coming out - let's talk about locker rooms... again
In March of this year, I moved out of the city and away from the gym (mentioned above) where I've been for the past three years. I moved into Seattle proper. New city, new gym. Going into this new gym I felt like it would be the same experience as before. I would take the same approach that I used at my last gym; the same level of confidence and respect. For the most part, everything was fine. I go in, change, do my workout, shower, change and leave. I was feeling positive. This validated that I am truly part of the tribe and at the very least tolerated in that locker room. I was rolling high!
On April 3rd things suddenly shifted and not in a positive way.
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living and training with a brain injury
It's difficult to understand brain injuries until you have one, and it's a club you really don't want to be a member of. It's a type of injury that is fairly easy to identify with a number of common symptoms, such as, difficulty remembering new information, difficulty thinking clearly, fuzzy or blurred vision, dizziness, headache, sensitivity to noise and/or light, issues with balance, drastic mood swings … just to list a few. Determining the extent of damage, and it's long term effect, on the other hand is extremely difficult. Unless you have a brain bleed, nothing is visible on MRI or CT, two of the most common methods of imagining the brain. It's really a new frontier for the medical world. We simply can't wait for people suffering from brain injuries to die, in order to physically look at their brain and see the CTE, or other damage that's a result from head injuries. They're just starting to gather the data, and test how to find these problems while the person is still alive, which can lead to better rehabilitation, and change any many full contact sports/jobs.
This single event changed my life, and the lives of everyone around me forever.
That was two years ago, and here we are today. I'm still recovering, still healing, still learning limits and how to adjust my life to accommodate my on going TBI and symptoms.
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