Brain Injury Vision Issues: Craig Part Eighteen
Craig discusses the brain injury vision issues along with some hearing problems he has experienced after his traumatic brain injury.
Brain Injury Vision Issues after TBI
You talked about some brain injury vission issues and hearing problems. Tell me about that.
Visual is still my worst, like in the morning when I wake up – I have 20/20 vision. I go into the morning and it’s morning time, 20/20 vision. If I go at night maybe 60/80. I mean, it’s that bad. And I have different prisms. I don’t know if you know people who have different, prescriptions of prisms. I was just noticing, last night that I’m putting so much strain on my brain that none of the prisms are sufficient enough now to, when I strain my brain I get in such a cycle.
So one of your brain injury vision issues is your vision deteriorates as you get tired.
As I get tired and after it starts at about six, eight hours.
Now, your brain injury vision issues, are they related to the headaches at all?
That I don’t think so because believe it or not I have worse headaches when I’m more awake than I do when I’m getting tired. I don’t know that I’m just more aware of them, but I push myself. I work probably 15 hours, 16 hours a day, seven days a week.
Brain Injury Hearing Issues after TBI
What problems are you having with your hearing?
Right now it’s not too bad but originally it was I guess you could call it Superman hearing. I could literally hear like bugs crawling on me. I mean, it was so accentuated that I could hear a pin drop and of course when you have a stimulation problem to be that sensitive to sound, it was really hard in the beginning, especially having two young kids. So you can imagine I was nutty by the end of the night.
Did anybody ever suggest that the problem wasn’t your hearing but the filter, the inability to filter out all of that noise?
No. No, I never really dealt with the audio part of it and to this day I still, when I gets tired it feels like it’s clogged almost like there’s rocks in it.
Next in Part Nineteen – Management of Seizures Post Severe Brain Injury
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For me, ringing and this steady tone was just one of the issues with hearing after TBI. The steady ‘zinnngggg” in my ears is annoying in quiet rooms, like doctors offices. In restaurants or malls, music, people walking around me and talking, then my friend talking to me goes about two stimulations too deep.
I learned to get into and out of grocery stores and malls as fast as possible. This took two or three years to get over. Now, if there are two or three stimulations going on, I can separate the most important one and manage to hold off the other two.
Sudden, loud noises are not fun either. Cars blowing their horn at me while I’m riding the bike scare me nearly right off the seat. Doors slamming or cabinets banging loudly in the kitchen is no fun. I used to work in busy and loud restaurants and loved it. Those days are over. Great segment.