Why am I a Zombie?

I don’t remember much of the first couple of years from my injury. But I’m forever grateful that prior to my injury I had learned the skill of journaling from a leadership course I had attended for my job. This skillset would prove to be one among many TBI recovery skills that are often taught post-injury to Brain Injured patients that I had been blessed to develop ahead of time. These skills somehow miraculously assisted in being able to regain entry into my job after the initial months of recovery off even though barely functioning internally. I don’t have as many journal entries as I retrospectively wish I would have had from the first year, but from what I can gather as I reread these early ones, the bulk of my initial days were literally sleeping so not much to record anyway. 18+ hours on most days. Falling asleep in the middle of loud activity all around. My time awake was spent staring out the window, at nothing truly. Unable to focus. Every light too much. Each sound so painful. These spots in my vision distracting, draining, confusing. Unable to do much and with little company there often was not much to journal about beyond my kids and wife in the pieces I could gather and understand, but I also thought I “just” had a concussion and was just resting and getting better and then eventually “just” Post Concussive Syndrome and just need to keep resting and I’ll be better. I never knew what this was and would end up being.

Early on I could not watch anything. The TV made me sick physically. Each scene cut transition every 3 seconds was too quick to process, too overstimulating for me. In the first days, I recorded that my wife and I went to watch a movie and I had it turned off within five minutes unable to process even the sound with my eyes shut. Everything was too much. It hurt, made me nauseous, and was overwhelming in a way that is so difficult to describe.