https://youtu.be/J3Scc6DRAWM –My perfect storm started with a car accident in June of 2012. So six years ago. And immediately after my accident lots of symptoms started appearing. I was immediately in a great deal of pain. So I had headaches right off the bat and neck pain. And what I found right away was I was just, what was most noticeable to me is that I was very irritable and as a person, it was not something I ever was before. So it was definitely new and obvious of just the irritability and like the mood of, and how much that was impacted and how just sensitive I was to emotions and sensitive to light and sounds. And there was dizziness at first and I was just in a lot of pain, but there were also a lot of sleep disturbances, so I was really exhausted and could sleep all the time.
But then because I was sleeping all the time, it was hard to sleep at night and I wasn’t sleeping well throughout the night. So there was a lot of just fatigue and exhaustion and it was kind of like with the brain injury, that aspect of neuro fatigue. So it was like anything that I did, like any task, it would be like I needed a lot of rest to recover from whatever it was after any activity. I would say the worst day, if I were to think of one is I would probably think at the time when things were the worst for me of when I had to leave my teaching job, which was the thing that I loved the most because I just, my body was just shutting down on me and so I had lost the thing I loved. And that with that came a lot of anxiety and depression, even though I had found a way to manage and cope with my symptoms as best as I could before I had started teaching.
After teaching, it was like everything went downhill for me. So my day pretty much looked like I would get up out of bed. And despite the fact that I went to bed probably at like seven or eight at night, because I was always so tired when I woke up in the morning after hours and hours of sleep, I didn’t feel rested or rejuvenated. And so I would wake up and just spend a lot of time alone because that was seemed to be the only way I was able to cope and cope with the symptoms because spending time with people was too overstimulating to some degree at that level. And my social activities were very limited because everything was kind of overstimulating and it was difficult to be in overstimulating environments. So I would basically, my day, for me, my typical day was kind of every day it was pick one thing and that’s what you do today because whatever you do, it was involved a lot of rest afterwards I saw various different specialists and doctors including like, I went the western medicine route first and I Saw doctors and I saw neurologists and neuropsychologists and chronic pain specialists. I tried, it seemed like everything to manage the pain. I was on lots of different medications, which seemed to only exacerbate the symptoms that I already had. I also went with the chronic pain specialist. I tried, I was doing Botox injections for multiple years and I had also tried nerve block injections and even though some things helped the pain a little bit, nothing ever really made any of the pain go away. I also tried various other routes, like I have seen, I had seen multiple naturopaths, multiple osteopaths, multiple chiropractors and I had been sent for multiple sleep studies. And I was also sent from the sleep studies to see a cardiologist and to have all that testing done. And I had also been referred to go to the environmental health clinic and went to see acupuncturists and Chinese medicine doctors, basically, you name it.
I tried it to try to find the answer. I heard about DNRS (Dynamic Neural Retraining System) through basically a friend of a family member someone named Jane Defoe who went to the program. And I was lucky enough to get connected with her and speak to her about her experience with the program. And after hearing her amazing story and how she completely recovered from all the health issues she had, it gave me a lot of hope. Somebody who was in her seminar program had used the program to also recover from post-concussive syndrome. After reading the book, I watched so many testimonials and I read the website and I found the questionnaire itself on the website was super powerful because just answering those questions and realizing how many of those I checked off is yes, it just, to me it said, wow, this is a limbic system impairment and this, this is the answer I heard about the seminar option and in my experience talking to Jane who recovered from the program, she had gone to the seminar and found it worthwhile and said she couldn’t speak to the DVDs because she hadn’t done them.
But that the seminar was a wonderful experience for her and that it was really great to be surrounded by people who had similar experiences and stories and that just feeling of being understood. And so to me, that stood out because at the time when I heard about the program, I was definitely feeling very alone. And just being able to have that experience was a really great thing for me. Although I had reservations about whether I could even make it through the days at the seminar, that was part of the questions that I asked when I spoke to Jane, and she said that for her with the fatigue and with the brain fog and stuff like that, and for other people at the program, there was something about the program that in itself allowed them to make it through the days. And so I just had to put all my trust in that. And even though I didn’t know whether I’d be able to do it, I, I tried it and I did. I made it through the days and as the week went on, symptoms started to get better. The experience at the seminar was wonderful. It was life changing for me. What stood out about the program was that that first day I couldn’t remember the words and on the very last day I was doing the rounds, the entire rounds, no problem. And I could remember everything during my recovery. I found the community forum and really just like buddies, the most amazing resource and just the most amazing experience ever was to be able to support one another through our recoveries and just like those friendships that we had formed at the seminar.
Just to be able to continue those on and to celebrate what was going well for us every day and to have that experience was incredible. And I know for me, and I think this is also what really helped me to get well, was the fact that one of the hardest things was losing the thing I loved and my ability to help other people. And so getting that back by being able to help support other people in their recovery was a huge part of getting me well. And so I was just grateful to be able to do that. And so I did buddy rounds weekly with multiple buddies, and I’m just so grateful for my buddies. And I found that it wasn’t difficult for me to stay motivated. I know that I would do anything to be well and I did. But it was also really fun.
Like, it, like everything about the (Dynamic Neural Retraining System) program is about just doing the things that bring you joy. And so it was a really incredible experience to get to prioritize that and to get, to bring all those things into my life that make me happy. And like, I felt like even just like dancing and singing and playing with kids and just doing all of the fun stuff was what helps me to get well. I think for me, what just stood out is how before my days were very small. There was like pick one activity and that’s all you could do. And it was very difficult to be surrounded by people because it was too overstimulating and it was very difficult cognitively even to follow conversations. And so it was like, even just family dinners at Christmas were a really hard thing because I couldn’t sit at the table with that many people with that much noise following conversations. And even just like my family in itself, if it was like it was easy to sit with one person and even that it was like cognitively I was drained after too long, so it was…like, sorry, now I need to go rest. But now, I have the most full days. Like it’s, I don’t have that fatigue. What I found funny is it’s just like now in the afternoons when I like when most people sometimes get tired, I’m full of energy and I really like, I have the choice to be able to go anywhere I want whenever I want. It’s not like I now have to go to bed super early. I can stay up and go to bed when I please. And just really, yeah, I can go anywhere. I’m not limited by where I can go. I can travel now. I can enjoy quality time with friends and family, which was something that was really difficult to do without, without needing to control where or when I could do it or for how long I could do it.
I can just go and I can be present and I can just enjoy my time and I can really just do whatever I feel like and what brings me joy and not have to worry about how I’m going to feel afterwards. I was told that the two year mark after my accident and after my brain injury, which is sometimes told by specialists working with the brain that after the two year mark things kind of had plateaued and weren’t going to get any better for me. And this was my new normal. And dealing with all those symptoms was just my life was about managing them at that point and learning how to live with my new reality that way. And I know that, that for me, I felt like, well, I just have to accept this and make the best of it. And I see that at that two year mark when I was told that that things really started to get worse at that point.
And I think it really is all about what you believe. And if you’re told that you’re not gonna get better, then that’s what you believe. But what I think is just like wildly amazing and wonderful is the fact that even after being told that it wasn’t true, and DNRS made everything possible and the life that I thought I was going to have for the rest of my life isn’t the one I have now. It’s completely changed. I would tell people who are thinking about doing DNRS that it is the most wonderful program and can truly change your life.
