Heard on Q: first-born girls are the most ambitious and most likely to succeed. Bwahahahaha! Ahem. #braininjury — ShireenJ (@ShireenJ) May 5, 2014 Brain injury takes so much from us or from clients and loved ones. On May 5th, I was listening to the radio show Q on CBC Radio 1 when Jian Ghomeshi, the…
Tag: Brain injury
Getting More Organized in my Speech
I spoke to Dr. Lynda Thompson on the phone last week. I hadn’t spoken to her since March. She noticed a big change in me: I was organized. That puzzled me. You get so used to being the way you are — and especially when people keep telling you you’re articulate and neglect to tell…
Touch Taboo in Therapy
This week’s reading for my ten minutes of tDCS during brain biofeedback came from my website. I decided I wanted to refresh my memory on the hypothalamus. But instead of reading Wikipedia, why not read what I’d written back in 2010 with the benefit of my trainer reading along with me, and so I could…
C4 Assessment Week and Ah-Ha Moments
Assessment week. Instead of doing a standard 30-second assessment at the start of the biofeedback portion of my session, I did three minutes like during gamma training. However, unlike the gamma training assessment, where I just sat there while the computer recorded my brainwaves and my trainer went off to work on paperwork, she stayed…
Good Heart!
Holy — — my starting heart rate during neurofeedback was 95. Not ending rate, not achieved after writing in SMIRB, not after reading, but right at the very start in the 30-second assessment screen. It stayed in the 90s during HRV then crawled up into the 100s during the biofeedback screens then dropped back to…
Laughter is Good Medicine but not Mid-Training
You know when you get a fit of the giggles and can’t stop laughing and how awkward that is? Well, imagine that when trying to move a virtual bowling ball down its virtual lane . . . Or worse flying a biplane with brainwaves that don’t want to co-operate so that the electric guitar in…
After Four Years, My CCAC Therapist is Leaving
My therapist is leaving. I have no idea what I’m feeling because when my emotions tried to rise and connect with my conscious mind — with the me I’m aware of — click, off they switched. Just gone. I thought I would take about 12 hours to process what she was telling me, what I…
Brain Injury Friendly Way to Socialize: My Article in March 2014 OBIA Review
Because of my Twitter activities and launching #ABIchat last year, the Communications and Program Assistant at OBIA, the Ontario Brain Injury Association, contacted me about writing an article on social media for their magazine OBIA Review. It’s rather nice to be invited out of the blue to write something, and so I did. Back in…
Reconnecting with Old Knowledge While Under tDCS
As part of my psychology degree I studied neurophysiology and physiology, not knowing I was studying for the needs of my future self. But that was a long time ago. How much could I remember now? Even if I hadn’t been injured and had my photographic memory intact, how much could I have been able…