My last brain biofeedback session may've been a washout, but as I mentioned in my blog post, I achieved a huge milestone, one I had thought impossible: my HRV looks like a real one. HRV stands for heart rate variability. Basically, as you inhale, your heart rate rises, and as you exhale, your heart rate…
Category: Health
Writings on health and nutrition, the health care system, doctors and therapists, heck, anything to do with health.
Recounting the Original Story for the Umpteenth Time
I have told my story a gazillion times. Well, okay, maybe not a gazillion. But between insurance docs, my docs, vocational and functional assessments for the insurers, therapists, new recent docs, it sure seems like it’s been a gazillion. So you’d think by now it would be no big deal. I could go into some…
Sleep Study in the Raw: The Results
I got my results. They weren’t anything unexpected — for the most part. This was my fifth (I think … I’ve lost count) overnight sleep study, and the results of each have been pretty much the same. And the solution has been as well. I did this sleep study in the raw, that is, without…
Does a National Strategy on Mental Health Have Any Meaning in Canada?
The Mental Health Commission of Canada has released its National Strategy report. It took them five years to compile and write it. I understand that they had two Chairmen — the original one resigned. I’ve heard several interviews with the second Chairman, a physician, and the original Chairman, a Senator, and I caught a snippet…
Clinical Trial Woes
Sooo … I was in a clinical trial recently. It was, uh, interesting being on the other side of the guinea pig fence. The drug did more than expected. And then it was taken away! But I get ahead of myself. It was March 1 when this story began. I saw a new specialist and…
What is Good Standard of Health Care?
Standard of care. It’s a phrase that gets tossed around a lot. Let me tell you a story about what it should not be, especially for a person in a drug research trial. Before I begin, a note on my background. I grew up as the daughter of a clinician-researcher who is to this day,…
What Doctors Don’t Know: Brain Injury Equals Weight Gain
Weight loss. The entirety of North American society is grappling with weight loss. With diet. With exercise. With staying at a healthy weight. But believe it or not, people with brain injuries struggle even more than the typical North American. We struggle more because we may no longer be able to perceive that one’s stomach…
Support Gives Life
An elderly gent said to me: you look…you look alive! This gent has known me a long time, starting in what I call my hell years after I had suffered a closed head injury aka traumatic brain injury. Back then, I used to see him weekly, yet when I spotted him one time in a…
The Sleep Study
It’s me and the men. Fat men. Snoring men. Young men. And extremely picky men. That latter is a new one to me in my five (six?) sleep studies. Seriously, does this guy think a hospital is going to purchase his preferred kind of sheets just for him? It’s not like in the pre-bed bug…