. I wasn’t a hypochondriac, like I felt people were making me feel. There really was a reason for everything that I was getting experiencing. I ended up going back in for another ultrasound to figure out what the hematoma was doing at that point when it came back. She called me and said, “So the hematoma is bigger this time and it’s become more solid. It’s not something we can just break up.” The recommendation at that point was surgery.
Well, I have this huge dive trip coming up to Egypt and the last thing I wanted to do is have to have surgery before this dive trip. But I thought, “If we get it done really fast, I could still make the trip.”
[00:15:36] BP: That you make it in next week.
[00:15:38] PT: Yeah, right. No, I didn’t. It took me like a month to even get into – the first surgeon that I had seen to do the biopsy, I went back to him, figuring I knew him, he had a great mannerism and I had this trust with him. He says, “Pam, I’m sorry, but we’re going to take a step back.” He said, “Everything you’re describing, some of the symptoms –” like my jaw locked up on me at one point. He’s like, “There’s some nerves involved here, there’s a lot more involved.” He goes, “I would really like to have you see an ENT surgeon.” Okay. So now I’m waiting to see another surgeon. By the time –
[00:16:19] BP: Even more. Yeah.
[00:16:20] PT: Yeah. During this time, I started a new job and it was literally the second day of my job. I was in the bathroom the entire night getting sick. That entire week was horrible. But what was happening is that, hematoma is breaking up on its own. By the time I saw him, the hematoma was actually gone, which was a blessing in disguise, because he could feel the cyst like tissue. He said, “That’s nerve damage. You’ve got your nerves trying to protect themselves, like a tree being cut, the bark grows around the cut to try to protect it.” He says, “That’s what your nerves are doing.” I explained my dive trip. He says, “Let’s take a very low invasive approach and lets to an injection to calm those nerves.” Of course, I’m going to get another injection into my temple.”
I agreed to do it. and I’m thankful because I had such a good response to that, and the tissue started breaking up. When I came back, because I needed to have that done weekly for three weeks, and I was literally three weeks before my trip to Egypt at that point. I said it worked really well. He said, “Then I don’t see why you can’t go diving.” My last, my third injection was literally the day before I left for Egypt. He signed my paperwork to go diving. I went to Egypt, I had 21 dives and I just had this amazing time, but I didn’t really understand post-concussion. I’m thinking, “The hematomas gone. This cyst-like tissues gone. I’m doing nothing but getting better.” But on that trip, I was lucky if I slept two to four hours a night maybe. I realized now, like one dive I called early because I didn’t feel right and I didn’t know what it was, but it was a night dive. Now I realized, I was just so disorientated on that tide and my head was just not right.
I did the right thing by calling the dive. Got back from Egypt and everything, I will say, mental health wise spiraled out of control. I was a miserable person. I was treating my family horribly. The way I talk, the way I didn’t want to spend time around them. I couldn’t spend time around them, I realized that now. It was just the symptoms I was having, my head was hurting, that I got in this place that was really a bad place to be. I was alone for the week and I caught myself writing basically a suicide note. I was just done. I just felt that everyone would be better off without me at that point, because I couldn’t explain what was happening. I didn’t understand what’s happening.
In a moment of I think disruption actually from a friend in Egypt, I had to go back to this note I’m writing and I had this moment of clarity that it’s like, “Oh my gosh! This is this is not me. This is not me.” I was the one that started taking that word post-concussion and started doing research, and it was me that discovered there’s something called post-concussion syndrome and really kind of looking into it. After Egypt, my family had approached me. It was kind of this unintended intervention and it was kind of after the whole suicidal thoughts and stuff for creeping up. My mom, she called me. She saw me one day and called me the next day. She just said, “You need to go get your head checked.” I said, “Really? Okay. Thanks for that.” I wasn’t sure how to take it.
But then the kids, and their dad, they’re telling me that I’ve withdrawn and I had to just – it was hard. I couldn’t find words to talk at that time either. Really struggling with my words, and especially when you get into intense conversation. I just said, “You know what, I’m going to go get help for myself. I will deal with this later.” My chiropractor told me, finally knew what had happened with the hit to the head. He said, “Oh man! I wish you would have started coming in and getting treatment sooner. If you feel like you’re not getting better, I have a neurologist to send you to.” I was referred to a functional chiropractic neurologist. I saw her in August. Okay. This is my challenge in trying to –
[00:21:12] BP: No, no. It’s good. You’re doing –
[00:21:14] PT: Trying to put a timeline together. These are things I still struggle with. October, there we go. October is when I thought –
[00:21:24] BP: It’s okay.
[00:21:27] PT: I’m like, oh my goodness. This is what I do all day. These are the real struggles, so I’m glad you recognize them.
[00:21:34] BP: They are real struggle.
[00:21:36] PT: They are. It’s daily. I do this daily. The other day, I was addressing a card to my mom. I’m like, I did not know her last name. I had to ask my roommate what her last name was. To see my neurologist, I literally had to move out of my house and in with a girlfriend from high school because she’s like three hours away from where I live. I’ve made a lot of changes, just to seek treatment. I’ll share that, the first day of treatment, when I went in and she’s really doing her assessment of me. She had me visually follow her out to the left. I did it and I have this sensation, this physical sensation behind my eye and in that area I was hit. She did it again, and I finally just – I think the third time I grabbed my head and I said, “I don’t know what you’re doing, but it hurts and I can’t do that.” She’s like, “Okay. Okay. That’s good to know.”
Then I want to say, one of the other things, I had no gag reflex. I couldn’t smell out of the left side. Then when she did the whole kind of field sobriety test, touch your nose, I missed my face. I just remember opening my eyes and just start crying. I’m like, “What is wrong with me?” She just gave me this big hug, and she’s like, “I’ve been there. We can overcome this. It’s going to take some time, because it’s been a year, but we’re going to work through this.” That’s kind of where I started finally getting some good help in the right direction.
[00:23:14] BP: Yeah. I think you mentioned a few really important things. I think one of them is, you said the timeline thing. I have that problem as well. I think part of it is like a trauma response, and part of it is – there’s so much going on every day when you’re dealing with a lot of symptoms. You’re also not doing a lot, so it’s kind of a weird conundrum. But a lot of things become mush. I know there’s a few years of my life, about four of them, I can’t tell you what order a lot of things happen other than the big moves. Like moved cities, moved houses, big events that occurred, but the smaller things like weekend trips with my girlfriends or treatment, when I did certain treatments, trying to keep order of what I did first. What I actually did was, I went to the hospital and I got all my medical records printed once because I was trying to put a timeline together for another medical professional and I couldn’t do it. I was like, I don’t know when I did. I know I did this therapy that’s not related to the hospital. I know it’s the hospital here. But I don’t know what was first, I don’t know what was second. I think that happens a lot because there was just so much going on. I was really struggling then, so it kind of becomes mush and kind of like a blur.
really want to talk about your passion to dive, but we’re going to take a quick break before we do that. Make sure you stay tuned to our talk on that and talking working post-concussion as well.
[BREAK]
[00:24:54] BP: Wow! I can’t believe it’s been one year. The support from everyone has been truly amazing. Due to reaching our one-year anniversary, you can now book one-hour sessions with myself, Bella Paige. I offer help with understanding love ones, finding your new normal and finding specialists near you. Find the Work with Bella link in our episode description. I am looking forward to another great year.
[INTERVIEW CONTINUES]
[00:25:24] BP: Welcome back to the Post Concussion Podcast with myself, Bella Paige, and today’s guest, Pam Treischel. I wanted to just talk a little bit about your passion to dive because for me, riding was a really big drive factor to get me to go to therapy and get me to get better because I wanted to ride. I wanted to do this. I know for you, wanting to dive is something that was really important to you.
[00:25:54] PT: Yes. Scuba diving, I mean, my trip to Egypt in many ways, I don’t know if those 21 dives in a week spurred on something that wasn’t good for me. But overall, it was the escape I needed at that time. It was my happy place. It’s still when I think of someplace warm, and sunny and happy. That’s where I go in my head, because that is my best memory right now with the last couple years. But yeah, I want to get back to diving. My neurologist, that was one of the first things she asked me is, “How much do you like to dive?” I said, “A lot.” She says, “Okay. On a scale of 1 to 10?” I said, “11.” She’s like, “Okay. We will get you diving again.”
Neurologically speaking, she’s pretty confident that I will be ready to dive by April. The actual area where I was hit is still tender. Then there’s that question, is it healed enough that the pressure from being underwater won’t do some type of damage or cause symptoms to exasperate. That’s kind of where I’m at. I actually have a dive trip plan the first week of May. I am going one way or another. If it’s a snorkeling trip, then it’s a snorkeling trip, I’d actually had to come to those terms with the whole thing going to Egypt. It was either going to be a very overpriced snorkeling trip or I’d get to dive. Kind of way I have to look at it, but I need that break. I totally need that break.
[00:27:46] BP: Well, you sound like me. You’re like, “They said April, so I’m doing it at May.” It’s like, “I’m going. I believe in this.” You know what, it is important to have hope and I think it’s really nice to have those escapes and those outlets, especially when you are in recovery. Of course, it’s challenging when it’s things that possibly are going to heighten your symptoms. But I always say, if you love it, and you really enjoy it, then I think it’s worth trying. Because not trying is going to just make you more upset, especially mentally. I know you’re working and you’ve had to change things a bit. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
[00:28:27] PT: Yeah. I started in a new job, literally, I think two weeks before I went to Egypt. It was kind of that learning, getting new hire stuff done. Then when I came back, it was suddenly working in front of a computer screen for eight hours a day. Yeah, that was right during my decline too. When I started seeing a neurologist, I didn’t feel like I had enough time to do all the homework. I felt like it makes some headway, and then I go to work and be staring into the computer screen and all my symptoms were just heightened and it was just starting to become a challenge. Talked a lot about with work, they’re great. They’ve helped me immensely, but talked a lot about going part-time or taking leave for a little while. I have this guilt. I didn’t want to totally take a leave, so I went to part time. I actually did really good. I’ve made some significant strides, I think in getting better. Tilt my head back and I could actually find my – close to my nose. I know I’m making progress. It’s just very slow and it’s definitely not linear. It’s all over the place.
I kind of hit this wall right now, where four hours is just, it’s killing my eyes. I mean, some days, I’m starting work and my eyes are hurting already, because they haven’t calmed down from the day before. I’m kind of at this point where I really have had to kind of think about, “Do I take a leave?” It’s so hard. I work for somebody that used to work for me. He was a stellar performer, and now I’m on one of his teams. I want to be that stellar performer and I am not. I’m struggling a lot with that, that whole guilt of, I don’t feel like they’re getting what they expected kind of thing.
Nobody’s making me feel that way, but me and I recognize that. Right now, I’m really just kind of evaluating what it is I need to do. I’ve turned my screens down. I’ve been trying tinted glasses. I just got a new pair of computer glasses, hoping that that helps. Trying to do those small things and been trying to kind of take a nap before I go to work. Just close my eyes, use that eye mask that heats up and just kind of rest my eyes, and avoid social media, and just all other screen time and just really focus my time on the screen when I really needing to work.
[00:31:16] BP: Yeah. I think it’s nice that you’re doing that. I know you’re on Concussion Connect, so you’re definitely on the screen sometimes. I’m glad it’s low. It is very low symptoms, like one of my focuses on it was making sure it’s not like flashy and bright. You can look at it and not hurt your eyes, hopefully, especially when you’re going through symptoms. I wanted to ask you. You mentioned the guilt and I know when we talked before, guilt is really common. All the time we feel guilty for those people around us because of maybe the things we say that we’re not ourselves anymore. I know, I used to feel guilty for a range of different things and different ways, usually just for lashing out in the anger. But sometimes we feel guilty for different ways. Do you want to touch on some of your guilt that you had for your family life?
[00:32:09] PT: Sure. If I really recognized it, as I had my grandson over and he’s only four and a half. I had no coping skills whatsoever for a four-and-a-half-year-old, let alone life in itself at that point. We had even gone on a little boating trip, and it was with a like a boating club. I couldn’t be around people. They’re drinking and they get louder when they drink. They were having fun. I don’t blame them at all. But I couldn’t tolerate that, I couldn’t tolerate trying to get my grandson to do something and he wouldn’t. I knew I wasn’t being the fun grandma that weekend. A lot of different, just my responses. Just yeah, that lack of coping skills, I just noticed all the way around.
The other odd thing for me is that, I’ve been married for a total of 30 years, but the last 10 years, we’ve actually been separated. We never got divorced, though. Over this time, we actually became good friends. Well, somewhere around the time I sustained the concussion, we got back together. I remember getting back together, and we bought a house and all these things, but I don’t – this was a very difficult conversation to have with him, but I don’t recall why, I don’t recall the emotional connection. It’s gone. I don’t remember it. That was a very difficult conversation.
By the time, I want to say June, it was like, we were just roommates. In fact, I actually moved into the other bedroom because I just wasn’t sure why I was there. Part of my neurologist being so far away, it kind of took me out of that situation where I was really uncomfortable. But yeah, I have this a ton of guilt, because I don’t know if I feel guilty because I made a bad choice before the concussion or after the concussion, or was it even a bad choice, was it a good choice. I just I just don’t remember. I have this enormous guilt that I am putting someone through something that I think they went through 10 years ago and really don’t want to go through it again. I don’t know where to go from that. Once I get myself figured out a little better, to where I can speak timelines fluently during a conversation, my goal would be to maybe seek some counseling with him if he’s open to that and figure out is there anything there to save or do we just continue on as friends. Time will tell.
[00:35:00] BP: Yeah. Thank you for being so honest in relationships. Post-concussion syndrome can be really challenging. You don’t feel like yourself, you mentally react to things way different. We’ve discussed it on the podcast before. Or as you call it, your ability to cope kind of goes away. A really common thing with post-concussion syndrome is kind of pushing everyone else out of your life. A lot of time we feel isolated, and then we almost make ourselves more isolated by accident. I think it’s like, for myself, I live in a house with three other siblings, and I didn’t want to see any of them. I live in this big busy house, but I felt like I live there alone, because I felt very isolated and alone. Even though they were like always in and out the door, there was other people in and out the door. My mom was that caring person who always had food on the table for anyone who needed to eat it. That meant we had extra people sleeping on couches at times when they had rough times at home.
My house growing up was very busy and very full. That’s what I was used to. I think being a part of that, it was crazy to feel so alone when I think about it now, but I know it’s real. That’s how I felt, despite maybe the reality of my situation. I think the mental aspect of my concussion because they couldn’t see what I was going through was really tough. Like I had a headache every day. I told them the other day, told my brother that, he remembered, “Well, you never ever saw Bella. Bella just lived in her room.” I was like, “Yeah, I guess I kind of did for a few years.” Nobody saw me. I was out when my family was around, but second somebody else was in house, which was often, I would disappear because it’s too loud and I just couldn’t handle it. I think it’s interesting, all these things that happen to us in our lives anyways and then you add post-concussion syndrome on top, and it just makes it the roller coaster way more crazy. You have told us so many great things and shared so much. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we end today’s episode?
[00:37:21] PT: I think I would just share. I’m still very early on this journey, but I really had to be an advocate for myself. I really had to be the one that kind of researched, what could this be? Nobody really had those answers for me. Yeah, you do. It’s a lonesome journey at times, most definitely and you do kind of put yourself in that spot because of the noise sensitivity. Being overstimulated can really aggravate your symptoms. Driving is one of my big triggers, so it’s really hard to go visit family. Be an advocate and get help. Get help when you need help. But the sooner you can get it, the better.
I had the disadvantage of not even knowing what I needed help for, but once I figured it out, it’s get the right help and realize you’re not alone on the journey. I’m so thankful to you and couple other folks that I posted something on Instagram, and I think you guys commented on it. That’s how I learned about you, was a simple tag on a post. I am so grateful because I’m not sure how else I would have found you as a resource. I have not binge watched, but binge listened to all of your podcasts and just trying to pick out bits and pieces that can be helpful for me. Thank you for everything you’ve done.
[00:38:56] BP: Well, thank you so much. I like that you mentioned being your own advocate. It’s really important. Like you said, you knew there was something wrong, even though you didn’t remember hitting your head. I strongly believe we know ourselves and our bodies better than anyone else. If something is wrong or something feels wrong, then there probably is something wrong. It might take time to figure out what that is and that’s okay. I just wanted to thank you so much for joining and sharing some of your life post-concussion.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:39:32] BP: Has your life been affected by concussions? Join our podcast by getting in touch. Thank you so much for listening to the Post Concussion Podcast and be sure to help us educate the world about the reality of concussions by giving us a share. To learn more, don’t forget to subscribe.
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