5 years in recovery, 3 left to go.

When there are 378 people in your lecture section, and the teacher talks at you like kindergartners, it's rather hard to wake up and drive an hour to sit in an uncomfortable chair for 45 minutes. Sorry, Mikey- I'm still a bad student.

Anyhow, my second stint on blogspot is meant to be less about illness, more about randomness; but I've recently begun to think that to avoid repeating everything, I need to remember the details. I've gotten to that happy place where I can look back without slipping back, so maybe this is the moment to start reflecting.

Last year at this time the big decision was whether I could finish college, or if I needed another medical leave. Now my big decision is whether or not to double-major in molecular biology and biochemistry, since it would only take a couple extra classes and the sequential biology will keep me here for another two years anyways. I like this lack of urgency. I REALLY like not being on medical leave!

The strange, but somehow nice, thing about an illness that takes an average of 8 years to recover from is that it has given my family and remaining friends time to come their own terms with it. The first few years I hated everything- my friends for abandoning me, my parents for not understanding, the school system for being so damn ridiculous about documentation. I almost didn't graduate from high school because the principal, whose daughter had brain cancer at the time, decided that my brain problems were no excuse for waving a couple classes. I would like to note here that I was an AP scholar with scholarship offers from multiple small, strong science colleges before I had even started applying to schools. They called the day before graduation to say they'd decided I couldn't graduate, and my mom let all hell loose on them. I walked at the ceremony without knowing if I would actually get my diploma or not until later that afternoon.

I so wanted to be normal again, and no one but the doctors though I couldn't be. My mom had me switching specialists monthly for over a year because everyone had the same, grim prognosis and she couldn't handle it. So far, though, it's been spot-on:

In 4-6 months I would most likely develop PTSD- 4 months later I did.

The first one and a half years would be a downward spiral, without any major improvments until 3 years or so- they were filled with cutting, raging, deep depressions, horrible flashbacks, and autitory and visual hallucinations. I was hospitalized while away at school, and had to take medical leave and come home. At almost exactly 18 months my thoughts congealed enough to dump the abusive boyfriend I'd had since the accident. The hallucinations came less often, and I had fewer flashbacks. A week before the 2 year mark, I met Mike and started part-time at college again. At 3 years, I started school fulltime again.

Going off the medications would be like quitting Cocaine. Withdrawl, depression, crawling skin. I would need to take a year off to complete the slow tapering-down of my dosage. Last year, at 4 years, I was mostly done with the drugs, but I had to go on medical leave after the last couple dosage drops increased my flashbacks and left me depressed and cutting again.

At five years, I would start to think and act more like my past self, and start to feel better. I would have hopefully learned enough coping methods to keep the PTSD in check and maintain a 'normal' life. I will still be easily overwhelmed, but I will be better at saying 'no' to things that will make me regress. It was five years as of two weeks ago. I've returned to school again, back to my origional major. Being a 17-22 year old who couldn't drink, stay out late, sleep weird hours, and be in large groups of people was very, very hard to come to grips with, and I give full credit to Mike for helping me find ways to have fun that don't make me sick. We're on a bowling league, I've started watching more movies instead of getting frustrated at the shifting print in books, and when I get in over my head and can't finish a project, Mike is a saint and does clean-up. My balance recently became good enough that I can walk in a straight line, so I've been hiking again in addition to careful weight lifting. I've lost 40+ lbs of the 80+ lbs I put on after the injury. This past spring Greg and I went skiing and had a blast! I haven't lost all my atheltisism after all; it's just been hiding! My dad bought me a season pass 'for Chirstmas' so Greg and I can go up a lot more this coming season! I volunteer feeding at a horse rescue a few nights a month, which fulfills my need for horse-time without costing a fortune. I think about Tigger, the horse who I fell with, a lot, and talk to his new owner a few times a year, but haven't been out to see him in a long time. He's a pleasure horse now, they trail ride a lot, but occasionally he still has a nutty eventer moment and does something terrible, like when he kicked her in the stomach after he'd been penned up for an injury for a couple days... There's a horse at the rescue who had a head-injury in a trailer accident, actually, and I spend extra time with her on my nights feeding. She's so young and spunky, but she'll never be adopted because she's not ridable and she has so many emotional issues as a result of that trailer accident. A high school girl came out twice a week over the summer to brush this mare, because she felt a connection and managed to convince the barn manager that she could deal with the potential dangers. It was somehow life-changing to me to watch them together.

8 years after the accident, I will be as recovered as I can get, which hopefully means having the ability to hold a job, have a full social life, and not get so easily overwhelmed. Here's hoping!!!