Ongoing Physical Symptoms

It takes me a while to get out of bed in the morning because I’m already disoriented. When I’m able to do that I feel my ankles cringing up because I have to move them a little bit when I wake up in the morning. It takes a while for the dizziness to go away. I can’t drive. Sometimes I might be late to work because I have to leave a little bit later. Depending on what I’m doing it might hit me. Sometimes I think it might be a mind-boggling thing that I feel in the elevator, you know, depending on how it’s moving.  Like right now with the shades, and that’s why I kind of dropped the shades because bright light really agitates me. That’s why I wear sunglasses a lot. Typically - when I get really tired or fatigued I feel it the most - and kind of feel like my mind plays tricks on me and sometimes I feel like I’m seeing something there when I sure as hell know there’s nothing there.

And then, you know, I get, I get headaches every day so I’m really sensitive to light. I’m always wearing my sunglasses. And I know I’m going to get one almost every day so it’s a matter of how soon in the day am I going to get it or how bad is it going to be that day. It gets to the point where I’ve had to take time off work and stuff. Because when I worked, I work as a deputy sheriff, so when I worked the road I would primarily work like evening, late evening hours and so you would do the transition of dark environments, bright laptop that I’m trying to focus on, information that’s coming and going. And then my emergency lights are going on and I’m using bright lights and then I’m transitioning back to trying to focus on this dark shadow and, you know, in the car or at the scene or whatever and so that transition back and forth was really difficult for me. Some days I’d just, I’d say, “I feel it coming, I’m going to get,” I knew I would get to the point where I would, the only relief would be to close my eyes, so I’d pull in and go home, so. That’s been difficult too because I never had, I wasn’t, you know, the guy who had headaches.

And then I came back, but I noticed some things were different. My vision was really bad. I mean it was awful. It was kind of wobbly and I’d see spots or things in my vision. And then I tried to work. I’d go on a mission and you know I was a marathon runner before, and now I’m just like smoked. I’d go on a mission and I’m talking to people and I’m engaging. And after one small, you know mission, I’m smoked like a cheap cigar and I just don’t understand that. So, I noticed that I was fatigued a lot easier than I was before.

I don’t know where different things are in the brain, but one of the results from it is, I’m now color blind in my left eye, because I had perfect color vision in both eyes, and now I only have color vision in one eye. So that’s why every color looks off to me. I can’t pick out what colors I’m going to wear or what to paint something. I have to assume that it’s right because that center - whatever center handles this eye was really banged up. And I didn’t know that until the VA this lady was taking these colors down and said, “What color is that?” And I went, “Well, that’s pink.” And she goes, “What color is this?” I said, “Well that’s red.” “Well, they’re actually the same one. It’s just you’re seeing this with both of your eyes, and you’re seeing this with just your right eye.”

I’ve lost a significant amount of my hearing, you know? And that doesn’t help with, you know, being married because it’s like, you know, women – I don’t know if you would understand it, but I did some research that women speak in a higher frequency than men speak. And it’s the high frequencies that I can’t hear. And it sounds like she’s mumbling to me. It sounds like, it’s like, it sounds like, you know [covers mouth] [sound effects]. But it’s like, it’s a higher pitch that I can’t hear and everything. And so I have hearing aids. And she gets mad at me if I don’t wear them, you know? Obviously, I’m not wearing them today because I forgot to put them in. And it’s things like that, I forget, you know? And I forget things that I’m supposed to do, you know? I miss appointments and then I get things in the mail saying that you missed an appointment and stuff, you know. And I’m like, “God,” you know, “when can I get this straightened out?” you know?

The reason why I walk with a walking stick is because my equilibrium - not because I have back or bone or knee problems - but because I, I don’t trust my equilibrium. I have fallen a couple of times due to my own lack of my surroundings. I was out in the garage one day and I wanted to put some boxes in the recycling bin. Well they were kind of big, so I had to make them smaller. So, I jumped on top of one, trying to smash it. Well of course, you know, I lost my balance on this thing that was wobbly, and over I went. I didn’t hurt myself, but it was a lesson. It was a lesson.

Yeah. I get stuck a lot more often on stuff. The ringing has gotten significantly worse. I’m having difficulty hearing people in crowded, crowded rooms, you know, where there’s other stuff going on and focusing on stuff. I think I’ve been putting that off for a while and it’s time, I’m glad today I started organizing stuff to go back in because whether or not I have to wear a hearing aid, or I know now, I’ve talked to other Veterans who have, who say there’s some noise cancelling features where they can adjust things, so that it matches the pitch of what they’re hearing at the time which will cancel it out and stuff. And the headaches have gotten worse and more frequent, unfortunately. But nothing, you know, I think those are probably the biggest pieces.

Some of them have gotten better. Some have gotten worse. Sensitivity to bright light has gotten worse.  Actually I go back in another week or so to get my eyes rechecked and get darker sunglasses.  Headaches have stayed about the same, just not as frequent as they used to be. Now it’s just like maybe one migraine every week. And all the other times it’s just a bad headache.

I: And is there stuff that’s gotten, what about your memory? Can you talk about that a little bit. How that’s sort of changed, or -

It’s gotten worse over time. There was, I could, my biggest problem is I could go downstairs and start the laundry and know in half hour I need to take it and put it into the dryer. And I’ll get upstairs, I’ll start doing other stuff and I’ll totally forget that I even started the laundry, or I’m supposed to do this. If I don’t put it down in my calendar it could be - all of a sudden I just realize - “Oh, shoot, I was supposed to be somewhere at 2:00.”  And I’ll call - “Oh, I forgot that I had the appointment. I need to reschedule.” 

I’ll tell you one thing, that OK, remember, they told me I was going to die. I saw my primary provider, last week? And he was, he had been giving me all these tests every six months, every year. I’m sorry, every year. And I see him every six months. And, and he took a look through all these tests and he, and he said, “really, really good.” He said, “really good.” And he said, “On, on your, your diabetes – really in control. You’ve still got it, don’t worry about that.” But he said, “You’re doing really, really well. Your blood pressure is doing really, really well,” all these things. And then he said, “You know,” how do I put it? “It’s like if you die now,” here are these other doctors that told me I’m going to die with my head, so, my brain is so messed up. He said, “If you die now, it will not be because of your brain injury.” And he said, and he looked, he showed me some things on, on the computer. And he said, “Because of this score, and this score, and this score, and this score.” And it showed, it means that the, I have a - is only a fifteen percent likelihood that I will have a heart attack or stroke in the next fifteen years, or ten years. And then he said, “And you’ll probably live another fifteen to twenty years.”