**Today is March 1st/Ash Wednesday/the first day of #braininjuryawarenessmonth. *My story is quite different from others, but our end results of #postconcussionsyndrome are the same. *My story begins months (even years) before the #tbi, when stomach problems, anxiety, and #insomnia began. I didn't address these issues very well, until I kept getting stomach virus after virus during student teaching, which resulted in me having to withdrawal. However, I've had stomach aches my whole life and I had been conditioned to blaming my stomach problems on #anxiety because that's what the doctors and family had told me "stop trying to get out of X" "you just miss your mom" "you just don't want to go to school" "you're fine stop complaining" "you're just faking it". *When May 2014 came I had gotten to a point of hardly eating, throwing up every day, the worst insomnia, anxiety, my ribcage was showing, energy depleted, I couldn't teach my own #zumba classes, but it wasn't until Memorial Day that I had my first ER visit on the way back from the beach. They instantly thought I had appendicitis so they pumped me up with antibiotics and pain medication. After negative testing, the pain was blamed on gynecological issues and I was sent home with #painmedication. I followed up with my Obgyn, but the pain was getting worse even with the strongest pain medication and I could barely move, so she admitted me to the hospital. *I was scared. In the background I had #invalidating people saying I was "faking it" and "doing it for pain medication/attention", which really hurt me and made me question my own physical pain, but now I see it had nothing to do with me at all. 3 days of gynecological testing, but since everything seemed fine it was passed along to GI. The last day I had an endoscopy done, but since nothing came back yet, they released me with a ton of medication. I was overjoyed to be going home, but still no diagnosis which fed into the invalidating phrases "supporting" people had said to me. "Maybe I am crazy?! What's wrong with me??" *The next day (June 3, 2014) my life would change forever.. #tbisurvivor #bia #braininjuryawareness #awareness #writing #pcs #survivor
