#yes it has my rvb blog (made After i wrapped up aitadjcrazytimes) mentioned. if anyone harasses me there i will be very disappointed in you

[aitadjcrazytimes]

Hi, I saw your tags:

I was wondering. Um. Would you be comfortable sharing what other symptoms you have?

I've had memory problems for years but every time I look them up I just get stuff like alzheimers and car crashes and stuff, which doesnt apply. Idk

I was wondering if this might be me also. I'll talk to a doctor, of course, but. Just wondering what the general vibe is

Sure! Though, be aware, if you Can get evaluated for your symptoms you probably should, at least to make sure it isn't degenerative.

Via-a-vis the ABI (That's Acquired Brain Injury), part of the reason it took so long to diagnose is because

I already have a different diagnosis of cEDS (Classical Ehlers Danlos Syndrome) that explained several of my other symptoms

I have GAD and PTSD due to living in a very abusive and dangerous environment up until about 5 months ago, and

At least two of my family members are autistic, so it was just kind of vaguely assumed that any weirdness regarding my sensory processing and so on was because of that.

So! To summarize (and I put this below a cut because it gets Long).

Chiari Malformation is when you have a defect in the base of your skull that puts pressure on your cerebellum, causing part of it to go into your spinal column. Many people with this condition don't experience any symptoms, but that is not always the case, and even with no symptoms, it does place you at a much higher risk for a brain injury. With a Chiari Malformation, even a mild concussion can cause serious damage.

I have had several concussions, with one of them knocking me out for several minutes when I was very young. So. Here we are.

Regarding treatments for Chiari, most of what can be done is simply treating the symptoms. Unless there is concern about the condition getting worse (more memory loss, paralysis, etc.), patients will likely be referred elsewhere to discuss pain management, because from my understanding, the only effective treatment for Chiari is a decompression surgery, which will remove part of your skull to take pressure off the brain. It's not terribly risky as brain surgeries go, but the best brain surgery is, of course, no brain surgery.

Re my Physical symptoms:

I get headaches very frequently, and often very severely. They have been categorized as migraines in the past, because they come with severe light and sound sensitivity, and they tend to knock me out for hours. That said, they don't meet all the criteria for a migraine, including having no aura to speak of. They are often triggered by strain and jostling my head--by coughing, sneezing, vomiting, jumping, or anything that would cause motion sickness.

I have poor balance. I have found that walking with a cane helps, but physical therapy doesn't do all that much (because it's in my brain and not my muscles).

I also struggle with chronic fatigue. Getting out of bed is a real struggle most days, as is getting anything done outside of simply going to work and then coming home--although I recently went on an antidepressant, which has helped a bit.

Insomnia! I have trouble sleeping. It comes and goes, sometimes I get several days worth of restful sleep, but sometimes I get only a few hours worth of sleep over the course of a week.

Shooting and burning pain in back of skull, neck, spine, shoulders, and chest. Be careful with this one, because this can also be a result of a heart issue. That said, I've had my heart checked out, and that's all good, which is why they checked the brain in the first place.

As for my cognitive symptoms, it's a bit fuzzier, because like I said before, I have PTSD, I have the ABI, I have GAD, several of my family members are somewhere on the autism spectrum, and now my therapist is also having me evaluated for OSDD. So, your mileage may vary. But essentially:

Memory loss. Some of it is retrograde, and I have found that I'll forget significant events and people. Most of it is anterograde, or short term--so, forgetting what a conversation is about while I'm in the middle of a sentence, and either having to improvise and try to make a guess as to what I was talking about, or having to have my conversation partner walk back what we were talking about to explain what we were doing. I have to have a very detailed and elaborate task tracker at work in order to stay on top of things, or I would simply forget it all. I also have the experience of feeling like all of my memories are stories that were told to me. So, I rarely experience a memory as a thing that happened to me, complete with sights and sounds and feelings and sensations and so on, but more like a story that someone told to me once. So, a vague recollection of events and the order in which they happened. This makes it difficult to differentiate between my own memories and stories that other people have told me. It has happened a few times that I have told a story of something that happened to me, only to find out that it actually happened to the person I was talking to instead, and I just got confused.

I'm not sure what to call this one, but I get EXTREMELY easily distracted from processing audio, especially in an environment with more than one thing happening. If I am having a verbal conversation with someone in a restaurant, and someone comes and sits at the table next to us and starts talking, I become almost incapable of conversation. If I'm talking to someone and someone turns on the TV in the next room, I become almost incapable of conversation. If music is playing, I lose track of the conversation. I forget everything I was saying. I won't be able to understand what other people are saying. Spending time in loud, busy, or crowded environments is not that distressing by itself, but I will not be able to hold a conversation.

Aphasia and Verbal Processing. It is incredibly difficult for me to put words together in a way that is coherent. It is significantly easier through writing, because I can look things up and take my time with it. But in vocal conversation, I will frequently have verbal shutdowns where I cannot find a word, and all of my language processing shuts down while I try to comprehend what I was talking about. This often leads to...

Fuzziness/Blurriness. I typically call this "going fuzzy". Generally it involves a verbal shutdown to an extent, where my brain has reached capacity with processing information, and is deciding to simply wipe everything and start over. Think of it like restarting a really old computer. Sometimes it doesn't take too terribly long--a few moments. Sometimes it takes more than half an hour. It depends. This is often accompanied by...

The Buzzing™--It happens for me at the base of the skull, where the injury is. It feels like a tuning fork fused to the inside of my skull. It is completely maddening. My ears ring, and it sounds like a high pitched whining noise. I become very on edge, it's incredibly anxiety inducing, and very overwhelming. I don't know if this is a common symptom you will be able to find under brain injuries, but it's Extremely not fun! I have found that it can be lessened somewhat with massaging the area.

The Voices™: I have heard voices ever since I was a kid. (Schizophrenia has already been ruled out.) Sometimes, it Is an actual auditory hallucination. I recently had an experience where I was grocery shopping and kept flinching because it sounded like someone was shouting my name directly into my ear. Other times, I've heard people whispering or knocking on my walls. These typically occur during or following a stressful situation. HOWEVER, I also experience The Voices™ in my daily life outside of stressful situations. In these situations, it is never auditory, more just a thing that occurs in my own head. I have, in the past, had the experience of talking more or less constantly to one or several distinct people in my head. Nowadays, it feels more like experiencing multiple trains of thought or multiple sets of emotions which feel distinct from "mine". Or feeling like a background voice in my head while someone else does things for me.

Per my therapist, I have recently begun categorizing them as different people to see if that helps. And it does sometimes! And sometimes it does not. It is a process. But that's where I am with that.

There's more to it, but I don't really have the capacity to talk about it much more than I have at the moment.

If you want to see what my experience with this is like... I mean. I did write an entire fanfiction about a character with several of my symptoms recently. You likely won't have the context for what is going on re the character and the situation unless you are into Red vs. Blue, but just in case it helps to see a recounting of it, here:

The Fanfiction That Helped Me Realize I Had Brain Damage™. Have fun!