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Coping With Mild Traumatic Brain Injury is the best book on the subject.
Now I have insurance. It makes a difference. Doctors can hear what I'm saying. I think, before, they were hearing a mosquito buzzing "Can't trust cash. Can't trust cash. Can't trust cash." I was working a minimum wage job, part-time, to save up, and afford a single doctor's visit ( usually in the range of $300) each month. It was nearly all I'd made each month. Dh also started coming to doctor's visits. I could say something, and the dr would completely ignore me. He would repeat it, word for word, and they'd note it, or act on it in some fashion.
How do you think I ended up in Supercrunch? Not by training or inclination: I was raised Republican. I was studying chemistry, with a lech for materials science. I was raised in a Dallas suburb- it's hard to get excited about a scrub grass backyard, a weeny little live oak- and frankly ugly, drought- stricken parks. Not a "wonders of nature" upbringing.
As I could barely afford doctors, I had to research what was going on. Fortunately, the minimum wage job was department manager at a college textbook store. The general manager liked me. I could read textbooks, or borrow them. I still have some of the notebooks. It's painful to even look at them.
Epilepsy: a new approach, is a book that was nearly a godsend. I backtracked what the author had written, to figure out what was nonsense, and what might work, and why. I got pretty fearless about high doses of Magnesium, and pretty gigged on anti- oxidants- manganese "catches" the chemical whip that makes some nerves work, for example. I took it from two or more seizure- like episodes per day down to one a week.
Atypical hemiplagic migraines. Migraines, btw, a itty- bitty seizures. The nerve spasms, it drains all the glutamate out of the mater covering, and then it takes up to a few days to recover. Untreated, the patches of spasm-blighted nerves grow. One can end up epileptic. Epilepsy, untreated, for that matter, does kill nerve cells. All the old prejudices about epileptics being ignorant came from somewhere.
I am sorry if this is disjointed. I keep editing. I sound like I"m bragging and obnoxious if I talk about where I started, and then what happened.
Oh, the book about multiple sclerosis- swank diet, or something like that- hugely helpful- it stops all sorts of ill-adventures. It says "limit fat to 5 teaspoons of fat per day" or something like that- maybe one teaspoon? Fast, then go to no butter/minimal oil. It stopped the headaches cold. That was the first breathing space.
Anticonvulsants did wonderful.....it's like I was underwater, asleep, befogged ( literally) and I came back to my self.
I am so sorry you are having lingering effects. Why are you still foggy? From a fever, or the really nineteenth century "brain fever" or "brain exhaustion"? I am so sorry. It is so frustrating to live in it. Is there an end point, or do you just keep walking, and maybe yes come out of it, maybe in a few years? or summertime? Are you taking care of yourself? Are you pleased with what you can do, or are you upset?
ari
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Boo- yeah!
... a part of devotion and love is the self- discipline to grow a talent into a skill...
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