Aspergers & TBI

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Who else here has a TBI on top of their ASD? What was your accident like? How many years out are you? What permanent symptoms do you contend with? Which elements of your ASD have worsened? Which elements (if any) have improved? Do you have any goals? Have you been able to straighten yourself out and get your life together? How do you go about coping with the agony?

I'm autistic and didn't speak until I was 4 years old. I got hit in the head twice when I was about 3 1/2 years old and had seizures for several months. My corpus callosum was structurally and functionally damaged and I have some subsidence of cerebellar and cerebral structures in the right hemisphere (due to structural compromise of the corpus callosum). The biggest permanent symptom is an almost complete split-brain condition, although there has been some neuroplastic tissue formation linking the two hemispheres across the vein of Galen. In a lot of ways it's like there are two identities in my head - there's a very cool YouTube video about that condition here: https://youtu.be/wfYbgdo8e-8 I had great difficulty using my left and right hands together to do things like put on a belt or button a shirt or tie shoelaces. My eyes track together now but my left-right visual processing is affected. I remember having meltdowns before the TBI but afterward my processing of physical and emotional feeling was impaired, so I didn't have meltdowns after that. My alexithymia is more profound due to the TBI. In terms of goals, I made it through school and college and did very well, although I didn't really plan that and I had a quite successful 40-year professional career in software and system design (with my name on a dozen patents). I'm not really sure what getting one's life together means - I drank too heavily for awhile and I've struggled with the autism, TBI and complex PTSD during my life. I was married twice and both times I got involved with women that I should not have been with. I've done very well academically and professionally but at this point don't have any close friends and not much family contact (just my younger sister). At times the immensity of what I've been through, including severe abuse as a child (which is how I got the TBI), has gotten overwhelming. But I've coped with it all through faith in God and through doing quite a bit of volunteer work as well as advocacy (including veganism/animal rights/anti-fur stuff). And animal rescue and fostering has been extremely helpful to me over the decades. Amazingly as I've gotten older I see how everything in my life (including things like severe illnesses and car and motorcycle accidents) has contributed to making me well-suited to being of help to others. It's been agonizing at times - still is sometimes - but I've found that sticking it out has given me deep rewards as well as a very unusual life. I'd be interested in hearing your experience of ASD plus TBI too.

I have ABI, don't know if that's the same thing or not.