All of a sudden, my first week at Lindamood-Bell Australia was done! Never so happy as to hear “we’ll stop there” as time was up in my second hour Thursday night. Yet vying with the fatigue was this alertness, this up state that my neurodoc described as excitement, excitement at starting something new and at the possibility that finally at last my reading will return. It’s a strange feeling, two opposite states co-existing in one brain.
The fatigue comes from pushing damaged circuits in my brain to work. The excitement and alertness arise from the circuits I’ve felt being healed the last year or so through brain biofeedback at the ADD Centre, particularly after we began to inhibit 16-20 Hz at the PZ location.
And now I have a new thing to report progress on!
One thing to note here: the instructors (clinicians) and consultants work as a team. It reminds me of the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute where all the health professionals I worked with kept each other informed of my performance, their observations of me, and any issues that came up.
My Lindamood-Bell Double Bay, Australia consultant emailed me my first progress report (see image). I flew through steps one to three, which I blogged on on day one.
Sentence by Sentence Imaging is either the instructor or me reading one sentence from a one-paragraph story and then me describing the picture I see. The instructor will sometimes ask me questions about that picture, details like describe the man or what do the chicks in the box look like or how many people are on the field. When I have a stable picture in my head that through my description creates an image in the instructor’s head, we move on to the next sentence. At the end of the paragraph, I retell each picture I saw for each sentence in sequence. Only once or twice toward the end of the week, did I get details out of order or forgot something. Once I’ve given the “picture summary” for each sentence, I give a word summary based on my pictures — not the same as recalling the actual words in the story, something I can do easily in the short term. Then I give the main idea. A short sentence with three points, leaving out extraneous details but keeping in a key detail(s). Discerning what’s extraneous and what’s key is not always easy! I can get a bit verbose.
Sentence by Sentence Imaging with Higher Order Thinking introduces questions after I give the main idea. These HOT questions are designed to get me to reach conclusions, inferences, make predictions, think about the abstract aspects of what I’ve read.
Multiple Sentence Imaging with Higher Order Thinking is the same as Sentence by Sentence, except instead of reading one sentence at a time, I or they read two sentences at a time. Sometimes the reading finishes with one sentence to reach the end of the story.
The first stories I read in the first three days had concrete things and few details to picture. On Day Four, my consultant interrupted the first hour to have me read one paragraph because the team had noted I was doing well. I read the paragraph, as opposed to her reading it to me, because I find reading harder than them reading to me. So of course I had to do it the most difficult way! She wanted me to recall it using my natural method, ie, recalling the words themselves. I zipped through my recall. No problem-o. Summarized every part of the story. Then she began asking me questions about the images I created. Well, um, not too many. At first, I was able to easily answer, like when I described the restaurant patron. Then it became apparent that other elements, like the chef, I hadn’t created images for or partial ones, like a closeup of a couple of fries, not the plate or bowl or whatever they were of fries. When she asked me for a word summary based on my images, the summary didn’t reflect the story. She noted that the wealth of my background knowledge props up my reading, but I need to generate images from the story, be able to shift the images as I learn more as the story unfolds, and remember the images and story based on those images over time. I need to also not be so hard on myself. They don’t expect me to achieve 100 percent on the first take! Yeah, I know. Others have told me same. I have eased up on myself over the years . . . maybe.
Based on her quick assessment of my paragraph reading, she had the instructors increase the story difficulty by one level. And if there were three sentences left at the end of a Multiple Sentence story, I’d read all three instead of two and then one. And on day five, during the second hour, I was asked to choose the colour of the first square of felt used. Each square is a different colour, and they’re placed in my view prior to reading a sentence or multiple sentences to represent that sentence(s). I’m not sure of the significance of me choosing the colour of the first square (they chose them for the subsequent sentences), but it does introduce a node of decision making, not exactly my forte.
So to sum up the first week: I did steps one to three automatically and easily. Steps four, five, and six were the focus of the first week, and I reached proficiency up to level five and partial proficiency at level 6.
For next week’s goals, I will have push steps added to the core program of Sentence by Sentence and Multiple Sentences. A push step is exactly that — to push my brain. The expectation is that maybe I’ll achieve 40 percent, but the next week, I’ll have gotten up to 70 or so. The push step will be to introduce reading and imaging an entire paragraph at once. My consultant is not yet settled on whether to up the level to 12 for Sentence by Sentence and Multiple Sentences before moving on to Whole Paragraph Imaging with Higher Order Thinking or move to Whole Paragraph first and then up the level. She’s going to try one or the other with me next week. Either way, from Whole Paragraph on, we’ll go up to level >12. Also, it’ll be at least a couple of weeks before they’ll start working on acquiring new vocabulary and more abstract language and week four or five before introducing multiple paragraphs.
My next-step-on-this-brain-injury-journey-related tweets
https://twitter.com/ShireenJ/status/1016133386790952961
Day one with @LindamoodBell Australia was about familiarizing myself with the visualizing and verbalizing program to restore reading comprehension, kiboshed by my #braininjury. Interesting couple of hours! #concussion #ABI #TBI #reading https://t.co/ed6d2fUWnB
— Shireen Jeejeebhoy (@ShireenJ) July 10, 2018
You learn several concepts about reading comprehension in the first couple of online videoconferencing sessions with @LindamoodBell Australia. One of them is the "main idea," not easy to come up with. #braininjury #reading #concussion #ABI #TBI https://t.co/D1psWBdI8B
— Shireen Jeejeebhoy (@ShireenJ) July 10, 2018
Day three of @LindamoodBell Visualizing and Verbalizing program to restore my reading comprehension began fine. Within seconds, my brain wanted out. I promised it ice cream at the end. [post] #braininjury #concussion #readingrehab #reading #ABI #TBI https://t.co/G6aQKyFjul
— Shireen Jeejeebhoy (@ShireenJ) July 11, 2018
https://twitter.com/ShireenJ/status/1017031127440285696
https://twitter.com/ShireenJ/status/1017064967957368838
https://twitter.com/ShireenJ/status/1017106990651363341
Unsurprising when standard care treats them like only need strategies/rest to heal & don’t Dx fully. RT @picardonhealth: Canadians know little about the dangers of concussions, federal survey suggests https://t.co/Py2oAEO0GW via @Globe_Sports @OntarioBrain #TBI ht @realHayman
— Shireen Jeejeebhoy (@ShireenJ) July 13, 2018
It feels like the weekend because the sun and birds let me sleep in, aka past 6am. Also, my first week at @LindamoodBell is over! Can’t believe it went that quickly. I want to do absolutely nothing all day.
— Shireen Jeejeebhoy (@ShireenJ) July 13, 2018
