Reading rehab continues. Because people were asleep at the switch when I hit the emotional wall with my impaired reading so that I could no longer read books on my own and because things went rather south with my neurodoc, he’s pulled out the stops and is reading with me most days. Brains really do support brains. When you have a brain injury, you can feel the alleviation of effort when doing a cognitive task with another as opposed to on your own. They not only support you emotionally when they’re encouraging and keeping you on task, but also their neurons are like scaffolds that hold up and activate your own.
This extends to the concept of conversation. Reading rehab can simply be reading and immediate recall, or it can include the give and flow of discussion. Discussion is the human way to express what’s in your mind, hear what’s in the other’s. It leads to clarity and understanding of the text, which straight reading and recall cannot do.
I noticed when reading Don’t Forgive Too Soon that the sections we didn’t discuss were much harder for me to remember later during weekly testing of my long-term recall. I also noticed that it was easier for me to remember those chapters I’d reread with my mother, again especially if we’d discussed them a bit. (I’m reading then rereading text to see if double reading within a relatively short period of time leads to better cognitive processing, remembering, learning. So far, I would say it does.)
But adding discussion was sort of ad hoc.
Just before the holidays, we began reading The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, which I’d read in my injured way many years ago. I remembered only the basics: Screwtape writes to his young relative about getting a human into Satan’s house. Something about the war. And something about the church. That was the sum total of my memory. Oh, and I enjoy Lewis’s writing.
So my neurodoc and I launched into it in the same way as we’d read Don’t Forgive Too Soon. I had no trouble with immediate recall. He also noted my abstract comprehension was improving. But he forgot to get me to do weekly long-term recall until I reminded him. That’s when I fell flat on my face. Although we’d been reading a couple of paragraphs daily, I couldn’t remember much of the concepts or the story, and we’d read only four short chapters! Not exactly a huge memory task. I also saw in my mind each chapter as a silo. I had no idea while we were reading how each chapter connected to the next, except that Uncle Screwtape was advising Wormwood on his latest issue and the human was a man converting to Christianity and was called “the patient.”
How to get me to see the big picture? How to help me build up the narrative in my mind and retain it so that not only could I see the progression of the story but also what Lewis was teaching?
We started over again at chapter one. We read a paragraph or two. I did a bit of immediate recall as usual. But my neurodoc quickly broke in to launch us into discussion. What was Lewis saying? What did I see? What was the theme that was developing? Sometimes I knew the biblical text being referred to and briefly recollected that. Then we discussed how that tied in.
Before we began reading chapter two, my neurodoc restated the theme of chapter one. When we examined the theme or issue in the first two paragraphs of chapter two, we discussed how they related to chapter one’s theme.
Suddenly I saw how chapter one flowed into chapter two. And I began to see the plot progression and the beginnings of the big picture. Phew!
So now at the end of each chapter, I say what I saw as its theme or issue. Then at the next reading session, before we begin reading the next chapter, I relate the themes and how each chapter flows one into the next starting with chapter one and ending with the chapter we’ve just finished. Needless to say, I have to remind my neurodoc that’s what we agreed on and to stick with the program. Sigh.
As we progress through the book, it’s getting harder and harder; yet this method is letting me see the characters, be aware of the plot not just vaguely the concepts, understand more and better what Lewis is saying.
I could not do this on my own. It takes too much effort to initiate; it’s a tremendous amount of cognitive work to do on one’s own; you need another to prompt you or encourage when memory or abstract processing fails; and the discussion part is key. You can’t really discuss something with yourself. I mean, you can, but it’s kind of limited and devoid of the benefits being a social animal gives us.
I need to add this book to my Goodreads so I can track my progress. Oops. (Having another human remind me would be awesome. Oh well.)
