Increasing mental work while not decreasing physical exercise commensurately was a really bad idea after brain injury. This lesson no one taught me. NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month—is a month of writing every single day in November to create a 50,000-word novel. This writing community and event includes anyone, no matter your ability; it releases your…
Tag: Health
‘I’m So Over It!’: Brain Injury Provides Insight Into COVID Fatigue
We feel stuck in COVID fatigue. That’s what they’re calling the feeling of being in the middle of a marathon with no end. That’s how brain injury feels, too. But with a difference. I’m stuck. We’re stuck. In COVID fatigue. The feeling of weariness, of being in the middle of a marathon that was supposed…
Fatigue: Does It Ever Go Away?
Does increasing functionality after brain injury mean no more fatigue? Fatigue is such an inadequate word to describe the unutterable weariness that comes on to a person with fibromyalgia or brain injury just because one got up in the morning. When someone who has a chronic illness or injury, particularly brain injury, fibromyalgia, or chronic…
Do We Consider Relationships When We Vote?
“I thought and remembered a great deal about my relationships while I was in heaven, but not at all about my work or other earthly issues.” 7 Lessons from Heaven. Mary Neal, MD Voting is an earthly issue; politics and democracy consume our thoughts and conversations these days. What if we reframed our politics in…
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…
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…
Pandemic Stages Are Like Brain Injury Stages
The longer this pandemic grinds on, the more similarities I see with how my brain injury recovery went. It’s so sad that physicians and rehabilitation haven’t innovated in the last two decades to change those stages. I wrote my latest post for Psychology Today on this topic, on how a concussion, or COVID-19, devastates us…
Learned Helplessness and the Medical Profession
This pandemic reminds me of learned helplessness. I wrote on it on Psychology Today, but I’m left to wonder why doctors exhibit it in response to #COVID19?
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.