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…
Category: Personal
Self-Help Book Launching Into Camp
Self-help book. I didn’t think I’d ever write one. I don’t feel qualified for one. Yeah, I’ve created a website to share knowledge about how to recognize, diagnose, and treat brain injury. It’s relatively easy (though super tiring, draining, exhausting) to research and put together facts, especially since I’ve essentially been doing that since 2005.…
Letter to Anglican Diocesan Bishop About Rev. Coren on Twitter
Dear The Right Reverend Susan Bell, I’m writing to you today about Rev. Michael Coren’s recent tweets about the reporter Travis Dhanraj and his response to me when I challenged him on it. I wouldn’t pursue it except that he represents Christianity and our church to the world and did, in effect, recognize his mistake…
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…
Breaking the Lore – A Five-Minute Book Review
The problem with genres is that they sometimes don’t work. A murder mystery isn’t a mystery when the murder is simply the inciting incident but doesn’t need much sleuthing to be solved when characters tell the Inspector fairly early on in the novel whodunnit and why. I was kind of expecting a twist to the…
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…
Twenty-Two Years Living with Brain Injury
Twenty-two years since my car crash. That’s long! People are finding twenty-two months of living with a health problem hard – COVID-19 – try a brain injury!
Pain Focus in Medicine
Because medical professionals focus on pain rather than healing its cause, patients learn to talk about pain in order to get help.
Low-Intensity Laser Therapy for COVID-19
Back in December 2019, during Christmas break, I developed an unusual pneumonia and turned to my low-intensity laser therapy unit to help me breathe. I’d been in close contact with someone whose wife had a pneumonia that was stumping doctors and who himself had a cough. The cough was easily attributable to a long-standing cause.…