A Nurse's Experiences with a Traumatic Brain Injury

Hello Friends!!!!  I'm back with another blog post and forgive my delay in my writings.  I've been recuperating from occipital nerve decompression surgery.  So today, I want to spend some time sharing what I've learned about the trauma to my occipital region that significantly impacted my overall functioning, what treatment options I've tried, and why surgery was my last and best option for relief. Nervous about my initial consult I was a front seat passenger riding with my friend when we were rear ended.  It was a quick, loud, but very powerful force that sifted through my whole body.  As my body rocked forward, it slammed back with even more force and unfortunately for me, my head took a serious blow onto the headrest.  My occipital region was impacted as well as my frontal region and some of the areas that affect motor and speech.  You could say my entire brain just shifted back and forth.  At that time, I didn't know what would be...

This post is all about the eyes.  The windows to our souls.  More importantly, I want to discuss an often overlooked issue with recovering traumatic brain injury victims-visual impairments.  I can best highlight the issues based on what I have been dealing with the past 11 months since starting vision therapy.  When I was evaluated by my physical therapist a year ago, I had no idea that my impairments that caused horrible headaches, sensitivity to light/sound, and ability to read in a straight line had to do with my visual system.  I couldn't track very well either and didn't know that.  Why?  I had been in the hospital following my accident and yet, no one saw these issues with my eyes and visual processing system.  My thoughts were that maybe the impairments hadn't set in a week after my accident.  Who knows?  I NEVER thought it would take this much work to get back on track visually.  What makes matters even worse is th...