How many of you here have had your rupture in your early twenties while studying in college or university? if you do, did you have trouble trying to learn things? and after the rupture did your university or school treat you right or did they disregard you as a nobody? i had my rupture at 21 while I was studying at university and after the rupture, I was completely paralyzed on my left. I reported back to my university that I wanted to withdraw my course because of my AVM to which they told me that i should walk to campus to file for my withdrawal despite having told them that I canāt walk because I was paralyzed. My university was very persistent in trying to make my fee withdrawal hard, they sent a representative to where i live to convince me to go back to my studies and they made the refund process of my tuition fees slow, it took me about a month before receiving them and even after I had gotten my fees back they still try to harass me by sending their representative to convince me to go back to my studies even though i clearly said no! Has this ever happened to anyone here? I also realized how much of a miserable person I was while studying, I was absolutely depressed with my university life because I never wanted to be there in the first place as it was expensive and far away but I nonetheless did because of peer pressure from an overbearing Asian father. After the rupture, I had realized that I had squandered the last three to four years of my life studying useless things for a piece of toilet paper called a bachelorās degree. I couldāve spent those three to four years at a practical school like a traineeship to better suit my learning needs or style and my AVM rupture only made it more apparent how much of my life is wasted at that university and I canāt get those years back and I have to live with hemiplegia because of it. I blame both my father and my university for my current disability because being forced to go to university made me extremely depressed and that caused me to go for a run at the park to rid myself of that depression and that run eventually caused my AVM to rupture. I now have to spend money on my therapies and most of my friends have moved on with their lives while iām still stuck at home as crippled besides that i still struggle to make money working from home investing in stocks and trading currencies for a living to make ends meet. This year in 2023 my mother is turning 60, and she has to take care of my disability while my idiot of a father doesnāt give a toss about me. He thinks because he financed my studies he can make me do what he wants even though i told him that i did not want to go to university but instead go to a practical college. Now my dad looks down on me and blames me for my current predicament when in fact this is all avoidable if he had listened to me and let me study in a practical college i would have gotten a job by now and wouldnāt become depressed and go for a run that causes my AVM to rupture and I donāt have to become a burden to my mother. Does anybody here experience what Iām experiencing now? How do you get through every day? I feel like things are never going in my favor. I hated my father every single day and i wish it was him who has this disability especially because he is overweight and never takes care of his own health. My dad is a fat selfish pig.
Hi Sam
I am so sorry of what you have gone through and are going through!
I am lucky in the sense that my supervisor for my PhD has known me since masters, and I was up front with them about it from the start.
But in terms of hating feeling disabled and stuck at home - god do I get where you are coming from! It is the worst! My AVM started in 2020, and after I was fired from my job I was essentially stuck at home. After my first embolisation the CRPS in my foot flared up so badly I am now practically housebound.
About the only thing which has kept me going is strangely online gaming with others (villagers and heroes if you are interested). This has given me a space where I am ānotā disabled, and can interact with others who just see me as me, rather than as someone who is housebound and in constant pain.
I am so sorry about how your father is acting, it is really rough and doesnāt help you at all. I know it isnāt much, but you have at least one person rooting for you (me), whatever path you take in life!
Sorry to hear Sam, certainly sounds like a challenging situation, and Iām not sure I can offer much advice. I often wonder if people act uncaring because they fear caring and emotion is a sign of weakness? The secret in those cases is to have people realize that caring, emotion and vulnerability is a strength, which it really is! I wish I had some advice on how to make that happen! Take Care, John.
Hi Sam, Your schooling was not a waste even if you donāt follow that career path. Your fatherās not to blame for your decisions (which were pretty darn good-- going for a run.)
I was in law school and it took me a full year extra to graduate because of the AVM/seizures. Thereās probably someone at your university that will be more accommodating.
At some point youāll have to process your anger and feelings for your father. Donāt worry, thereās no rush. But youāll probably have to do therapy for that.
As far as the woulda-shoulda-coulda analysis youāre stuck in, that wonāt help you reach your goals or attain a good quality of life. Just get out of that rut immediately.
You really are a good person and financial independence is a worthy dream-- donāt give that up. Your pain, both physical and emotional, are normal-- just keep posting here.
Weāre here for you and want to help. Donāt push yourself too fast or punish yourself. Iām wishing you the best. Greg
Hey Sam,
An overbearing parent? Hmmm, I know what thatās like. I cut all ties and moved to another part of the country, but he still tried to have an influence. Eventually, I moved to another country altogether. 20 years later he came for a visit, only to try and continue on where he left off all those years ago. Well, I wasnāt playing those games anymore and reminded him of his own attitude. He didnāt like that, tried to blame everybody else for his past behaviour/attitude. What I have found is that that thing, āBlameā, is a waste of energy. We can keep looking backwards at the past, but in doing so we often lose sight of the opportunities right in front of us. We canāt change the past, itās been, itās gone. All we can really do is live for the āNowā and move on. I had to let that angst go and concentrate on āMeā. Your AVM was already there when you went for that run, you could have been sitting down, watching TV on some idle Tuesday, then stood up and POP, with no one to blame. But it happened. Now where do you go from here?
I was progressing with my studies when my brain āfartā occurred, and my entire world stopped. Everything was put on-hold and I had to re-assess my life as I knew it. That was ugly. I had plans, I had goals and was meeting my milestones along the way in reaching those goals and that all evaporated. Now what? Some friends moved on with life, whilst I seemed to stagnate. Some friends seemed to just vanish. My life had changed and so did my circle of friends.
Itās our individual experiences through life that make us who we are. Pieces of paper can be nice to hang on the wall, but itās the experiences on the journey that educate us about life. Donāt be looking at it all in a negative light. Every now and again life throws us a curveball and sometimes that ball hits us right between the eyes (no pun intended) but that word āsquanderedā is a negative and I had to turn it into a positive. We have all had some fairly unique experiences on this neuro journey, which (luckily) not everybody goes through. When I was confronted with it all, OMG, it rocked my world and I felt very much alone. In the past I would have used that is a huge negative and gone down the negative path of what I call the āPoor meāsā or I could use my experiences, both good and bad, to assist others on this god damn awful journey.
As Iām often saying to others, none of us are here, in this predicament by choice, but here we are. I had to find a positive in it all. I started out volunteering with an organisation working with people with disabilities, using my negative experiences as a positive. There are lots of people within the āneuro worldā with all of the qualifications known to man. But those qualifications donāt give you that āFirst handā experience of living it. You canāt get that sort of knowledge from a book. I started using my experiences to assist people with disabilities to live independently in the community. Supporting and teaching them how to shop, cook, clean, budget, pay bills etc etc. I was using my negative experience as a positive, to help others.
Then in 2013 I ended up needing 3 more neurosurgeries and although āthe scans all look goodā, the result has left me with some difficult symptoms/side effects/impairments to manage around. The easiest approach is just to give up, but one thing I learnt from my clients was about resilience. They didnāt give up. They tried again and again, some of them were in a much worse situation than me, but they didnāt give up. I learnt I needed to make adjustments to manage around what I could do and not focus on what I couldnāt. I may make that sound like a simple process. It is not simple. But there is light at the end of the tunnel.
We know this because weāve lived it too. So come talk to us.
Merl from the Modsupport Team
Hi Sam, I think I may owe you an apology for: 1. sounding judgmental 2. giving unsolicited advice and 3. talking in a familiar way without knowing you.
So Iāll try to just talk about my journey. Iām not a therapist but Iām willing to bet when weāre young and ambitious and have a big trauma, ādad issuesā occur. There were times when I wanted to be like my dad and others when I wanted to be the exact opposite.
That caused me to be angry and even hurtful. In retrospect Iām very sorry for that. He was traumatized also in a different way and I never realized that.
Like Merl, a terrific moderator, said, I had to adjust and give up part of me. To the point where I didnāt feel good about myself or trying to get a date,. etc.
Itās taken decades of hard work and horrendous mistakes to get some perspective and optimism/hope. (Iām saying all this so it doesnāt take you decades and Iām trying to do it in a way that isnāt unsolicited advice.)
When I look back, you know what, that extra year of my life that it took to graduate law school doesnāt matter a hill of beans. I mean it! All the shame/weakness I felt-- unnecessary, a true waste of time and energy.
That emotional/physical energy could have been directed in a meaningful/generous way like the moderator I mentioned did. (Heād probably deny it.) I blew it! I was only centered on myself.
Hopefully this time Iāve succeeded in not sounding judgmental or like someone with wisdom. Iām an emotional klutz. Weāre here for you brother. Greg
@GregF all of this post is great but this part is exactly my motivation in saying the things I do on here: hopefully our learning from experience can short cut things for others.
@Sam2307 none of us knows what motivates your dad and I didnāt say anything the other day for exactly that fact: I donāt know him in the slightest: but a factor that will probably be part of his motivation to push you into things like university will be that he knows how tough his life has been and he is convinced that a way out of the ātrapā is education. So thatās probably why heās been pushing you that way. Now, we can all see that even if the motivation is great, the execution of it can be poor, so it definitely sounds like his approach has been pretty bad. But donāt read into that that he doesnāt care for you. Itās quite possible that it is completely the opposite, heās just not good at showing you or explaining himself (or has forgotten his motivation because of how difficult his life is).
I donāt think it matters what your dad thinks. The important thing is to find a way forwards for yourself. This will take time. The way forward feels blocked or impossibly difficult at the moment: we all recognise that. Over time, youāll feel different and youāll be able to see a way forwards. It wonāt be the route your dad wanted and it wonāt be the route you used to want but it will open up and all of your experience to date will help you make your way.
What Greg and I want to help you with is being a bit more optimistic about finding a way forwards, which could take less time than getting very depressed about it. It is going to take longer than youād like but try to be positive about the future and I think it will take less time than letting the situation with your dad or with college swallow you up.
Very best wishes,
Richard
Iām planning to cut ties with him once I can walk normally and just make enough money on my own
You donāt need to apologize, you were just giving some insight about your experience and how it can relate to mine and yes I agree with what you say. Iām now focusing on other matters that help me distract from my current frustration of being disabled. I started attending online courses from udemy and start financial investing as means of substituting the lack of income after my rupture. I now just give my dad the cold shoulder. Iām starting to find a bit of joy in doing these things like learning something online