PJ-ND

Oh my gosh this is me right now! My ego is completely getting in the way of taking care of myself! I want to be like I was. I don't want to take advantage of accommodations being made for me at work because I don't want to seem weak or be like I am demanding what I don't have a right to. I am 7 months out and I keep thinking everyone thinks I should be normal again. After reading this I think it is ME thinking I need to be normal again and not admitting I need help so I don't take help offered. ugh! This is so hard. I have the noise issue but I have quit walking out of meetings or chaotic settings. I have spent a lot of time on this site tonight. I am being reminded of so many things. I am used to be super woman not wimpy woman. Very hard to make the transition and killing my brain because of my own stubbornness! Why have I been my own worst enemy? Pushing until I collapse is the norm for me and it is literally kicking me down and making things worse. Good grief I have so much to figure out about myself!

So helpful! Realized a lot about myself reading it.

Thank you for all the kind words,! I finally got a call from the neurology department where I was in ICU for the SAH. Thanks to my husband getting involed with the patient advocate. They are sending paperwork to my employer to let me work as tolerated for the next 4 weeks. Then I have a followup in 4 weeks to reevaluate me. I am beyond thankful. I feel like I have hope again. they are also setting me up with a neuropsychologist in my home town. It was kind of funny because they were kind of dancing around why I should see one until I interrupted her and said I was trying to get a referral to one from my primary care doctor. I know I need to see one because I am not dealing with any of this in a healthy way and I need help! Between the encouragement and understanding here on this page and finally getting help with not having to work full time and an appointment with the neuropsychologist, I feel so much better about my immediate future. I will check back in here as I journey down this unknown path that is my future. I am so glad I have family that is working hard to get me the help I need. They were quite worried over my decline over the past 3 weeks. This group and the stories here make me feel so much better. I am not so different than all the great folks here. It is so comforting to know my recovery is like a lot of others and I am not all alone!

I am so frustrated. I had my NASAH Jan. 6th, was in ICU for 8 days and then discharged on the 14th. I went back to,work part time on Jan. 18. It was way too soon. It has been a constant up and down, rocky recovery. You know, I only had a few minor deficits like headaches from hell, no short term memory, can't concentrate or focus, brain feels like it is foggy, busy and noisy meetings and rooms stress me out to the point I have to leave, need about 14 hours of sleep a day. Nothing major if you ask my doctors. It is 4 months. When I pushed to get to full time in April it killed me.. all of my symptoms are getting worse, my fani'y has noticed I have regressed a lot the past 2 weeks. Everything is back except the severe headache. Now my headache can be handled with prescription strength naproxen instead of pain pills. When i I was discharged my doctor gave me ONE WEEK to work part time and then the second week he wrote "8 hours, as tolerated." I have been fighting the doctor since to give me time to heal. My employer lat me build back up through the rest of January until almost the end of March to get back to full time. Now that I am back to full time I am not accomplishing anything at work for the last 3 weeks. I was putting out a lot more work with part time because I just am not handling the time, the stress the pressure right now. Has anyone else had this problem? I am so beside myself I don't know what to do. I am overeating and gaining weight, I want to start self medicating with booze, (I have abused alcohol in the past but haven't drank for 13 years.) and for,the first time ever in my life I,had a moment of thinking maybe I should just check out of life because this is too damn hard. I feel like I have PTSD, I dream about my awful time in the ICU, I obsess about why my doctor gave me one week to recover and that no one cares that this is so bizarre and unreasonable! Some days I just can't let it go because I just can't understand any of it. i have not seen in this group where anyone else has not been given a reasonable amount of time from doctors to heal. I have reached out to patient advocates who promise they will help me and then I never hear from them again or they try to pass me back to my GP. Why wou,d my general doctor fill out work papers for me instead of the neuroscience people? Has anyone been able to get referred to a psychologist or psychiatrist? I really think I need help because my emotional health is crashing under the weight of all the stress and frustration. I feel so helpless and hopeless. I don't get how I am going to get better, I am going backwards. Now my work is starting to lose patience with me because I am 4 months out and not back to normal. But really, who can blame them when my doctor gave me a week of part time work and then back to full time? For the love love of God! I am not experiencing anything out of the normal from what I see in this group! What is wrong with a Dr not knowing what recovery from aSAH is like? My family is starting to really worry and they are trying to work with a patient advocate to get me help. All I want is a reasonable time frame to keep,working 30-35 hours a week. I was handling that OK. It isn't that I want to not ever work again. I want a chance to heal and maybe actually get back to close to who I was before the SAH. This full time is killing me! Oh yeah, the insane insomnia is back the last 4-5 nights. Which is about to drive me over the edge. Ugh! It is all so overwhelming again.

Thank you for all the kind comments and input. I do feel like maybe I rushed going back to work. I am not sure how to undo that, but I did ask to meet with my director and my HR department. I will see what they are willing to do for me. They have been supportive so far, and like everyone else, they were so surprised I was back as soon as I was, even though it is part time. i definitely see that my headache gets worse when I try to do too much. Today was a pretty good day after 2 very rough days. Maybe I jus felt better after finding this site and seeing all the support. Seriously, it is the first time I have not felt so all alone with the symptoms and anxiety. I hope down the road I can be helpful to others too. My husband has been stepping up as much as he can. I have a feeling we will have to make changes to our lifestyle. I am trying hard to let myself take the time I need to heal. It is a challenge. I have had a great side effect, I did smoke, but not only have I not had one puff since my SAH, it is like the part of my brain that craved them is just gone. I don't desire one, need one, think about one, it is just gone. I am super excited about that. I will I'll keep on making my way through the information and posts from this group. Thank you for the warm welcome, so glad I found this site!

I am not quite 4 weeks out from my SAH, 1/6/2017. I have no 'deficits' according to the medical professionals. I do get that I am so lucky to not have had a lot of complications that could have happened, but it is a struggle right now. I was in the ICU for 9 days, and then discharged. I was able to return to work 4 hours a day less than 2 weeks after my SAH. Now that I am almost 4 weeks out, it fees like it is getting harder every day. I have not had a minute without a headache. I still have a lot of nausea when the headache spikes, and I am sleeping about 12 hours a day, even though my sleep at night is very restless. I am finding some short term memory issues, and I have a hard time concentrating at work, even though I used to be a master at multi-tasking and juggling many demands at the same time. I am so glad to find this group, but in a way it is daunting and depressing to see people still struggling so much after one year, 2 year, 3 years. I don't think I have come to terms with the fact I will have a new normal, and never be how I was before. It scares me. I have a disabled husband, I am used to being the care taker. I work full time, I have the medical insurance because of my job, I was barely keeping up with my house, my dogs, my job, my dad in assisted living, my vision impaired adult child, all my responsibilities before this happened. I can hardly do anything right now except work my 4 hours a day, 5 days a week, and rest every minute of every day that is left over. I have no idea how to deal with this. my life does not fit into this level of activity. I also did not have a good experience in the hospital. Doctors telling me I was so critical because of the risk of additional bleeding and my blood pressure being out of control, but then i had nurses making rude comments to me like I didn't need to be in the ICU, my life flight to their city 2 hours away from home was a waste and similar kind of statements. Then there were a few days in a row in the middle of my stay my pain was out of control and it felt like I was not getting what i was prescribed for pain. After the 3rd day of this, I begged and pleaded with the critical care dr. and charge nurse to please help me. FInally my pain meds were increased, and I had some relief. When I was discharged, I got almost nothing but Tylenol to control the pain, I had to use pain pills from a previous surgery that were a year and a half old for 3 days because no one in the medical facility I was discharged from would help me. I finally went to my local Dr. and he helped me with pain management and medication for my nausea. He has been my life saver. Seriously, I feel traumatized by my experience with the medical facility. And my normal dr. is telling me my body has been through a lot of trauma and I should expect recovery to be slow, months long. It is so hard, I keep hearing how great I look, I fear that because there is nothing visible on the outside, coworkers and friends think I should be back to 100% by now, My family is awesome, they are telling me I am not taking it slow enough. I was just not given any information from the hospital except "'resume your normal activities,( including work), as tolerated". Any time we asked any questions, that is the only answer anyone would give us. I have had to 'google' my questions to feel like I know anything about what to expect from here on out. You know, as a rule I don't like to find my information from the Internet, but it has been a valuable tool for me since I have been discharged. I feel lucky to be alive, to not seemingly have many long term issues except the headaches and fatigue. I am blessed, I truly am. Why do I feel so much anxiety and frustration? I still can't believe this happened to me. I look in the mirror and look the same, but yet nothing is the same as it was before that day. And will my head ever stop hurting?