Light sensitivity was a challenge for Brian

Light sensitivity was a challenge for Brian

Brian:

When we were in Baghdad, we always had to wear eye protection. And ,so at night, you had to wear clear lenses; during the day, you had to wear sunglasses. Fine. I came home I didn't have to do that anymore and my eyes hurt all the time. I couldn't figure it out. I said I don't understand why I'm getting these headaches and my eyes just hurt.

The same neurologist was like your eyes were hurt. And I say, what do you mean? Your eyes: they're hurt. You're super light sensitive but you never noticed it because you never were exposed to so much light. Because while you were overseas, you had eye protection, but now your eyes are showing you that you've suffered this this injury that at some point repeated exposure does make it worse and worse and worse.

Then I came home to my sunglasses off and it was painful. I couldn't, I couldn't drive at night and it was weird. Figuring that out was really helpful, because then I figured out not only what was wrong but then it explained the headaches. I mean my head would just hurt and then obviously studying hurt, so that was hard. So then I'd go outside to relax and that hurt. So for my first semester, I was just in constant pain. I couldn't kind of figure out why until you know the doctor just walked me through what a TBI [traumatic brain injury] was and I said oh yeah I got that, I got that, I got that.