On Hiatus Because Concussion

The title pretty much says it all, but here's the story: in late March, I went down a super fast playground slide (seriously, beware this thing) at Plateau Park. I came off the end on my feet running, tripped, & faceplanted. On concrete.

This gave me a concussion, unsurprisingly. Five days later, I got what I thought was a cold. After two weeks of increasingly excruciating headaches, exhaustion, nausea, light & sound hypersensitivity, most of which was spent in bed, I went to Emergency.

After blood work & a CT Scan, the doctor explained that I had an acute infection in the ethmoid & sphenoid sinuses, the ones at the back, just under my brain. He told us the symptoms to watch out for should it turn into meningitis (ack!). The nurse pumped me full of fluids, an antiinflammatory, & antibiotics via IV, then I was sent home with a handful of serious painkiller, a prescription for two weeks of antibiotics.

That was a week ago. The infection is mostly better, but the concussion (technically post-concussion syndrome) is still here. Sadly, brains are kinda hard to heal. It takes rest & time. Which sounds simple, but when you look at what that actually means, you'll understand my frustration. Here are some of the things I need to avoid:

• Screen time. No streaming TV shows, no internet surfing, no YouTube videos, no reading blogs or news articles, no social media. Aaaugh. Just. Aaauuuughhh. I am so addicted to all this stuff.
• Thinking too hard. I've heard it described as don't think harder than you would have to in a casual conversation. So designing & sewing a superhero costume for your kindergartener, like I did yesterday? Not advisable. Paying for that now.
• Quick movement or travel. Car trips make me feel quite ill, as does cycling, though to a lesser degree. Even walking fast or turning a corner can give me motion sickness. Walking through a store & scanning sideways, looking for things on the shelves as you normally do while shopping? Ugh. Just can't.
• Alcohol for six months. No beer. A summer without beer. I cry.

I just can't completely unplug from the digital world. I am trying very hard to minimize it. So my compromise will be no blogging for a while (Thank you for your patience!), but I will be on social media in short bursts most days. If you want to keep up with what I'm doing--it'll be a lot of colouring books, repetetive crafty stuff, podcasts, audio books, & walks, follow me on Instagram. If I can avoid the brain fog, I'll try to remember to use a hashtag: #ConcussionDiaries.

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