Hi everybody, iv been referring to these forums for a while to relate some of my post tbi problems to others to feel a little more connected and normal and i really appreciate any feedback given here as im running out of patience and ideas.
Im a paratrooper in the us army, recovering from a deployment related blast exposure tbi in september 2012 and more recently a airborne operations malfunction that resulted in a moderate tbi august 2013. I have been undergoing treatment in a military tbi clinic for 10 months and have recovered alot during this time but unfortunately because of the extent of my injuries im facing a med board.
I have made some recovery in my speech, reflexes, problem solving, eyesight problems, vestibular issues, physical injuries and limitations as well as some hand coordination but I am still having very severe memory retention and recall issues/ concentration problems. Mainly short term although my long term memories are damaged as well, its just kind of difficult to remember what i cant remember lol.
The problem with my short term memory is that not only is it damn near impossible for me to absorb verbal information but i am very often remembering things that turn out to be in fact very wrong even though i feel like i am remembering them with 100% accuracy. Needless to say this has become my paramount problem as it makes me unreliable in the field to my men and myself.
Before this airborne ops injury i had what most people refer to as a photographic memory. The change has been so drastic that i have a very difficult time coping with it, Iv lost confidence in myself to make reliable educated decisions on the fly and under pressure. Iv worked on all kinds of memory techniques as well as reliance on devices and annotating everything i do and need to do but it has not helped much at all. Iv become heavily reliant on my wife to manage our lives and be my life secretary so to speak. Im terribly worried about continuing education and transitioning out of the service because of these issues.
Very recently i took a neuro psych exam to gauge where i currently stand. The results were labeled invalid. When i had a sit down with the doc i was very disapointed with his assessment. He suggested that because my results were so strange he thought i may have exaggerated my problems or have underlying psychiatric issues that are manifesting as physical and mental limitations..... he said the data wasnt consistant..... What struck me funny is that improvement some large some small was shown in all areas except for memory retention and recall..... sounds like consistency to me but maybe i own a different dictionary. He said i scored in the 1% or less on memory and recall tasks which is only found in patients with dementia.
I have a ton of medical records showing my injuries and my road to recovery and it has been well documented. Sadly this doctor didnt have any background on me or knowledge of my injuries or medical history and i realize his job is to analyze the data and make a determination off said data without any other knowledge so as far as im concerned he can go climb a rock!. To me the data shows that my memory is as large an issue as i thought, and even worse. I honestly had expected to do better but it seems that most of what i was remembering during the testing was false or just wrong even though i thought i was doing better than usual.
What im concerned with is that my results were so low. How could i be having such severe memory problems this late in the game? As far as mris showed my brain has healed fine but i still have very bad balance and spacial reasoning problems, my heart rate shoots through the roof under low stress activity, i still routinely pass out for no reason at all, my left eye still doesnt work correctly and now im having problems with my right eye as well. My hands still feel like theyve been out in the cold all the time and are slow, i still forget to use the right words sometimes or make things plural or just stutter and slur, i cant type, text or do anything intricate nearly as efficiently as i used to and I cant read my own hand writing because its changed so drastically. I barely feel myself. everything feels slow and disconnected but apparently alot of these tests i tested low average or within normal limits which is the 25%-75% range.
I could really use some advice or solutions. Have any of you all experienced anything like this and made further recovery?