The BIST Community Fair and Expressive Art Show was in a new venue. Off of Yonge near Brain Injury Society of Toronto’s offices. People found it easier than last year so the place was buzzing as they checked out all the resources like Sunnybrook Family Navigation, 211, Cota, Free Geeks, and of course BIST. Quite…
Category: Personal
Neurodoc Chronicles: Reading Rehab and Unheard Brain Injury Grief
I emailed my neurodoc a long time ago a tweet about what reading means to me. He’d repeatedly said my emails were important; he understood they were my way of communicating what I needed to talk about during our sessions. He printed, signed, filed it. And he wonders why he isn’t succeeding with me. A very…
Eyes Sharpening
It’s a gusty day, clouds billowing up on each other, stretching apart to reveal dark patches of blue sky and let the sunlight through. Once again this week, I’m standing on the sidewalk, against the wind, staring down down down the street, all the way to the third traffic light in the distance. Red red…
Figuring out Brain Injury Grief
I had to figure out how to bring my temperature down and stabilize my thermoregulation; I had to, have to continue, to figure out how to rehab my reading; I had to figure out how to persist in relearning skills, doing life in a new way long after bean counters in hospitals and insurance decided…
Running to Grief
Watching 1 Mile To You. High school boy, runner. Loses his entire team in a bus accident. Girlfriend and friend, too. Runs to remember them. The faster he runs, the more he sees them. Remembers them. He doesn’t want to forget them. His new coach asks: What do you want? Your heart. The most important…
Reading Rehab: Big Picture Begins to Return
Last Monday brought a surprise — in the neverending river of reading rehab, I connected the elements in a chart in the book I was reading with my mother to the succeeding paragraphs. I could see automatically how they connected. Maybe this uptick in reading cognition happened because this is my fifth time reading this…
Let Me Eat Cake
There are days when the only remedy is a slice of cake . . . maybe a whole cake. Well, OK, even in my lowest moments, I can’t eat that much! It’s March Break when students get a week or two off from the hard mental work of school. It’s predictable and reliable, that time…
Vision Update: Seeing Farther
Brief vision update here. I don’t want to jinx it, but for the last couple of weeks, my far-distance and panoramic vision seem to have stabilized. Does this mean my brain has stopped trying to shut down the firehose of new visual information that the surgery turned on? Does this mean it has ceded the…
Going to the CNIB, Talking Vision and Brain Injury
When the Executive Director (ED) of BIST invited me to attend a meeting with the CNIB, I said yes. But I had no idea what I was saying yes to, other than getting to talk about vision and brain injury. I also didn’t really pay attention to how many people I’d be talking to. So…