Tag: Health

Health

Concussion Recovery is a Series of What are my Priorities?

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Slide of graphic of man looking into his head. From Healing the Brain conference.

As I come out of the narrow, tortuous pass that is a life focused on treating brain injury and the subsequent PTSD, I’m faced with the big question: what are my priorities?

The first time I said bye to focusing on treating my injured neurons, I hunted for the supports I needed to be functional. That was my priority then.

“T1: To me “treating the whole person” is about discussing how care plans fit into the patient’s life and GOALS vs. the patient figuring that out later in a vacuum. #patientchat”
http://twitter.com/btrfly12/status/956952160234868741

As I begin writing this, I’m also scrolling through Twitter #patientchat; one person tweets that it would be nice if the physician discussed how care fits into the patient’s life and goals.

It would be!

Up until 2013, for me, my life goal was getting back to my life. Oh, I knew I was writing differently, I probably couldn’t return to computer programming, and writing was the only thing I could realistically do with my fatigue and propensity to suddenly not be able to work for long stretches. But somewhere in me, I believed I could return to “normal.” Return to working several hours a day. Return to normal socializing. Return to earning an income. Return to never having to attend another fucking health care appointment.

Then life and PTSD gave me a rude wakeup call. I had to refocus on health care appointments and also religiously treat my injured neurons at home just so that I could get through the day. That went on for years until a confluence of treatments in 2017 finally slayed the chaos in my brain. Ruminations like a hamster in a steroidal wheel slowed then almost faded away.

I resisted then finally acquiesced to the knowledge that my PTSD was not going to be treated in any curative way (some day I’ll write about why people with complex PTSD aren’t getting better and life is a daily struggle to keep functional and nights a nightly hell of tossing sleep). Then this past Christmas, I tired of treating my brain injury too.

I quit.

Yeah, okay, I’m still attending my brain biofeedback and I continue reading rehab with my neurodoc and I use my home devices just enough to keep pain of every kind at bay and my body ticking along as best it can. But I’m not doing any homework. I’m not thinking anymore about how to work on this part of my injury or that part. Any thoughts on brain injury and treatments are to keep my book blog pages updated. And I’m not working at all on treating my PTSD. It is what it is.

I want to get back to normal life, what I now define as: a day not consumed by health care.

But what do I want to do? Write novels for myself. (No one is buying them and I’m not made of money to spend on taking them to the final published book form so once I write the first draft, what’s the point of revising and editing.) Philosophy of Mind requires me to read. A lot. And really hard stuff. Well, that’s not going to happen. I didn’t get the professional help when it would have made a difference. (Health care professionals are so focused on what they do and what the average is for this function or that that they miss the rare opportunities to radically help their clients.) On the other hand I learnt of the video courses on the Great Courses Plus app, which I’m wending my way through very very slowly. I enjoy photography but can’t seem to dedicate time to it and haven’t been able to in years. I can design and create websites, though it’s on/off, sucks me dry of any energy, and oftentimes feels like there’s a thick concrete wall between me and understanding the back end of a website where all the coding takes place. I can help people with brain injury, like I did last November with NaNoWriMo and like I’m trying to do with Concussion Is Brain Injury, as long as I have energy and don’t have to do it for longer than a month at a time. There are other things I’d like to do. Cooking would also be nice; to make myself yummy nutritious meals without the energy suckage would be awesome.

I return to the question: what are my priorities? I don’t know.

Brain Biofeedback

The Presbyopic Lens of the DSM Mutes this Patient with Brain Injury

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Love BotThe main character in my new novel has no voice. She’s not me, yet, too, I am muted, most recently, in the relationship with my neurodoc. It’s come to an impasse. He is clinging on with rigid ferocity to the DSM and, though he’s interested in the new ideas of neuroplasticity, he continues to adhere to the familiar-to-him chemical model of the brain, while I demand that he sees my injury as an injury, meaning my issues come out of physiological damage and as the neurons heal, what he calls moods and traits will and do suddenly disappear or flip, something the DSM and chemical models don’t account for.

He’s not alone.

Psychiatry has devolved into prescribing chemicals. Take this and see me in six weeks. If one chemical formula doesn’t work, try another or add another. In the brittle brains of medical specialists, the brain has become a chemical bath that can be manipulated by ingesting or injecting the right solid or liquid chemistry. Forward thinkers aka health policy experts and bureaucratic innovators further maneuvere psychiatrists out of that old fussy model of talking and into dispensing increasingly sophisticated variations of the same type of chemicals. Community-minded forward thinkers look to generics as being exactly the same as brand names: cures for cheaper, thus more responsible to the community, except psychiatric medicines don’t cure. They just mask and symptom manage.

Accordingly, brain injury medical specialists and mental health forward thinkers have evolved treatment beyond the intimate therapeutic alliance between physician and patient to infrequent expert consults and time-limited overview, never mind that a therapeutic alliance is the best buttress against “noncompliance.” When you’re heard and you feel cared for and you’re connected to your physician, especially your psychiatrist, you’re more likely to have your concerns heard, to be given therapy and medicine that’s better suited to your needs, and thus to comply.

But in the forward thinking brittleness of evidence-based modern psychiatry, relationships are obsolete. (That reflects our society; and we wonder why North America is in turmoil.) A relationship that respects and hears the patient, that values their insight and uses it to diagnose and treat, that works with non-medical health professionals, seems to be an anomaly. Add in the lifelong demands of brain injury that’s not static over time, where communication is challenging yet the only type acceptable by the brittle progressive psychiatrists is verbal, and you have an impasse when a patient like me objects to being unheard, devalued, and sexist and culturally stereotyped through the presbyopic lens of the DSM.

If I’d had oodles of money, back in 2009, I would have sought out a psychologist familiar with brain injury. I had been told back in 2001 — and discovered for myself — that you really need a mental health professional who knows and understands brain injury in order to receive good, effective, and understanding therapy to manage the injury and its social, psychological, and economic consequences.

I would now add: needs to be someone who is willing to learn and adopt the neuroplastic model of the brain, to learn how brain injury affects women worse than men, and how gender inequality affects their social and economic lives as well as taking into account cultural differences.

Progressive men who feel proud of how they empower women and grant them equality don’t react too well to women who’ve known all their lives that they’re equal under God and don’t need to be granted it by a man, who come in expecting to have a say in their diagnosis and therapy, even when unable to communicate in the traditional way.

Unfortunately I didn’t have money flowing out of my coffers to afford a psychologist. In Ontario’s version of Canadian universal health care, the government funds only psychiatrists. And so that’s who I had to look for. The University of Toronto has hundreds, almost a thousand, psychiatrists affiliated with their Faculty of Medicine. Of those a handful work in neuropsychiatry, maybe a few understand brain injury, and hardly any work with people with brain injury in the way they need: weekly talk therapy using a team approach with health care professionals who actively treat the broken neurons. The psychiatrist ought to provide the emotional therapy and the others the physiological treatments. Some psychiatrists are joining their psychology colleagues in moving from the DSM and chemical bath model to the neuroplastic model of actually permanently healing broken people. Some so that they can work better as a member of a team; some so that they can actually treat their patients both emotionally and physiologically. I don’t know who would pay when a psychiatrist uses brain biofeedback, for example, as part of their therapy sessions. Our forward thinking bureaucrats and politicians probably ensure it isn’t taxpayer-paid health care. And I don’t think many or any of these psychiatrists are focusing on people with brain injury.

But I bet you no one is approaching reading rehab in the way my neurodoc and I are doing it (even though I became so exhausted emotionally from begging and begging for help that when he finally assented, I could no longer do the work on my own and I’ve become mute in asking for the fullness of what I need). So somehow, though he shot our therapeutic alliance to hell with his rigid clawed grip on the inappropriate-for-brain-injury DSM, he’s committed to going out of his way to help me with regaining my reading. I think that’s a metaphor for my post-brain injury life: every heavily fought-for improvement has come at a price.

Brain Power

Adventures in Brain Injury: Training Vision in the Winter Light

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Winter sunlight on the waterWinter light is not the same as summer sunlight. You’d think after practicing walking — seeing, perceiving with both eyes and feet together, learning where I am in space — during strong and long summer sunlight hours, I’d have no trouble in the winter. Nope.

It isn’t just the snow.

The sunlight is sharp, throwing long rays through polarized sunglasses. Bare trees cast patterns of shadow and blazing light in a repeating rhythm as you walk. No matter the hour, the low sun sends photons into your eyes instead of down to the top of your head. And white, gleaming snow reflects it back up.

My brain remembers how my scarred eye used to shut and, in its diabolical plan to return my vision to what it was used to, tries to convince my eye it still doesn’t like the light. I have to fight to perceive that its light tolerance has improved, except when looking extremely sideways to the left. Even when back indoors, my brain is like, hey, it didn’t like the light so let’s shut it against inside light too! Grrr. It doesn’t help my good eye is sensitive to the light as well. (Yes, before my brain injury and eye surgery, I’d walk familiar routes with eyes shut on bright winter days.)

My CNIB guy suggested I get the sunglasses with the top and side panels. That way sun rays can’t sneak around the frame edges. Old people glasses, I think. But then he’s way younger than me and his pair not only has the panels but also sit over his glasses. Then I noticed the baby boomer generation growing older means seeing others my age wearing them too and looking not old, looking chic. But where do you get them?

Brain Biofeedback

Eyes and Heart, Neurons and Brain Connecting Again

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Last year, after eye surgery, my iPhone display looked enormous. These days, it looks teeny weeny. Amazing how adaptation changes perception. I no longer get dizzy moving my eyes across a wide screen. My brain is used to the sharper-looking text and more depth in the screen colours. My panoramic vision isn’t solid yet, but I’m used to seeing my iPhone display left to right, top to bottom, in one go. No more bits missing like before the eye surgery.

I still very occasionally get double vision, partly because my brain is still fighting to return to my pre-surgery default and discard the new binocular information. But brain biofeedback at PZ (top middle back) to inhibit 16-20 Hz, the thinking brainwaves, seems to be helping me win that fight.

(They call the excessive 16-20 Hz “high-beta spindling.”)

Slowly, panoramic vision outside on the streets and in parks is solidifying – one marker of that is being able to cross side streets without having to consciously narrate every step like I have had to since the eye surgery. Now after brain training I can see the traffic on both peripheries of my vision and process it in real time.

My proprioception is improving again; I’m able to distinguish myself in space with full up-down side-to-side awareness, which means I’m not returning to my old default with bits missing in that awareness. (I’ve just realized I don’t keep bumping into door jambs like I used to!) The first week of November I was able to discern the bottom step of the TTC stairs from the landing peripherally (and for the second week through my feet too) while looking ahead at a fixed point and walking down slowly and carefully.

This is huge!

Being able to go down the visually inaccessible steps on the TTC is a lot safer when one can see the low contrasts and feel the differences. It’s a lot of work and fatiguing trying to navigate the bloody TTC when not able-bodied, able-eyed, able-brained. Have I mentioned I hate it?!

Let’s think about more positive things — like my heart! This week was another in a series of OM Effing G!! Did you seeeee that?!!! As I mentioned before, the goal back in 2012 was to raise my HRV (the measure of how well my heart syncs with breathing) from the basement to a modest 10 and to lower my heart rate from freaky 130 to double digits. Also, to get rid of the scary-ass rises to 170 and drops to 30-50 beats per minute. It’s been a slow slog. Low-intensity light therapy (concussion protocol) where the lights are over my cerebellum definitely began to move things along in the right direction. But now–

My low frequency HRV got to 8.57!!!!!

CZ LF Numbers during HRV and Gamma Training

8.57 uV for low frequency heart rate variability (HRV) during HRV training — basically deep breathing — is stupendous enough but to get 8.24 during gamma brainwave training and again have LF higher than sympathetic nervous system activity (VLF) is WOW!!

PZ LF Numbers

LF wasn’t as high during PZ training to inhibit 16-20 but look at that — 5.36 during the first neurofeedback screen! Sweet.

Reducing my 16-20 Hz brainwaves is not only cementing my improved vision, it’s also been working on my trauma-related round-and-round thoughts that whirl up grief, distress, hurt into an ever-intensifying tornado. I didn’t mention the emotion effects to anyone because we were focused on my vision and I wasn’t sure if it was for real, but recently I’ve become sure. My thoughts drop out of the whirling and into clear thinking. Clear thinking is the antithesis of trauma and flashbacks. Clear thinking settles emotions. Relief. Even if it’s only for a few hours or days.

But how is reducing high-beta spindling helping my HRV too?

I came across an article that said the cerebellum is involved in emotional control. We already know it’s tied into the heart via control of the autonomic nervous system. Soooo, using logic — if the cerebellum is involved in emotions and so is the area around PZ, then they must network. And then flow from the emotional control part of the cerebellum into the heart control. Brain injury and healing of injury is like exploring the brain.

Brain Biofeedback

Proprioception Efficiency Improving after Eye Surgery

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I’m back on the weekly brain training track: enhance gamma (39-42 Hz) brainwaves for three neurofeedback screens; inhibit 16-20 Hz and enhance SMR (12-15 Hz) brainwaves for the next three neurofeedback screens. The latter three are supposed to help me adapt to and keep my improved and more efficient vision, perception, and proprioception.

Right after this week’s training, I got a taste of the latter.

I normally go down most TTC steps slowly and carefully. It’s easier and quicker to walk down their stairs when my eyes are on the steps in front of me instead of looking ahead. But with that method, I only see the steps. I don’t see people coming at me or signage or anything else. So I make myself look ahead. Gotta see what’s around you! The problem is the last few steps. For whatever reason, they give my feet the willies. I slow down and stop on them, look down, then continue to the landing. The step I stop on has been improving from two or three steps before the landing or the second step before to the last step before. This week (for the first time?) I felt distinctly the difference between the texture of the step and the texture and flatness of the landing. Yeah, I’m wearing shoes, but I could feel a difference in the hardness and how the landing had a bit of a dip from where many feet had worn down the terrazzo. Being able to feel the difference made it easier to know where I was and give my feet confidence to keep stepping down until I touched down on the landing. I didn’t have to look down to check (though I did from habit, except the last time — sweet). Since this is all at the conscious level and not yet automated, I do it slowly, slowly. As my brain learns and stops trying to return my vision back to what it was used to (so annoying), it’ll become automated gradually and I’ll be able to speed up and do it automatically like I used to before my eye surgery.

The TTC uses an enormous variety of tiles for its steps. Most of them have low contrast. My fave is when they replace a light tile with a dark grey one — makes it grab my eyes, scream look at me, look at me, as if walking down and up TTC steps wasn’t hard enough. Just another wonderful example of the TTC’s systemic discrimination against those with visual or cognitive impairments. I guess we’re not supposed to use public transit.

Anyway, getting a taste of my increasingly efficient proprioception was way cool.

Brain Biofeedback

Miracles of Biofeedback

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Something spectacular happened. And happened again. My heart rate dropped into the 70s and stayed in the 80s during brain biofeedback two weeks in a row. And my HRV (heart rate variability) hit 6. Six!!! Back in 2012, two was good news, and ten was the goal. So five years later, more than halfway there. (By the way, athletes have HRVs of 60 or something silly high like that. But even old people are higher than me.)

My EMG (muscle tension) was also below 2.0 uV for most of the training for the first time in months. I’ve been a bit stressed, and it’s shown up in my jaw muscles. But turns out getting Invisalign to straighten teeth banging painfully into each other has the rather nice side effect of relaxing jaw tension. (You’d think going into debt for my teeth in our universal health care system we enjoy here in delist-as-much-as-we-can-so-we-can-employ-more-hospital-admin-Ontario would counter the relaxation.) Was that also why my heart rate went down? Apparently, I have a narrow airway so maybe when these things are in my mouth, I get more oxygen. Or maybe not.

Maybe it’s doing more to ease my lower back or maybe it’s taking a new anti-inflammatory for joint and muscle pain after exercise. It contains devils claw (what a name), ginger, chokeberry, Angelica gingas, turmeric, and green tea. Apparently, Angelica gigas (dang gui) has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for circulatory health. Was there enough in my not-quite-daily intake to strengthen my heart and improve brain control of HRV??? There’s no doubt my brain is improving rapidly again; that means more resources to control autonomic functions like the heart. I still get short of breath though, so I gotta be careful not to push the limits just because I’m thinking clearer, am more alert, am improving control over my emotions — the latter only as long as I use SMR/Beta L13.5/R18 Hz audiovisual entrainment most days. And most of all, the chaos in my head really is GONE!!!

I really think that the three sessions of gamma enhancement and three sessions of SMR enhancement and two of 16-20 Hz inhibition, along with the concussion protocol of the low-intensity light therapy that kickstarted the heart improvement is most responsible and the effects are beginning to show.

Topping the amazing heart news is the miracle that happened last week during my first gamma enhancement neurofeedback screen of my brain biofeedback session. For one minute and thirty-six seconds, I was in the zone. In what psychologists call “flow” and what brain injury took from me. That sweet feeling of being so deep into a book or work that the outside world disappears and your mind and brain hum along in harmony. I was oblivious to my brain trainer’s noisy typing as I followed the virtual triplane in its swoops around its virtual mountain island. My delta-theta brainwaves that always show my brief (or lengthy) distraction as she’ll suddenly bang a key or mouse hard, stayed down and didn’t spike until at one minute and thirty-six seconds, I heard her typing like some sort of loud office cacophony. (Part of the training as you progress is to try and distract you so that your brain will work harder and you’ll learn to focus in a distracting environment.)

We both went WOW!!!

Flow IS possible for me. Disappearing into a book again IS possible for me. Sweet mother, I could weep. But am too stunned and unable to process this unreal progress. Will it happen this week?

Books

Manuscript for Concussion Is Brain Injury II Submitted to Editor

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I made my deadline! I submitted my manuscript for Concussion Is Brain Injury update to my editor. She’s now doing a developmental/structural edit — looking at the big picture, content, storytelling. Grammar and spelling edits come in the final copyediting round in June/July.

The last week to meet my deadline was deadly. I’ve not worked so many hours since my brain injury, and even though Cogmed increased my mental stamina substantially, my body couldn’t handle it. Thermoregulation went out of whack — too hot and burned and feeling of cold burn in my fingers and feet — edema, and that opportunistic infection shingles burst out of the inactive chickenpox viruses in my nerves. So much fun. My hands hurt (less now but still do), and I couldn’t think well outside of my book. My vocabulary in conversation is still a little shot. I didn’t go out, walk, or do some of my daily living routine for a week because no energy left over to do them. I took lots of Star Trek: Voyager breaks in between chapters or scenes or ideas — Voyager is familiar from before my injury so little cognitive action needed on my part to watch!

I didn’t expect how euphoric I’d feel seeing the word count dropping just below 100,000 and hitting Send on my email to my editor. Felt soooo good. And the feeling lasted a couple of days. What a contrast to Lifeliner. Back then in 2007 my affect was still mostly flat plus working on the book had been delayed twice, the second time by 7 years so I was just relieved to have finished it. This time relieved AND pleased with myself.

Although I’ve been calling this an update, it’s turned out to be a major rewrite to the point I’m adding a subtitle for sure and am almost wondering if I should change the title . . . Nah. I like the title!

Well, I got 4 weeks off. What shall I do? Check links!

Brain Power

Faith Healing, Brain Injury, Regenerating Eyesight, and Walking

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I went to a faith healing a month ago.

Yeah, I know, faith healing! Who believes in that charlatan practice, eh? Well, it was central to Christ’s ministry and to the early Christian church. But even back then, the elders warned of false prophets, the need to discern between those who genuinely give themselves to be a conduit for the Holy Spirit and those in it for personal glory and money. Today, we also have the skepticism of science and atheists who consider themselves the only rationalists in Western culture. Atheism is the smart way to think; faith healing is akin to, um, well silly, non-rational people, eliciting a polite rolling of the eyes, or with those Christians spewing invective and literal interpretations of spiritual teachings. But many of us, especially those of us from ancient cultures believe the material is only one dimension of a multidimensional universe, where the spiritual is a dimension equal if not more powerful than the material. Besides, my mother’s friend had received a lifting of her spirit when she had gone in search of healing for her cancer, a lifting that no human could give her. That alone was worth the free price of admission to me when my mother and her friend suggested it.

I’d never been to one before. My sole exposure was what I’d seen on TV. This was different, the people looked like the whole of Toronto: skinny, rich WASPs; Italians from Woodbridge; down and outs in their donated unwashed clothes; young women bringing their Muslim co-worker friends; strong mothers bringing their fragile adult children; people from every continent of every size and age, sang, clapped, and waited together for the service to begin. Basically, Toronto showed up.

The man we waited for began by saying the Holy Spirit decides how the service will go; so he cannot say how long it will be, what kinds of manifestations will happen. But no matter if you receive 100% manifestation or 50% or none, you will all leave with a healing of your spirit, he exclaimed.

That last sounded like a cop out – a way to keep you believing if you don’t regain your hearing, aren’t healed of your cancer, can’t walk again. But the man was firm: he who touches you is not the one who heals. That’s the Holy Spirit. And as I learnt later: the experience of your spirit being relieved of its burden in a way no physician, psychologist, brain trainer, or mother can do is –

Words fail.

Anyway, when I was near the front, he walked across the floor to me, his fair face and light eyes fixed on my face. He asked why the cane. I told him. He swiftly took it from me, saying, “You don’t need this.”

He asked where it was from.

“My Dad gave it to me.”

“He doesn’t need it anymore?”

“Oh, no, he’s OK,” I replied lightly. He and everyone laughed. I told him why I was there: PTSD, reading, brain injury. He was more interested in my eyes. He asked me about my eyesight.

“Oh, it’s OK,” I said just as I realized he was looking directly into my scarred eye. I hadn’t told him which eye was good and which bad. It felt like he was examining my retina with a telescope. Very strange. So I added: “My retina of that eye is scarred, and my macula doesn’t work. But I came to heal my PTSD, reading, and brain injury.” My mother said I asked for healing of my writing too. I don’t remember that! But that would be cool too, being able to write throughout the year not just during NaNoWriMo when I receive the initiation and organization kicks I need because I don’t have them in my injured brain.

He told me to raise my arms with him. He asked for healing for the swellings in my brain (swellings?), the lesions here and there in my brain (like many others, I can feel them when I think about my brain), the traumas, my eyes. He paused. Fear!

He touched my face and told me to walk. Walk? Without my cane to keep me balanced among the cacophony of sound and movement?

Walk!

I did.

No sweat.

Whoa.

He called me back.

“How did that feel?”

“Weird.”

He laughed.

It felt exactly like when my brain would improve in a big leap and immediately adjust to that improvement; only hours later would I realize that only the day before I couldn’t think like that or listen like that or do something. (Healing sans instant adjustment was like when my speech would speed up and I would go, hey, wait a minute I can’t keep up! It would take days or weeks for me to adjust to faster speaking.)

He told me to walk quickly. Um, walking was one thing but quickly with my eyes and brain not communicating in real time, with my brain unable to keep up with my speed of movement? That would send me over.

But his sureness that I could sent me walking as quickly as my legs could go.

I didn’t fall over or lose my balance. Not even a hint.

Sweet. I was grinning, and everyone was clapping.

I left feeling better in spirit. The burden of the social isolation, the unforeseen humongously long recovery time, the months of sudden dependence, lifted too. Although stress has returned, I remain better able to function and bounce back, much more so than before the healing.

People noticed a difference in my spirit. I noticed my legs were solid and my feet sure on the ground even though my head spins like a dryer when I walk faster than my brain can process visual information (or even when I get nauseated on the TTC with the train noise and yawing buses). The volume from my ears has been turned down too, so I no longer need earbuds to protect me from auditory overload … for the most part. Noises behind me from footfalls to subway trains to bikes still make me pause as my brain tries to process and locate and identify. But traffic looks normal again, and thoughtless Torontonians are annoying not a danger to my health and well being.

And my visual field expanded. I see more and more clearly. I am practicing so I won’t lose the momentum. Like with human-made healing, if you don’t practice or exercise, you’ll lose it. Unfortunately, I got rundown from NaNoWriMo writing daily and a cold. But I beat the virus quicker than normal: 2 weeks. Recovery of my energy, stamina, thinking, clear vision continues: I’ve regressed a bit. (It’s taken me a month to write this post.) But my legs remain solid, my feet sure of their footing, just like right after the faith healing.

Health

I Support AODA Alliance’s Finalized Brief on Barriers to Health Care in Ontario

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I wrote the government at aoda.input@ontario.ca the following email to support AODA Alliance’s Finalized Brief on Health Care Accessibility Barriers. Join me and email them to; just one sentence to say you support the Brief is all that needed. Read more on the Alliance’s website.

I support AODA Alliance’s Finalized Brief on Health Care Accessibility Barriers.

I’d like to add that being able to access health care isn’t just about being able to get into a clinic or doctors office, but also about being able to have the doctor come to you when you’re unable to leave home due to the nature of your illness or recovering from surgery or type of disability. Telemedicine allows a person to receive timely and good health care.

This is especially important in mental health care.

Conditions such as OCD, depression, ADD, agoraphobia could be treated better if the physician could begin treatment in the home through telemedicine. The physician can see the living environment and understand the complexity of the condition better; the patient wouldn’t have to recover well enough to travel and get to the clinic on time just to receive some treatment; the physician could better guide the patient to leave home and eventually receive treatment in the clinic; and the physician would not have to spend time travelling, allowing for more hours to see more patients.

Not paying for laptop to laptop telemedicine excludes patients who can’t get to OHIP-designated centres. And wastes a doctor’s time by forcing her to travel if she’s not at an OHIP centre just to talk to and see her patient.

It isn’t only patients who live vast distances from their doctors who need telemedicine. It’s also the thousands who forego health care or receive diminished care because they can’t leave their home or they can’t get to the clinic for whatever reason. 

Dropping this artificial barrier to telemedicine will ultimately cost the system less and speed up health recovery, leading to faster return to work and taxes to the government.

Accessibility is a right not an option and benefits all Ontarians.