For the initial 5 years post incurring my severe TBI, I compared myself not to others with the same disability of a similar severity. Rather, to how easily & fluidly I used to accomplish things, pre injury. This is only natural for humans, I feel. But, like all other components of this recovery, my timeline to reach greater ability & acceptance is unexpectedly looong be me, even though my recovery is considered phenomenally quick by expert professionals!
The grand gap in my abilities, between then & now, was maddening initially. As is commonly known, with redundant unsuccessful attempts comes ample frustration, which only slowed me further. Consequently, I would then allow myself to become disillusioned….
I’ve always been devoted to assessing other’s individually, sans overshadowing assumptions, why then have I forsaken accurate, unbiassed, judgement of my own current self?! It’s only natural for me personally, and, so I hear, for a wide swath of other humans, to hold themselves to a higher caliber than we do other’s.
I have now come to cradle the Ancient Greek aphorism “know thyself” fondly and with that, my patience continues to expand. If I expect others to asses me individually & put aside commonly accepted stereotypes of severe TBI survivors, the majority of which don’t truly apply to me, than I must personally employ this differentiation 1st!
Currently, and for the past few years (in varying degrees), increasing productivity has been my aim. To find a gigantic amount of blog drafts, only partially composed, in my WordPress account, is quite telling of my lacking attention span (which is a pervasive symptom of survivors that have incurred any severity of TBI). I have 90ish drafts in my account and I first began to draft this post a few days ago…undoubtedly there are more now. Nor did I have the patience (yet another symptom of this all-encompassing disability) to diligently keep track of the # of drafts counted, when cataloging the amount. So…the given # is likely lesser than reality.
Ah well, specifics are minutia, compared to this general sharing of my personal reality.
“It is not uncommon for a person with a TBI to only be able to pay attention for a few minutes at a time. This can occur with any level of severity of a TBI – mild, moderate, severe” not to mention critical, which is often uncategorized as such a slight few of us survive (20% of the minutia who obtain them
-CEMM (a training resource ((I’m guessing for medics…?)) developed by the Air Force Surgeon General)
This quote re-affirms what every specialist of mine (physical MDs as well as psychiatric MDs) have stated: my recovery is unprecedented: I’ve now been adding to & editing this post for 30 minutes. My guess is, once completed, I will have spent 1 hour.
Indeed, multiple revisions were needed, over 2 days. Yep…completion takes me much, much longer now.