The slow recovery from a brain injury

I received a letter today from my brain trauma doctor that said I was fully capable of signing or agreeing to anything of any importance and that I was making excellent recovery. 

My speech therapist has also signed me off today saying I had come so far from the first time she met me and my speech is now almost back to normal. 

I only wish they had mind doctors to tell me how to stop thinking so negatively. 

You see from the outside my recovery is fantastic and rosy. 

It’s what’s going on in my head that I can’t come to terms with.  This slow, repairing brain is finally taking its toll on me.

In a nutshell, I wake up every morning and think what’s the point?  After dragging myself out of bed and seeing the kids off to school I think why should I do anything I‘m going to eventually die of cancer and I crumble a little more inside. 

But that’s what they are… just thoughts. 

You would think they are easily changeable.  I mean why not when I’ve changed them so many times before?  I’ve always been this positive influence that has seen past the incurable diagnosis and searched for other things, knowing the doctors can only do so much.  Where has that person gone?

I look at my children and wonder how they’ll cope without a mum?  How will they feel when I’m not at their prom night, sweet sixteen, eighteenth, twenty first etc? 

And knowing they will have to come to terms with having no mum around to pick them up from school or parties or watch them on sports day or in dance shows, take them on shopping sprees and who will tell them about the birds and the bees like a mum would? 

The destruction and devastation I’ll leave behind leaving Carl to pick up the pieces.  I’ve had these thoughts before the car accident on occasion but never as intensely as I have now.  That’s a brain injury trying to heal itself for you!  

My doctor says “It’s like trying to run a marathon with a broken leg.  It’s hard enough for your brain to heal without the added worry over the cancer.”

I had a phone call last Wednesday to say that a needle test I had done on my boob, because of all the pain, was clear. 

You think I should be ecstatic.  Yes, I am relieved it’s not cancer, as it once was in that boob, but the pain (which reminds me of how the cancer felt) is still there reminding me every day that something’s not right and has the doctor put the needle in the right part of my boob? 

Ludicrous I know but it’s what’s going through my mind.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not trying to be a walking bubble of positivity but just how I used to think pre-accident would be enough. 

You see it took me 3 years to finally get to that place, a lot of money spent (thanks to the Rainbow Ball) and a lot of things tried and tested to make me find peace with the situation and what lies within.

I was comfortable with what will be, will be, I’d made my peace.  But now, I can’t find that peace, that acceptance and I know it must be there somewhere because I had it once before.

I’m determined to stop the negative thoughts, rather than come to terms with them.

I just wonder how terminally ill people, who have young kids, cope. What do I do now? 

Something that makes me happy, like a holiday or fun times or something to sort my head and thinking out like a mind coach.  Will any of that be my cure?

I don’t know if there is such a thing anymore, only acceptance of what is. 

I’m so grateful to the people who have been helping me through this and you have helped me more than you know but because of the brain injury the information has not been retained.

So maybe I need a quicker way to get my brain back to normal!  Patience comes first. 

So maybe I need to learn about patience first rather than anything else and to go with these feelings, rather than fight them?  Who knows maybe it will bring about acceptance.