Angela's Blog

Hi.

Not a lot for today, but I've got some. Always.

The rest of the TBI conference was good. Lots learned and I think one of my best compliments ever. As for what was learned - lots about TBI from other survivors, I am definitely not alone in any of this. I'm not alone in any part of my struggles or any of my successes. Pretty cool to know that this is all just part of the fun of TBI recovery. All the feelings of scariness, hurt, anger, exasperation, etc. is all normal. I'm not the only one who's ever been where I'm at nor will I be the last. Certainly a club I'd rather not be a part of but a club nonetheless. As for the compliment - a lady that works at UW with TBI survivors was surprised to hear that my accident was only 8 months ago. She said I look like a 10-year survivor. Cool! So I may be a spring chicken but I don't look like one. And the other big thing that I learned was, well I didn't really learn it, it was just reinforced - anywho what was strongly reinforced was that I am REALLY blessed to be where I'm at. A lot of TBI survivors are a lot worse off than me. I think my TBI was pretty bad but I'm really doing pretty well considering.

If you want to check out the website for the folks that put on the conference it's www.tbiwashington.org. They said they'd be posting minutes to it in the near future.

What else, well I made more progress on the go-back-to-work stuff. I got a loaner laptop from UW with the Dragon voice recognition program on it. I practiced by dictating part of an industry paper to it and it went well. When the guru came to help me out and I showed him how far I'd gotten he pretty much said I was good to go and had a good enough grip of things. So that's good news.

And Sunday was an awesome day! Got to sleep in with Josh, went to church, and then went to lunch with some friends we hadn't seen in a while after church. Then went home, got stuff done for a few hours, went out to dinner, and went to the movies. We went and saw The Bounty Hunter which was pretty cute. All in all it was just awesome to get to have a whole date-day with my husband! Barring the rockstar parking and super slow walking to and from the car it was almost like before the accident. Pretty nice!

We got to go see Baby Doodle today too! It was pretty cool to get to hold a baby that was less than 24 hours old! And he was cute!!! I didn't realize how much of a vortex newborns are. Holding him was like time had stopped. Josh said it was time for us to go and I felt like I had just gotten him. Little did I know that it had really been about 20 minutes with him in my arms. Wow! What a trip! He was certainly mesmerizing to say the least. What a doll!

Just one other thing - I got to go to the pool again on Monday. And whew, was it tiring! I fell asleep on the couch Monday night and still just passed out when I went to bed. Then this morning I had to peel myself out of bed at 8 and get going. I haven't slept that late for weeks! And I could've just kept sleeping. What a trip! I knew it was a good workout but my God! Sharon, I'm going to start calling you the butt kicker extraordinaire if this keeps up. Holy you know what!

Ok, that's all I've got. Hope y'all are doing well.

Bye,

Ang