Neilhapgood

hi gareth, I had an SAH nearly ten years ago, firstly its fantastic that you are on board with her, I would have really struggled without my then partner and now wife to help me along the way. I put all my experiences and advice into a website which may be of interest to you as it is a process that is measured in years, not months! - www.braininjuryftp.com all the best neil

hi jan, i am nearly ten years on and the why me days have gone but most days I have to manage aspects of the new me, I put together a website with my experiences and thoughts around what it is to manage the stuff you can't understand or explain, you might find it interesting - www.braininjuryftp.com

That's really interesting , I had that problem for a few years post SAH, I had put it down to having a catheter in while they kept me in a coma for a couple of weeks and consequent shrinking of the bladder. It took years to get some control again. One of my lowest points of the early days post SAH was about 2 months after when I was in tesco and trying to use one of the scan yourself machines, I was getting in a bit of a muddle so a member of staff came to help me and as she was explaining it I suddenly starting wetting myself. I got out of their ASAP and it was a real low point accepting what my life had become. However I still use the same tesco regularly and I often look at that same self scanning machine with a mix of pity for the me of those days and a sense of how far I have travelled. Sorry if that was more detail than required!

Hi Ron, I know exactly what you mean, I am 2.5 years on and still treat good days with an element of trepidation, although with time the good, well I refer to them as 'normal days' as that what it feels like as oppose to good, but anyway over time they increase and the dark days decrease so even when I am having a string of 'normal days' I know it won't last but equally have been into the darkness and out the other side so many times I know that normality will return again soon when the darkness comes back. Hope that makes sense! Good luck in those gales you have on the way! kind regards Neil

also Bill, I really liked some of your comments, particularly how your life before was 'steeped in cause and effect', that completely sums it up for me, it is such a natural process and way of living that trying to explain that you have lost that is impossible for people to grasp. Also the sub-conscious and conscious 'hard drive and RAM' analogy sums things up really well for me too. Thanks for the input.

yeah it is the strangest experience when you join the site as you feel a link that is unexplainable to everyone else on it!

hi all, thanks so much for the feedback so far, as I am sure you can all relate, it means so much that it made some kind of sense to some of you, as we all know to well, trying to explain this sort of stuff to people can be so hard and often leaves me more confused than when I started, let alone the poor person on the receiving end! I wanted to get a quick posting in now to say to Lin Lin that I did send you a private message to see if you might want to meet up for at some point as I work in Neath so message me back if you would be interested. And Raine I found your words really heartfelt, helpful and touching and there is clearly something about SAH's and van keys! I was surfing when I had my SAH and my van keys were hidden in my van, the family never found them and thought they were going to have to tow the van out the beach car park to avoid a months worth of parking fees until my housemate found the spare set sometime later and sent them down. At one point they were joking about asking the doctor to bring me out of my induced coma for long enough to ask me where I had hidden the bl**dy keys! Thankfully they did turn up which was good but unfortunately they didn't also unlock the 'old Neil'!

hi jan, I can 100% relate to what you are saying. I often feel that this would be so much easier if I had some kind of deficit, even something simple like a part of body didn't quite function properly but it was obvious to see. People would view me completely differently, the assumption is always that I had 'an accident' and was then 'lucky' and made a full recovery. As I go through this and realise how much the brain does, in the sense of doing everything, then I want to scream as it now seems so obvious to me that I am going to be totally messed up in soooo many ways after a brain injury but no one else sees it. Interestingly I had some acupuncture last week and the Chinese guy was saying that if you had an injury like a SAH in China it would be immediately understood by yourself and everyone else that you will be a real mess for a long time as your 'inner balance' will have been completely thrown off. Regardless of what you believe there is no question that it effects you in many ways that we don't understand regardless of your exterior appearance. My family are understanding slowly but its taken two years for them to begin to understand that this isn't a problem that can be dealt with with normal coping mechanisms that we apply in life. Show your family this site as this may help them realise that this thing effects people of all ages and walks of life in similar ways. Best of luck! xxx