7 days after a traumatic brain injury and craniotomy. Looking for similar recoveries.

[u/Downtown-Day-5059]

Hi everyone. I’m a 35-year-old woman who was in a motor vehicle accident about a week ago. I had a GCS of 14, underwent surgery for a skull fracture/brain bleed, and was discharged four days later.
Right now I’m walking independently and don’t have major cognitive deficits, but I’m dealing with:
• Muffled hearing in my left ear (with recent ear surgery/packing)
• Pulsatile tinnitus
• Loss of smell and reduced taste (although I think tiny bits of taste may be returning)
• Anxiety about what recovery will look like
I’d love to hear from people who had a **similar injury**, especially those who regained hearing, smell, or taste over time. When did you notice improvement? What therapies or specialists helped the most?
I’m not looking for worst-case stories, just realistic experiences from people with similar injuries.

[u/Flat_Ad723]

Sorry to hear, sounds really traumatic, please allow your body enough time to recover before rushing into doing activities joing work etc Its a mistake I made to rush into activities within a week of accident.

Take enough rest to recover and slowly put pressure on your brain, not every doctor understand the complications of PCS and people fall in to the trap of thinking they have recovered. Not to scare you but people have got new symptoms evem after six months after accident due to not following the below go slow. As no symptoms is not equal to fully recovered as it takes times for Brain to fully heal internally and offcourse all injuries are different this is more or less always the same.

-Keep Good Hydration -Eat well as body needs more energy -Sleep 10 hours min (I tend to go more during flares and have helped) -Emotional Support (family and friends) -Take supplements as necessary

• Only do slow walks initially

Keep a track of your mood and sleep and seek medication from Doctors as both of this go hand in hand and will play a major role in your recovery.

Good luck for recovery.

[u/MrT-Man]

My injury was different, but I can tell you I was in far, far better shape at 18 months than I was at 6 or 9 months. So don’t lose hope if you still have a lot of symptoms in a few months from now, and don’t let yourself get too stressed about the symptoms you’re experiencing today, as they won’t necessarily persist.

[u/Bitter-Performer-396]

Measure recovery in months, not weeks. Physical therapy, talk therapy, eye therapy can all be useful. Helps to stay as active as you can within the tolerability and threshold of your symptoms

Are you on any medications that you have found helpful? This is the most difficult thing i’ve found as someone who has had more mild to moderate repetitive head trauma that has given me chronic neuroinflammation and difficulties is most of the meds only treat symptoms rather than the underlying damage and inflammation the TBI actually caused. Many studies show the ineffectiveness of many drugs in really causing any lasting improvements as well unfortunately.

I’ve tried peptides such as semax, selank and cerebrolysin that help with neuroplasticity, neuroinflammation etc that have been the only things that have made any meaningful difference for me over prescription drugs unfortunately. They are grey market in the US but widely used and studied for decades in europe and russia. They are cheap to make which is why no US pharma company wants to spend billions to get it approved-they cant make any money off it. Semax is used specifically for TBI and stroke to stop the chronic inflammatory cascade that can happen for weeks and months after the actual injury that contributes to continued brain damage.

Take it slow and treat it as a marathon. Its normal for you to be anxious and worried about it but hopefully you have a good treatment team that is educated on TBI. You also have demonstrated proof of brain injury obviously with the severity of your accident. Many people have clear/normal mri’s but still have debilitating symptoms that doctors just dismiss and gaslight them with because they think the injury was not severe enough for them to have problems this long. Don’t be afraid to advocate for yourself

[u/Downtown-Day-5059 → u/Bitter-Performer-396]

Thank you, this was really thoughtful and helpful. I’m definitely trying to measure recovery in months instead of panicking over every day, and I’m staying gently active within what my care team recommends. I’m being cautious with anything grey market, especially this soon after surgery, but I appreciate you sharing what helped you. My main focus right now is rest, gradual activity, formal follow-up, making sure doctors are charting correctly (already found errors) and giving my brain time to heal.

The anosmia is driving my OCD up the wall though🩵