I believed in reading strategies because I believed in my therapist—until I finally had to admit they were an illusion. I sat opposite my therapist, focusing effortfully on her lesson. She was teaching me how to read post-concussion using strategies: highlighters to highlight words I needed to remember; pens to write notes in the margins…
Category: Brain Power
Musings on what makes for a powerful brain. This category also includes the sub-category Brain Health, which covers all things related to brain injury.
Cognitive Empathy For Reading Loss After Brain Injury
Cognitive empathy lets you imagine a client’s experience, puts yourself in their shoes, and act accordingly. How you can use it to help restore reading post concussion. Dr. Brian Goldman, a Toronto ER doctor and host of White Coat Black Art on CBC Radio, was on CBC Radio’s Ontario Today at noon, Friday, May 4,…
Reading Loss: The Genesis of Grief, The Seed of PTSD
You don’t know the grief of brain injury until you hear a gentle, compassionate voice drop the devastating news that you can’t read while you’re holding your usual paperback. You never know how brain injury will play out over time. What you think at first is mild becomes worse and worse. Biochemical changes wreak hidden…
What’s In A Name? Me!
#BrainInjury obliterated the old me. I felt like my name wasn’t my name. I eventually felt like my name was my first and last only. But when I designed my self-help book’s cover in April, I found myself using my full name on it. And that felt right. Today, here too on my profile. Originally…
Two Books – Two Yays!
Early this morning, I received the beta reader comments on book one of my Resurrection Trilogy. And a few hours later I discussed my self-help book with my editor, the one who guided me through Lifeliner and my first novels and oversaw Concussion Is Brain Injury (both editions). The Interdimension Beta Read Katherine of Autocrit,…
Time for Another Book
April means Camp NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). This year, I’m trying it again because a self-help book for people with brain injury sprouted in my brain and demanded being written. I obeyed. I set my Camp goal as 25,000 words. I don’t usually manage to last the month, and I thought halving the November…
Where Is My Nose Running To?
Rhinitis running to drive me crazy! “vasomotor rhinitis seems to be an exaggeration of the normal nasal response to irritation, occurring at levels of exposure, which doesn’t bother most people.” Vasomotor Rhinitis, Asthma + Respiratory Foundation New Zealand Way, way back my GP told me my non-stop congested nose was traumatic rhinitis. The trauma of…
Roller Coaster Fatigue Management
It dawned on me today that managing my fatigue is like politicians managing the pandemic. They’ve created a roller coaster of lockdown, reopen, restrict, reopen; my fatigue has boxed me into a roller coaster of day-long couch time, add some cognitive activity, rest, add walking, restrict, add walking to cognitive, take a week off. You…
Learned Helplessness and the Medical Profession
This pandemic reminds me of learned helplessness. I wrote on it on Psychology Today, but I’m left to wonder why doctors exhibit it in response to #COVID19?