I wore a watch since my 8th birthday until a few years after my brain injury when my skin and tolerance to skin irritation made me take it off. I figured I’d use TTC clocks (OK, hard to see after they upgraded to those screens), city clocks (where are they‽), or my Palm, later my…
Category: Health
Writings on health and nutrition, the health care system, doctors and therapists, heck, anything to do with health.
2023 Arrives, Optimism Stays
These almost three years have witnessed increased death; a virus sprouting disability; people rallying to protect each other; then falling apart like pins and SARSCoV2 the bowling ball. On one side are the back-to-normal-yay folks. The ones unused to chronic illness — which this pandemic is on the population level — demanding this illness be…
Hey Docs! Innovate Long COVID Care!!
qEEG and neurostimulation have improved the lives of people with brain injury. It’s time to study it for the treatment of people living with long COVID. While clinics and docs “innovate” medicine for Long COVID by bringing back 1980s’ methods for blood pressure instability*, I’ve been looking and asking around about 21st medicine. We’ve progressed…
Is Mental Work the Same as Exercise?
Increasing mental work while not decreasing physical exercise commensurately was a really bad idea after brain injury. This lesson no one taught me. NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month—is a month of writing every single day in November to create a 50,000-word novel. This writing community and event includes anyone, no matter your ability; it releases your…
‘I’m So Over It!’: Brain Injury Provides Insight Into COVID Fatigue
We feel stuck in COVID fatigue. That’s what they’re calling the feeling of being in the middle of a marathon with no end. That’s how brain injury feels, too. But with a difference. I’m stuck. We’re stuck. In COVID fatigue. The feeling of weariness, of being in the middle of a marathon that was supposed…
Fatigue: Does It Ever Go Away?
Does increasing functionality after brain injury mean no more fatigue? Fatigue is such an inadequate word to describe the unutterable weariness that comes on to a person with fibromyalgia or brain injury just because one got up in the morning. When someone who has a chronic illness or injury, particularly brain injury, fibromyalgia, or chronic…
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…
Pandemic Stages Are Like Brain Injury Stages
The longer this pandemic grinds on, the more similarities I see with how my brain injury recovery went. It’s so sad that physicians and rehabilitation haven’t innovated in the last two decades to change those stages. I wrote my latest post for Psychology Today on this topic, on how a concussion, or COVID-19, devastates us…