Clunky title. Kind of like the dull, monstrous bang of a car thundering into another car, stopping dead. Today is the 23rd anniversary of that sound times three. Twenty-third. That’s an unreal number. It seems absurd that I’d still be suffering from a brain injury, that the number of my years as an adult with…
Tag: Grief
Individual Climate Action
As an individual, climate action begins in the home. Some have no control over what they can do in their homes, but many of us do. I figured I was the former until my gas furnace began dying and a neighbour brought up the possibility of replacing it with a heat pump. Hmmm. Was that…
Cognitive Empathy For Reading Loss After Brain Injury
Cognitive empathy lets you imagine a client’s experience, puts yourself in their shoes, and act accordingly. How you can use it to help restore reading post concussion. Dr. Brian Goldman, a Toronto ER doctor and host of White Coat Black Art on CBC Radio, was on CBC Radio’s Ontario Today at noon, Friday, May 4,…
Reading Loss: The Genesis of Grief, The Seed of PTSD
You don’t know the grief of brain injury until you hear a gentle, compassionate voice drop the devastating news that you can’t read while you’re holding your usual paperback. You never know how brain injury will play out over time. What you think at first is mild becomes worse and worse. Biochemical changes wreak hidden…
Photography Practical Possibility
Almost a decade ago, I mused about taking my photography from art to practical. CafePress called to me. Use your images, design cool stuff, and make money. I set to work, creating things I’d designed for my family on my home printer: cards. I added calendars, travel mugs, T-shirts, and, of course, framed posters. Then…
Twentieth Crashiversary
Five and a half years after the car crash that took away myself, the only friend to reach in to me and who’s stuck with me until today, suggested I buy a point ‘n shoot camera. My brain injury had taken away my photography, and I could no longer use my Minolta Maxxum — “unintended…
Eighteen Years, Eleven Months, Three Weeks
flic.kr/p/2bcpboE When I first met a person who’d lived with brain injury for twenty years, it seemed so far into the future for me. I could barely comprehend living with brain injury that long. I expected to be fully recovered by that point, myself. Roll eyes here. I was working hard on improving my health,…
Reading Evaluation Results for Comprehension Issues After Concussion
I wrote last time about my reading evaluation. This post is on my results. When you have a brain injury and rehab tells you that you can’t read anymore, you assume that they’ve done a thorough assessment and analysis of your reading cognition. You’d assume wrong. Reaction In 2005, five years after I was told…
Two-Headed Monster of Brain Injury and PTSD
The weather gods jumped our temps from jacket cool to sweaty tank tops. Pretty soon, we’ll be seeing caterpillars munching on flower buds and leaves as this two-headed monster was on a milkweed flower last year. Brain injury and PTSD are like a two-headed monster sitting on your psyche, slowly munching on your sanity. When…