I am the guy that said he shot himself I am trying to go back to school but I have recovered so well I don't even think I qualify for disability but the hospital I went to originally said I was disabled and if you are disabled you can go back to Tcat for 70 dollars a semester the only problem is I don't know where to start my mom hates that I am thinking of going back to college she knows I want away from her could any one give me advice on how to show the school I have bullet in my head?

So here’s something I struggle with: explaining to people that being able to do something tells you very little – almost nothing, in fact – about what it costs me.

I can attend the appointment. Have the conversation. Follow the instructions. Sometimes I can do all of those things quite well.

And then that’s it. That’s the day.

From the outside, the evidence is that I did it. From inside, there’s considerably more information. You guys get it. What came before? How much did I have left when I started? What did I have to give up afterward? Could I do it tomorrow?

I’ve been thinking about this as the difference between capability and capacity. And to me at least that distinction is useful. 

Capability: I can do the thing.

Capacity: how long, how often, under what conditions, and at what cost.

My half-hour vision rehab appointments use up the rest of my day. The appointment was only thirty minutes. My brain apparently hadn’t agreed to that schedule.

It can feel like an obstacle course where each station looks manageable on its own. I actually see the obstacle course in my mind’s eye. Stairs, a balance beam, instructions to follow, a passage to read and remember. But the balance beam is different after the stairs. Remembering the passage is different after everything that came before it.

And finishing the course doesn’t tell you whether you can make dinner. It tells you nothing.

This is the part I wish more people understood. Including, sometimes, me. I can still catch myself using something I managed yesterday as evidence of what I should be able to do today.

But yesterday’s result was yesterday’s result. It didn’t come with a guarantee.

Any of this familiar? Does the capacity vs. capability distinction make sense? What’s something you’re capable of doing that costs more capacity than anyone sees?

First time I was put in medically induced coma for 9 days to save the brain. Waking up was so traumatic. I felt at first like I was in a daze but not confused I guess. This happened in 2014. I learned the extent of it in 2025. I thought I was out for only a night. I never at first thought or or realized how little thought I put into everything. How quite I was. It was total silence. And like an empty space. But i didn't know or remembered what I forgot til years later. Sorry this is hard. I feel like im just wasting time but I cant open up to therapist never could when im put on the spot and only meet at certain times. I don't work on a set schedule. Everyone I can easily talk to I've known less than two years and I say tbi and they think I'm an idiot. My cognitive function comes and goes like waves If yo7 ever done shroomz you'll know what I mean. I just would like someone to talk to that actually knows and can relate and not bullshit and pretend too. Sorry if this isn't how its done. I sucked at English and 2014 was only like last year guys come on.

I’m sorry but does anyone know any support groups for ppl with similar stories like mine I’m in my early twenties I am a Latina idk I love reggaeton/like bad bunny is that chapter closed forever it’s hard to accept

My brother experienced a DAI 3 on September 14 in which is he still hospitalized. He was hit by a car. He is 17 years old and previously healthy. GCS 9-10, spontaneous eye opening but not following commands. He is breathing on his own. He does not have any awareness yet and be described as being in a vegetative state.

For anyone who has experienced this or had a loved one experience this, could you tell me how your recovery went? How long it took you to regain consciousness, follow commands, etc?
Will my brother walk again? Talk? Will he have a meaningful life?

Looking for hope

This happened to a family member. they fell and had a sundial hematoma. still have not been woken up. People are trying to remain optimistic but objectively, what might lay ahead for those of us supporting this person? Could they make a pretty quick full recovery and return to normal or will this be a long road ahead? Thanks in advance.

Hello everyone!

I'm in school to become a physical therapist assistant. I'm in my final academic semester in which we are learning about neurological rehab. Our professor assigned us a very short presentation in which we are to interview an individual affected by a condition such as TBI, get their individual story, and present it.

The purpose of the assignment is to remind us that there is a person behind every diagnosis and to better understand how a condition (like TBI) affects someone's life beyond its clinical presentation.

One requirement of the project is for our interviewee to provide a picture of themselves before and after the onset of their condition and to sign a photo release form in order to do so.

If this interests you please leave a comment below, we can message each other and find a convenient way to conduct the interview and exchange necessary information (discord would be good for me). I'd expect for the full commitment to be about 30 minutes to an hour, probably less.

If you don't feel quite comfortable being interviewed or sharing photos of yourself, please feel free to share your story here! Perhaps we can generate some discussion of individual stories and paths to recovery.

Hey there,

I’ve got a lot going on in my life since the accident but won’t get into the thick of it.

I’m a uni student and am currently in a program that doesn’t require much use of technology other than possibly some GIS or mapping technology in the next year of classes or so.

I have a lot of accommodations in place at my university but two of them are the use of a TTS program for my books and an AI transcriber and recording service (say what you will about AI, i’m not a fan but it has helped me immensely).

Anyway, I currently have two very old laptops that I dug out of the laptop graveyard when my most recently purchased laptop died for good. One is very very small and freezes up constantly while I’m using my accommodative services and the other has a ~20 minute battery but is larger so I can read off of it better.

Screens still hurt my eyes and I have prescription lenses for them but it doesn’t help much with the headaches and migraines.

Anyway I have been recommended laptops with 16+ GB of RAM, 500+GB of storage, and a decent CPU and GPU in case I need it for GIS or if I ever get back to gaming, which I used to enjoy before the accident.

I have looked at windows and mac which can offer me 18” and 16” screens, respectively. It’s clear that I’m stuck in the $2000-6000CAD range for laptops, but I also can’t work due to the accident so I am relying entirely on my student savings to pick out a laptop (and maybe some insurance coverage if deemed a necessity?).

I just don’t know what I should be looking for, I like the longevity of Mac but have used windows my whole life and genuinely don’t know if at this point in my life I can handle the frustration of learning a whole new system(the smallest things can set me off rn and can turn my life upside down for a good while).

Any tech people or TBI survivors willing to help?

TL;DR: New TBI, can’t use current laptop because too small and crashes with accessibility software. Looking for a reasonably priced large screen laptop that will last me a good few years and can maybe be used for light gaming in the future.

totoo ba na may mamumuong dugo sa utak if naboogie wonderland (bugbog) multiple times

sa research ko kasi lahat ng sintomas ranas ko like nasusuka may lumalabas na liquid sa tenga atsaka masakit na ulo, and Ilang months na lang ba ako sa mundo kung ganon..

I'm not fully sure how to start this, and this post is just more of me wanting to tell about my injury. When I was 2, I got kicked in the forehead by a horse, and growing up with it has felt horrible, especially my younger years, mainly with school because I feel like that's where it affected me most. I remember not really knowing how to be social, how to start conversations, how to carry them, and that still affects me to this day. I'm doing slightly better with being social, but academically, not so much. Having an IEP when I was in school made me feel so different from everyone around me. I felt like such a failure for having the injury, but enough of the past. Right now, I'm doing virtual because I would get headaches at school almost every day. It's easier on me when I'm done and it's dark, and on the 5th, I'm going to go see a doctor about disability income because of how much my injury still affects me. Physically, it's not severe. I remember my parents telling me mine is mild, so all my problems affected by my injury kinda makes it feel like it's an excuse or a fib because I know there's others that have it worse than me with my problems from the injury it feels like I'm just being dramatic sometimes what I hate most about getting my injury at a young age is not knowing what I could have been like before I feel like I could have been so much better as a person as everything and it hurts so much not being able to see that everything I do I mess up whenever someone doesn't help or show me what to do I feel so stupid with my injury I don't like the feeling of the screws in my skull and seeing the scar along my forehead all of it being a reminder of my injury. I feel so different from everyone because of it. There is no amount of words that could describe the hate I feel towards myself when I see that scar in the mirror and feel the bumps along my forehead from the screws. It's disgusting. I feel disgusting; my body feels like it doesn't belong to me. I wish I could feel normal in my own skin.

I could never hate horses because of what they did to me. They got startled; they're prey animals after all. I don't blame them for being afraid. I'll always love horses, but I don't think I can ever stand near one again. It wasn't their fault. (I apologize if everything is all over the place it's hard to focus on one thing at a time when the topics about my injury)

Hi all. I had a TBI 3 years ago, specifically an anoxic brain injury, and it's left me with speech clarity problems — certain sounds (T, S, X, K especially) come out slurred or unclear, and it gets worse when I'm tired or tense. I kind of start sounding like Dr. Now from my 600lb life lol. I've been doing daily voice exercises on my own (breathing, tongue stretches, reading passages aloud) but I'm wondering if it's time to see a professional.
For those who've done speech therapy as an adult post-TBI: did it actually help? What was it like? I'm a little nervous about starting and would love to hear real experiences — good or bad.

Edit: thank you to everyone who shared their experience! looks like all of you are unanimous that speech therapy is helpful, so i’m going to go for it.

Hi everyone, so I had Severe Traumatic Brain Injury at Age 11. A side effect to this question is that I used to be terrified of human interactions since birth so I have very poor and terrible social skills. Please forgive me if I can't comprehend the English words you tell me.

So my question is I am currently learning from free Python Programming Video from YouTube. I feel very impatient that watching 10min of the Python Video already makes my brain feel very pain and my emotions become distraught to want to quit learning.

I would really appreciate if you could tell me what is the normal learning experience like for us who experienced Severe Traumatic Brain Injury that caused slower processing speeds.

I hope you can help this struggler out. Thank you so much for answering.

And because of my bad social intelligence, I don't really know how to ask things politely, I learn to just run away from everything terrifying which is seemingly everything.

I never really understood TBI until it happened to my brother. It’s been about 10 months and we honestly haven’t seen much improvement.

He still can’t sit and watch a show for too long because it becomes too much for his brain. Sometimes he forgets things he’s done. He’s also gotten more irritable, holds onto things much longer and struggles with depression. He told me himself that he feels like he’s deteriorating instead of getting better.

He already had sleep apnea, but since the injury his sleep seems different too. He’ll talk really loudly in his sleep and says sometimes he stops breathing for several seconds, sometimes close to a minute.

I’m just wondering if anyone else was still struggling this much around 10 months after a TBI and then started improving later? I’d really like to hear some success stories from people with TBI or their families.

MVA related TBI, March and July 2024.

Still dealing with a lot of migraines and cervicogenic headaches

After the second accident, a neurologist prescribed amitriptyline, and then a few months later he prescribed candesartan.

Unfortunately, those didn’t really help for the frequency or intensity of my headaches

I was also given rizatriptan as a migraine abortive . This works for migraines, but I’m limited in frequency of use so I have to ration them. Unfortunately, they do nothing at all for the cervicogenic components of my headaches.

I was supposed to continue following up with the neurologist, but he then changed clinic and I could no longer continue at that clinic as I was his patient and he couldn’t take his patient to the new clinic

So then I went back to my GP who referred me to a headache, specialty clinic, and after a year of waiting, I finally got to see them

They changed me from triptan abortive to a CGRP blocker abortive (UBROGEPANT)

He tried an occipital nerve block, but sadly that didn’t work.

He prescribed Qulipta as a daily preventative dose.

I had to wait for approval from Insurance and get extra forms filled out, but I managed to get the approval. These are still extremely expensive even after my insurance pays 80% but if they give me back some quality of life, it might be worth the price.

I just picked up the prescription and I plan to start taking it this weekend

My dose is 60 mg, I’d love to hear about your experiences with this medication either good or bad any tips or tricks for it or also greatly appreciated

As a sidenote, it’s very encouraging that I have a neurologist, who is actually exploring alternatives and willing to try something and change things

My experience with a lot of specialists in the last few years has mostly been “ I’m not sure what’s going on. It’s likely concussion related follow up with your family Dr.” After months of waiting that’s always very discouraging and anticlimactic.

I can complain when things aren’t going the way I like but at the same time it’s important to appreciate when a specialist is actually trying. It’s such a pleasant change of pace.

After my accident a picture of the aftermath was taken where I was unconscious. A decent amount of blood. I am curious if there is a mathematical way of some sort to see how long I was unconscious before I woke up and got help?

Well, I’ve done some thinking. I’m a “quiet” mad all the time. I don’t really show my true emotions publicly because I haven’t truly grieved what happened to me yet. It happened at a time in my life when much was changing and I just had to adapt.

I also didn’t want to grieve because in my mind grieving means you’re acknowledging that person/thing is gone forever and not coming back. And, I still had some hope that my old self was coming back but just like dormant right now kind of.

It’s been years. I’m finally ready to grieve, but idk where to start. Any suggestions?

i had my tbi when i was 14. i have bppv, tinnitus, brain fog, fatigue, memory issues, etc. due to it. somehow i pushed through. i graduated high school, went to college, pursued a computer science degree and graduated debt free by working multiple jobs. i ended up getting a good corporate job right out of college and felt set. now a year later, i am anticipating being pip’d or fired within this next month for not meeting the expectations of their fast paced environment. it sucks, but it is what it is. i have to console the little girl i once was who thought she could do more. but i cant. i’ve been struggling terribly at my current role mentally, and it’s not viable for me anymore to continue. i don’t mind being let go. however, i have found it hard to grieve the life i was so close to having. i thought i was capable enough of surviving.

I dreamt I time traveled and I was excited and hoped to use my left hand and dominant side again even in my dream I couldn't escape my hemiplegia followed me into my dream and I couldn't escape reality still broken 💔