Good to see that you're ok!

Thanks a lot!

I'll share a new post since my thread got bumped. So I have these super weird brain issues that I wanted to talk about it a second. First I'll say something that I didn't believe to be true at first, but I just asked my neuropsychologist and she said it's very true so it's worth saying: see right after my surgery my parents were called and they came down and the surgeon told them I might NEVER wake up, or walk again, or talk again, and apparently that was a real risk that the surgeon knew about based on what happened to my brain and the surgery they had to do (they were basically trying to stop bleeding, and my brain was bleeding a ton, they ended up removing two parts of my skull too. Halfway through the doctor even said he was just going to quit because he just couldn't get the blood to stop but he decided that since I was just a young man he had to try to do it and he did).

Oh, I also wanted to say that we have no idea why this happened. I had a seizure due to low sodium but I've never had a seizure or a low sodium problem! No idea what caused it.

So obviously it's a pretty great deal that I'm MOSTLY okay now. It's weird and I say mostly because I can walk fine and write fine (this message should be fine! and i can email well) but on the other side I have these weird brain problems. I got a literature degree in college and I'm the only lit major who can't actually read a book anymore! My brain just can't read it if it has big and tough words. I also wrote this message to several friends about another weird brain issue I have:


"So one of my rehab things is called Speech Therapy and part of it is about getting smarter and using your brain to get stuff better. Here's an example of homework from speech therapy. You have to name what these things are, for example you've got to say helicopter on the bottom left one because that's what it is. Is the fact that I can only do like 3 of them because of my surgery, or would I have just been stupid and done 3 prior to my surgery? Or would I have gotten all of them right before this happened? I gave it to my brother and he got them all right! And I used to be smarter! http://i.imgur.com/LuT60rp.jpg "

Speaking of speech therapy, she also asked me to name all the vegetables I can and this weird brain came up with just one! So I can actually play poker still which is also super weird. I feel okay playing and I remember the actions most of the time. I think because I've been a professional for 8 years it just stuck inside my head. I'm really not sure if I'm as good as I used to be but it's been working out so far, although I haven't played a ton yet and I'm sticking to smaller stakes.

So yeah, I'm happy that I'm doing much better and I still have lots of rehab so I'm trying to fix these brain issues. thanks again for the support from everyone here, I really appreciate it!

This is so obviously because you thought WAY more about poker then you did about eating your vegetables!
Your poker neuron paths must be thick like tree trunks if your like most of us dedicated poker guys haha

Jesus dude. That's insane. I'm glad you're doing better and it's good to see you still have your wits (some) about you. No one likes vegetables anyway.

Also, did you know you could grow a beard like that? Seems like a pretty decent silver lining.....you go to sleep for a while and wake up with a beard.

heh, yeah vegetables suck. ONIONS! Lettuce...umm ****, yeah that's all. My situation is weird, like I was never a true genius but I was fairly smart. Got a 31 on the ACT, 1380 on the SAT, fairly good grades I guess, and the weird thing is if you met me and talked to me on the streets you would never know that I've got weird brain problems, unless you decide to ask me to name all the vegetables I can, or the animals in a zoo, or all the words that start with 'C'. Weird.

And yeah, I knew I could grow a beard but I didn't know I had one of that caliber inside me. I'd always trimmed it within 3 or 4 weeks, never grew it for long. I am kinda growing it back now just because I miss it. Like I grew one for a bit when I moved to Austin, Texas and got my license:



To give one description of how my new brain works, it's completely and totally frustrating in tons of different ways. Like I took this pic and moved it to Paint to block out my old address and stuff and I COULD NOT FIGURE IT OUT. Like wtf, using Paint, I figured this **** out in 1990 and I have to learn all that stuff again because I just don't remember the buttons.

I wrote up a long email to a friend about what my rehab is like with a lot of pics about how this new version of middle school basically is, plus a description of some of my other problems. Here's a copy:

Hey, great hearing from you! This email is probably going to get long and have tons of typos. Thanks for saying it seems like my emailing/typing is good, appreciate it! This brain **** is just super weird, like I can write perfectly fine but I have all these other brain issues, like I can only name one type of vegetable (ONIONS!!). My brain knows these words still but they don't come out naturally. Just strange.

The problem is I've had two more seizures in the past few months. Once was just a couple of days ago. I was just watching True Detective with my mom and we were talking and I froze and fell back in the couch and she came an asked if I was okay and I was just like "wtf, are you waking me up?? what day is it??" That and at occupational therapy he set me on his computer to play some annoying brain game and I just froze and starred at it for 15 minutes until he came over and woke me up and he was like "yeah, you really shouldn't be on the computer." So I haven't been doing much computering, kinda off poker for a while but I'll get back into it eventually, if only just for fun.

Therapy went well! I'm actually graduated, I finished about 2 weeks ago. I've been in therapy since mid-December 2014, so it's been a long time. Therapy was okay, I wouldn't call it fun but it was helpful. Whether or not it's hard is pretty damn close. Some of it is hard, like I have to do tons of annoying ass brain games on the computer. Like use these tiny six pieces of color to make the same exact shape as the image on the left:
that **** is impossible to do. Then physical therapy was just making me do tons of leg workouts, which i could handle but I did go like 4 months in a wheel chair so it was hard at first, plus standing on this annoying ass thing where it bends up/down or right/left depending on what side it's positioned on while you throw a ball at a chair: I swear, no one earth could stand on this thing without tipping it over:



Occupational therapy was just a lot of brain work, like building these cards to where every card matches the ones right by it:
plus using these pieces to match the same shape on the page, this one made me mad so i flipped it off lol: .

But if i got help I did one correctly and got happy!



Tons of building legos too which I guess was fun: .

Ok that's enough pics. So yeah I graduated from rehab but my insurance still covers speech therapy so I just got signed up at this other place for more speech therapy, that's gonna last a while, lots more home work and failing at naming vegetables and stuff.

Long reply here. I make tons of typos, sorry about them. Just figured I'd share some more if anyone cares. Things are going well, just hope I quit having more seizures like I am, and hope I get the ability to freaking drive a car in a while, looking forward to it.

Damn, I don't think I could do any of those puzzles!

Also, I would recommend not watching True Detective for the seizures, and just in general.

Great write up! I didn't really notice any typos btw!

GL Keyser. You don't know me but seem like such a great guy. I'll totally be rooting for you!

Cool Scar! Will you be giving refunds to people who wanted coaching 5 months ago, and no longer want it?

Thanks

yes of course, I'm not gonna refuse to give the money back from people who don't want the service anymore, don't really know why you consider I wouldn't

Wow! I just clicked on the SSNL life thread for the first time in a year, and found this.

Take care, man. I don't know what I could possibly do from afar, but let me know if you think of something! (PM me your address if you want cute cards from the flock of kids I have these days, for instance.)

Wishing the very best!

Recovering from a traumatic brain injury is pretty awful. :-( I mean I'm doing okay. I'm back to playing golf, I can walk now, but I'm still a former lit major who can't even read a book and I've got tons of other brain problems. I'm getting better though! One thing I'm proud about is that on October 26 we're entering 1 year from my seizure caused injury. So it's been a year and I'm proud of making it this far and getting better because my surgeons didn't even think it would happen.

But imagine a life where you were halfway intelligent at age 30 then you have a brain trauma and your brain gets taken away. It's pretty much like going back to 1st grade. You've got to relearn everything and learn how to interact with people and deal with things again. And I'm not very good at it. You also get outrageously frustrated by everything. Like I have an internet troll who keeps attacking me and publicly posting how I PM'd him a bit too much. You might have seen him post in this thread and his posts quickly got deleted because he's wrong. He says I'm harassing him and I'm not. I'm going through hell and sometimes make mistakes, but I didn't even make any big ones against him really. He'll probably show up but if you read this often you'll see before they get deleted. It reminds me of someone recovering from cancer and constantly getting attacked. My speech therapist says to just walk always from a troll attacking you, but I have a hard time doing it with the level it bothers me. I kinda hate the internet now and I've always kind of hated people. I like cats a lot more. :-)

Ok I plan to make another post on my big day. October 26th is coming and that's one year since my injury! Thanks again for the support guys.

Hey Keyser, always nice to read updates on how you're doing. Keep grinding away and making progress. Will PM you soon.

thanks bro, looking forward to hearing from you. Hope all is well.

So i thought more about this troll who is attacking me and it makes me think. I really just need to drop it and move away like my Speech Therapist told me to, but interactions with people is difficult and I think too much about it. it's kind of a perfect example of what i'm going through. My brain basically forgot every single thing about life, and i didn't know how to act with people. So someone asked me a question that i found to be odd, and i PM'd him wondering why. Then he never replied so i PM'd again. Then i sent another because i thought maybe like a lot of people on 2p2, he just wasn't seeing that he was being messaged. Then i asked him a few more questions and saw he plays microstakes so even made an offer to help coach him for free just because i wanted to talk to him. I saw he criticizes a coach i used to fight with so I shared some of the fights, but turns out i was wrong on those and i read more about that coach and changed my view, so my PM's about that aren't what i currently believe.

Apparently this is not the way to do things! OMG i sent too many PM's!! Well isn't that just total harassment!! i should end up in jail!! Well basically, my recovering brain doesn't know how to do things. i was just frustrated i was being ignored so i sent too much and he makes it into some huge criminal deal and it bothers me because yes, i make many mistakes and apparently this was one of them, but jesus he seems out of line going after me.

Yes I'm sorry for PM'ing him too much, but jesus, now he's trying to fight a person going through death recovery and it's awfully frustrating and annoying and this guy needs banned or something. Okay I'm done with this topic. Until he shows up again and tries to attack me more for these terrible crimes I committed.

Wow just came across this thread crazy story man GL in your recovery an f... The trolls

awesome, tyvm.

I realize it's ridiculous how much I let a troll bother me. Brain trauma recovery is just awful, it changes your thoughts on everything. I'm sure all of you are used to trolls since they're everywhere, but they're absurd or too ignorant to spend time caring or thinking about, it's just like a brand new reality to me I didn't foresee happening. So this is the LAST time i talk about my troll, I'm over it. Moving on. It's done. I win. TY again. Ok 3 days away from my 1 year near-death seizure accident, I'll be writing too long of a post that day probably. At least I can write now and my surgeons didn't even think I'd ever be able to. :-)

edit: lol I realize this'll just make someone else decide to start a troll account and attack me but don't waste your time. You'll just get deleted and banned quickly, not worth it. And I don't even care anymore to react to it (getting attention is the troll goal) because I've moved on from trolls.

All right, well today is October 26th. It's my one year anniversary from a traumatic brain injury (TBI is what it's commonly called).

Here right now exactly one year ago my parents were called by a hospital. I didn't have my phone on me but they used People Search and found my likely parents. They were told I was currently having surgery because I had an accident and a brain bleed they had to quit.

Then about 4 hours later I was out of surgery and in a coma. They had to cut out two parts of my skull because my brain was bulging and they were kept locked up for 3 months then put back in. The surgeon called my parents and my parents asked when I'm waking up from the coma and the surgeon said "I honestly don't know if he ever will." I ended up being stuck in a coma for about 14 days, and when I got out things were not right, but eventually I started communicating by giving a thumbs up to certain questions. I could also use both hands which was unexpected. My trauma injured the part of my brain that controls your right side, so it wasn't even foreseen as being possible.

What's confusing and bothers me about this whole process is we don't even know the cause. What happened is around 1pm I left my apartment and was walking to a gas station right by where I lived, and I lost consciousness and fell straight on my head. Someone some it happen and he called 911. I haven't found him yet but I plan to thank him eventually. So what caused this? Well if you look it up seizures can be caused by many things. They did do a drug test and an alcohol test and I was clean and sober. All they found is I had very low sodium. I don't remember eating salt-free food so we don't know why it happened, but one weird thing about seizures is they can come from past situations and just get re-let out and effect you. It's true I'm not a normal eater and my doctors say this is the most likely cause (alcohol could do it but I'd been sober for so long doctors say it probably didn't). I'm weird in the sense that I don't actually get hungry or full. So I can both go 2 days without eating a drop and feel fine, and I can also get lazy and find some food I like and eat tons of it. After I do that for a while I'm very good at getting in shape so I cut out my food and I ride my bike a ton. I wasn't even a good cyclist but I'd regularly ride my bike like 30 miles in a day. That can cause low sodium so maybe that just came back to me. All I know is I wouldn't have even left to buy cat food or whatever if I felt bad, so I must have felt fine when I left then this happened.

Life is just different now. TBI is pretty awful. I read this webpage a lot. There's a lot of stories about the effect TBI has on people and what it's like to have you brain basically restarted: http://www.brainline.org/index.html

I am happy, but some things are bad. Among all my brain problems like not remembering words and get frustrated by lots of things or it being hard to read a book despite having a degree in literature, I can't legally drive for 6 months after seizures and I've had more after my surgery so I can't drive until January. This basically means I have to live at home. My parents are great people and they did a lot for me growing up and are doing a lot now, but it's kind of awful to live at home. All I'm happy about is that I did well in poker and never went busto cause I'd just be embarrassed if I didn't have to live where I live because of a brain surgery. I do like the free food provided here! It's been like 9 years of living by myself and doing everything by myself, which does make the free food great but the lack of privacy terrible. I'm an introvert and I like being by myself and I just can't now.

One another level, in a way I'm happy this all happened. I was a big fan of poker and I did well, but on some levels I think it's bad for people who might have an antisocial desire inside them. I basically managed to play a game on a computer for a living and it didn't require making a lot of friends or being a normal person. Now I'll be getting a real job and maybe one day playing some poker on the side and doing it for fun and possible profit. I have vocational rehab service coming up soon, and it's a service that helps disabled people or injured people get a real job. It's strange how I think my past is on some level impressive (own boss at a skill game like poker for a long time) but businesses don't really like it. I like golf a lot so I might work at a course. I like cats a lot so I might work at a cat care place. We'll see what happens. I could go back to college but I don't really wanna.

My life is a little weird now. All my friends tell them it's odd how I actually got nicer, but to my parents I'm just a lot meaner without meaning to be. I basically forgot normal things like how to interact with people, what to say, etc., so I'm working on improving all of that now. I have therapy still. I've been in since mid-December so it's been a long time and they help a lot. It's also funny how they say TBI causes you to forget new memories but remember older ones better. Right before this I was watching the MLB World Series but when I woke up I kept asking if the Cardinals or Royals won. They weren't even the opponents. But on another level I remember baseball games better that I played when I was 14. It's odd.

I'm also currently exercising a lot for what I feel is a funny reason. When I was stuck in the hospital I couldn't eat food or drink liquid for a long time. There was some thing attached to my arm that they put in the required calories from some medical liquid. That lasted for a while. Then later when I was able to eat I was given crappy hospital food with no choice of what I wanted. So when I was released I weighed a tiny amount, like I'm 5'11" and I weighed 140lbs. But when I was released and went home I was like OMG ICE CREAM and I ate too much, lol. But now I bought a fitbit and I'm walking a ton each day while listening to podcasts and super quickly I'll lose my weight. I like doing things I'm still good at. :-)

Anyway, this post maybe got long, but obviously for all my friends, all my relatives, all my poker contacts over the years, this was a pretty big deal, and in a way it's kind of second chance at life. Things feel different. I'll have a different lifestyle. And I'll keep getting better. I'm excited about the rest of the year. Let's see what happens!

It's great to hear that you're doing well and pretty amazing honestly. I really hope you keep crushing life and keep golfing!

Really glad to see you progressing so well, Daniel. Your grammar isn't as bad as you make it out to be, don't be so hard on yourself!

Great to hear all of the progress

Keep up the good work and good luck!

Dan you were and still are an amazing guy!!!! I can't even imagine the struggles you go thru, but the progress you are making is definitely a result of how you always just keep working harder to get through any challenges put in your way. Just keep pushing hard and I am sure you will be able to reach any goal you have in life!!

Happy to hear you're doing well Keyser! Your updates are written very well - a pleasure to read!

Dan - you are doing great! Cherish this time with your parents, I know it can be hard, but you will be on your own and crushing life in no time. I will do my best to come visit sometime in the next few weeks. Your progress is amazing and inspiring!

Nice post, Dan. Keep up the good work!

Dan--you are doing awesome. Just out of curiosity, how normal do you think you were before all of this? Nah, just kidding. I am just so happy to have you around again. I really gained a lot of perspective on what is important and what is totally meaningless having seen what you went through. Stay strong my friend.

Glad to hear your recovery is going well Dan ... all my best to you buddy!

Cheers,
C.