One year and 5 months now… she still has issues… Please Guide

[aujjaju]

Hello everyone there,

Greetings for the day.

Thanks for being there in a long journey and helping me out.

My 22 years old fiancee is 1 year & 5 months post TB Meningitis now. She recovered but still screams like hell sometimes and never tells why she screams. She can go upstairs with very minimal or no support but walking straight is still not possible for her. She has fear of falling. Mentally she is better and can remember things but still very weak in voice and cries a lot.

Will she get back to a good level again???

Please share your views and suggestions as you really showed me way to help her and I need your assistance .

Thanks and regards,

Anuj

[StrawberryCream]

Dear Anuj

That is brilliant news to hear how your fiancee has progressed. Think back to what you were first writing when I seem to recall she was not communicating at all or able to walk. Recovery is long and slow and further improvement could yet be achieved for her but how much I don't think even the medical professionals would be able or want to predict and on here we certainly cannot reassure you that it will be to a level that you are hoping for. She was clearly very seriously ill and like me it is likely that her brain and abilities have been to some degree damaged so that she will never entirely be the person she was before. That has been something extremely hard for me to accept and I have not found it easy when my friends and people who know me look at me on the outside, remind me of how so seriously ill I was, that I was not expected to survive, or awaken fully from the coma and if I did that I would be mentally and physically handicapped and are very keen to point out how well I look now! Well I may look good on the outside but cognitively, behaviourally, socially, and physically (abilities eg ongoing balance problems) I am far from the person I was before. Just because I have survived does not make me grateful and not struggle to accept who I am now and how I fit with life now. Most other people expect me to be my old self and that is an expectation I cannot achieve and therefore causes confusion, conflict, disappointment, feeling of failure, distress and upset and very much a sense of not fitting in this world anymore. I need people to accept me for who I am now and help me adjust our friendships/relationships to the here and now and not be expecting me to manage, respond or be who I used to be. Very few manage this and it has resulted in a lot of lost friendships as they get frustrated and disappointed with me and don't understand the brain injury that has caused my personality and reactions to change and be beyond my control. From reading all your posts over ?the past year I get the sense that just like my friends that you are very much struggling to accept your fiancee for who she is now regardless of how she was in the past or how she will be in the future. Like my friends your hope that she will fully recover is an expectation that will be emotionally impacting on your fiancee as your desparation to get your finacee back just as she was before is very apparent in your posts. You are hoping that someone will be able to tell you that all will be well and she will fully recover, and then that, will be totally true. Anuj I think you need to seek counselling for yourself to help you to work through your own distress, grieve for the loss of your 'old' fiancee and come to terms with the fact that the future for you and your fiancee is uncertain and is most probably not going to be as you had been planning it before - that said your love for your fiancee is very strong and you both have to find your way forward with life as it is now with an open mind as to how it may or may not improve depending on the hope of further recovery for your fiancee as sadly the clock cannot be turned back and what has happened has happened. As I have already said I speak as a sufferer whose greatest wish for myself too (and no doubt a personal agony that is experienced far greater than my friends wants) has been that I can get my own 'old' life back, has experienced the unrealistic expectation of myself and that others have had of me and the devastating sense that I am no longer acceptable as I am now.

Best wishes to you Anuj and your beloved fiancee.

[aujjaju in reply to StrawberryCream]

Thanks for your kind reply.

I get to learn new things from you.

I am desperate to help her to achieve her best recovery. I have accepted the fact and will stand for her for life. We have started our new relationship now as she can't remember much of old days and missing a 2-3 timeframe of life. We are trying to make it a fun time again. I feel bad when she cries as things will change slowly not suddenly but it is painful for her. She can remember new things for so long. Just walking is her issue. I'll accept her the way she is now and whatever recovery she'll achieve. I'll be her friend and carer of life.