As I come out of the narrow, tortuous pass that is a life focused on treating brain injury and the subsequent PTSD, I’m faced with the big question: what are my priorities? The first time I said bye to focusing on treating my injured neurons, I hunted for the supports I needed to be functional.…
Category: Health
Writings on health and nutrition, the health care system, doctors and therapists, heck, anything to do with health.
Fatigue Meets Weather Equals . . .
Dry air. Deep cold that penetrates into the tiniest lung cells. Early mornings interrupting fractured sleep. Brain goes pfft, I’m not doing this, regulating the nose, the throat, the heart, and lungs. Let’s go back to bed. But bed wasn’t doing me good. I had to keep my head elevated to keep the drips out…
The Presbyopic Lens of the DSM Mutes this Patient with Brain Injury
The main character in my new novel has no voice. She’s not me, yet, too, I am muted, most recently, in the relationship with my neurodoc. It’s come to an impasse. He is clinging on with rigid ferocity to the DSM and, though he’s interested in the new ideas of neuroplasticity, he continues to adhere…
Adventures in Brain Injury: Training Vision in the Winter Light
Winter light is not the same as summer sunlight. You’d think after practicing walking — seeing, perceiving with both eyes and feet together, learning where I am in space — during strong and long summer sunlight hours, I’d have no trouble in the winter. Nope. It isn’t just the snow. The sunlight is sharp, throwing…
Eyes and Heart, Neurons and Brain Connecting Again
Last year, after eye surgery, my iPhone display looked enormous. These days, it looks teeny weeny. Amazing how adaptation changes perception. I no longer get dizzy moving my eyes across a wide screen. My brain is used to the sharper-looking text and more depth in the screen colours. My panoramic vision isn’t solid yet, but…
Proprioception Efficiency Improving after Eye Surgery
I’m back on the weekly brain training track: enhance gamma (39-42 Hz) brainwaves for three neurofeedback screens; inhibit 16-20 Hz and enhance SMR (12-15 Hz) brainwaves for the next three neurofeedback screens. The latter three are supposed to help me adapt to and keep my improved and more efficient vision, perception, and proprioception. Right after…
Miracles of Biofeedback
Something spectacular happened. And happened again. My heart rate dropped into the 70s and stayed in the 80s during brain biofeedback two weeks in a row. And my HRV (heart rate variability) hit 6. Six!!! Back in 2012, two was good news, and ten was the goal. So five years later, more than halfway there.…
A Whale of a Post
I wanted to see the Blue Whale heart at the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum), but I hadn’t been there in years, never mind in the year since my eye surgery. Navigating large indoor spaces with my new vision still makes my head spin. Yet I asked my CNIB orientation mobility trainer if he could take…
Week Three of New Brain Biofeedback Protocols
I arrived at my brain biofeedback appointment cold anger fusing into brittle ice over something I’d learnt about my treatment from another health care professional. It had taken a few hours to percolate into comprehension and explode sharp-eyed moral anger through my being. Looking at brain injury through the lens of the DSM, through the…