“Jeejeebhoy’s tale is highly emotional…uplifting, while giving a realistic view of recovery.”
Self-Publishing Review
Kind of unbelievable that it’s finally done! Today, good stuff happened. I got my first review of the revised edition from Self-Publishing Review in my inbox — and such a nice review too! They also created a book page for it on their website. Bonus! Then receiving the paperback and hard cover in the mail today ended this week on a real high of this is real!! It’s done. It’s over. And the cover looks way nicer in print than I expected. Kudos to Daniella Postavsky who designed it from a couple of my images (she also helped me with my PubLaunch campaign) and Kathryn Willms of Iguana Books who went above and beyond for me in getting the book published through IngramSpark. Woot! Now the hard part begins: waiting for people to read it and see what they say. I have already heard that the font is a readable size. Awesome!
Readability was very important to me, especially for readers with brain injury and North America’s aging demographic who need reading glasses. I structured it so that readers could read just the story or the Learnings sections or both, whichever suited them. The chapters are fairly short, and the book is divided into sections that mimic my brain injury journey and allow for short attention spans. I asked for a larger font and every section to start on a right-facing page so that visually it would be easy to find the start of a new section.
About the original version:
“very good book, good reading” on Goodreads
The revised version is better looking, well edited, has all new material — and I hope is great reading!
This is my story about brain injury. Scroll down or see the sidebar to pre-order!
A long time ago, I suffered a brain injury, a “closed head injury” as the diagnosing doctor called it. All that had happened was that my brain had smacked around inside my skull like Jell-O inside a corrugated, shark-tooth infested bowl. Upon my diagnosis, the first thing the doctor said to me was: “You must write a book on this! It’s a hidden epidemic, and you need to get the word out!” (quoted from the original Concussion Is Brain Injury)
Well, okay, then.
In the year 2000, I was in a car crash. I emerged walking and talking, but the person I’d been was forever gone. Although no one knew it at the time, I’d sustained a concussion. The repercussions of that injury have shaped my life ever since.
Many believe a concussion is a mild injury, when in truth it is a traumatic brain injury in which the brain bangs about inside the skull. If not identified or treated within the first 48 hours, the injury can lead to secondary symptoms (euphemistically named post-concussive syndrome) that require years of rehabilitation.
Traditional rehabilitation, involving cognitive therapy and rest, were ineffective. In addition to lost neurons, I was quickly losing my social connections and relationships. The concussion was threatening to cut me off from the world.
I wanted this hidden injury healed; I wanted the plethora of problems from it, especially the cognitive ones, treated. I wanted to return to society. And so began my long quest to find better treatment. In Concussion Is Brain Injury: Treating the Neurons and Me, I share my journey and discoveries to give hope to those who have suffered from concussions and the people who care for them.
Concussion Is Brain Injury spent many years in incubation, was supported generously through a PubLaunch campaign, and is happy to be re-birthed with a brand-new reader-friendly structure. The Treating the Neurons and Me edition tells my story in all its rawness and in separate sections outlines the lessons I learned, the treatments I underwent that dramatically healed — and keep healing — my damaged brain .If, like me, you have trouble reading, I’d recommend the ebook. Ebooks are much easier to read.
Goodreads.com for reviews and store links
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My main credential to write this book is as a person with a brain injury. But I also drew on my education and experience. I am trained in the scientific method and have experience in designing, conducting, analyzing, and writing up research papers. I began working in the research field when a teenager. I worked six summers at the University of Toronto in a nutrition lab, assisting in science, animal, and human subject experiments and learnt much about laboratory research methods. As part of my Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology at the University of Toronto, I studied physiology and neurophysiology, I did an original-research thesis on reducing inattention in a child with attention deficit disorder, and conducted a year-long study on food perception in various eating populations and wrote the Abstract. I was hired as a research officer for a government of Ontario task force on the strength and quality of my research work; I created and analyzed surveys as well as did investigative research. For Lifeliner, I conducted over sixty interviews, read the literature, and waded through a massive amount of medical data. I grew up in a medical household and spent many hours learning from my mother about good nursing care and the social value of volunteering and from my father about what makes for a good clinician-researcher. Doctors don’t intimidate me.
