I’m recovering from eye surgery while still in my decades-long brain injury recovery. I have a CNIB orientation mobility trainer teaching me how to navigate the streets and TTC with my new vision. It’s harder than you’d think. The TTC is making it traumatic. I don’t exaggerate. Independence is fundamental to a purposeful existence, necessary…
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CCAC Support for Finishing Concussion Is Brain Injury Update
I met last month with the CCAC Clinical Director (I think that’s his title) and my new CCAC care co-ordinator, the one for Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) for the entire huge city of Toronto. I’m gonna get help! After my eye surgery, all my plans for updating my book Concussion Is Brain Injury flew out…
Returning to the Subway after Eye Surgery
After an extended Christmas-and-Cogmed break, I’m back to orientation mobility training with my CNIB guy and weekly practice stints with my Vision Mate. My eye surgeon saw me for the last time last week and explained I had to keep exercising my peripheral vision (seeing everything all at once) and eye tracking (moving eyes from…
Cogmed Rehab of Brain Injury Working Memory Over!
Cogmed is over. I’m both really glad and kind of sad, for it’s been five weeks of something different that also makes me feel like I’m regenerating my brain in real time, not the usual let’s wait a couple or more months or years (or decades with traditional rest and strategies) and see if this…
Seventeen Years with a Brain Injury
A Twitter of a crash anniversary blog post this year. Mocha in one hand, croissant flaking all over me, and iPhone in the other, for over an hour, I tweeted: 17 years. Creeping up to 20. Hard to believe this time 17 years ago, I had less than 3 hours to live without a #braininjury…
Cogmed to Train Working Memory — An Experiment to Help Post-Brain Injury Reading Rehab
I’ve begun Cogmed to train my working memory, that brief moment you hold something in memory in order to accomplish a task or store a piece of knowledge before you forget then scratch your head as you futilely try to remember what you were doing or reading. The folks at the ADD Centre had told…
Return to Reading the Novel
Reading. A. Novel. Except for the graphic wordless novel I read last Spring, I haven’t read a novel in 3 years. Yeah, that’s a shitload of time taken from me by changed and unknown identity; grief; loss; lack of consistent, continual professional help devoted to my reading; and lack of social support to encourage me…
Faith Healing, Brain Injury, Regenerating Eyesight, and Walking
I went to a faith healing a month ago. Yeah, I know, faith healing! Who believes in that charlatan practice, eh? Well, it was central to Christ’s ministry and to the early Christian church. But even back then, the elders warned of false prophets, the need to discern between those who genuinely give themselves to…
Happy Gamma Fights Brain Injury and PTSD
The substitute brain trainer I had last week meant I could persuade her to do extra gamma brainwave training. My next appointment wasn’t for a month, and I was looking for the de-stressing effect of gamma brainwaves. I had no idea the surprise gamma would give me! First surprise came right after: the stairs at…