Tag: Ontario

News

Celebrating a BIST Achievement with MPP Mike Colle

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I attended yesterday’s BIST meeting to celebrate the awarding of a $72,300 grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, an agency of the Government of Ontario. I expected the usual boring speeches. Instead, Ontario MPP Mike Colle got up and grabbed the crowd’s attention with his compelling no-notes speech on how brain injury is leaving the social taboo hemisphere and how important it is to celebrate success whether little or big. He then presented BIST’s president with a celebratory plaque.

“When you recognize success, you make people feel stronger … and you go on to another success.”

 

The very first benefit of the grant is the hiring of social worker Michelle Ratcliff. The grant will also allow BIST (Brain Injury Society of Toronto) to expand its programs to provide support groups for those with brain injuries and their caregivers; workshops; and community meetings in two locations, not just the current one.

Brain Health

COTA Case Manager, the Saga Continues

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Update to Case Management drama:

I met with my case manager from COTA (see previous post for the story so far). I told her to get to it; I didn’t even give her a chance for her usual draining chit-chat. I needed my energy to get through the session with her; thankfully my moral anger kicked in to lend me energy and thinking power. I first pried the phone number of the Homemaking service from her by asking her point-blank for it. Later, she justified not giving me the phone number two months ago — she didn’t think she had to give it to me because I already had it, because she thought in that vague way of hers that I had already received help earlier from them. I’m amazed my eyeballs didn’t fall onto the table. I demanded to know why I’d ask for homemaking help if I’d already received it? She repeated she thought I had it. She was thinking of the student who helped me for a few months before quitting abruptly. Not exactly a provincial Homemaking program.

Anyway, after I got the phone number, I asked her for all the information she had gathered to date. Of my list of items, she had three done — sort of. She had a phone number for one; 311 for the second; an information sheet from the City of Toronto for the third. (And, oh yeah, an application for the funding help I’d been receiving for years.) It took her since October 18 to gather that. She said she had to research them on the Internet, that she doesn’t know about these Toronto services.

Her territory is the City of Toronto. She’s been working in this job for at least two years, but she didn’t tell me precisely how many. I do not have esoteric needs.

She also doesn’t know what the Rotary Club offers, which I’ve been told by two doctors and a therapist should’ve been contacted on my behalf for at least one item on my list that she said there was no help for.

As I mentioned in my previous post, she had totally gotten some of my needs wrong. But she denied it. She insisted that she’d gotten my list all correct and hadn’t asked me to repeat any of my needs in a follow-up phone call. She insisted that she had listened (the implication being I’d misspoken — imagine, me, the “articulate one” telling her I needed something I’d been receiving for years). When I informed her of her error last week and what she should’ve been looking into, she didn’t leap to correct it because she “wasn’t at work.” Apparently knowing she was meeting me today was not enough incentive to make things right.

She constantly apologised: “I’m sorry you feel this way.” Would you feel apologised to with those words? Nope, me neither. I finally told her to quit it, that if she was truly apologetic, truly understood how much she’d screwed up, she’d say she was sorry for screwing up. I then lectured her on ehealth and computerization. I have no idea if she took in anything I said. She just sat there. She did intimate at one point she didn’t want to carry a laptop around on the TTC. Good thing all the students and biz folk I see on the subway with their laptops don’t agree with her. They’d get much less done and make errors, as well as spending twice the time on the same task, transcribing pen and paper to computer when they got home or to work. I rhymed off a list of lighter computer devices she could carry with password protection. It made me wonder if any of these people pay attention to the world-shattering Apple launches.

I called her boss. She said she’d talk to the case manager and get back to me. CCAC did not react like this when I called about a disrespectful OT; they believed me — they didn’t say they had to talk to the OT as if to imply they needed verification — and immediately looked for a replacement.

After she left, I needed  a nap. But I stopped myself because I need to sleep at night. However, the rest of my day has been disrupted because as a person with a brain injury, it’s very difficult to refocus. I went from anger to weariness to distractedness to upsetedness. That’s when I called my MPP to see if I could be un-split. Only people with brain injuries — the folks who by the very nature of their injury need things to be simple — are split between COTA and CCAC. As I understand it, no one else is. People with cancer get 100% of their help, including case management, from CCAC. I’m ready to cry over this injustice and unnecessary bureaucracy. I’m hoping by writing this, by venting, I can get back to my day.

Update 4 Jan 2012:

The case manager’s boss called after speaking with the case manager. She wanted to discuss some issues. She wanted to persuade me to continue on with my case manager and was wanting to work things out so that could happen. I cut her off. I wasn’t working with that case manager, and I didn’t want any contact by any means with her. She tried again, and I cut her off again. So then she said there were issues that had to be discussed. There is nothing more upsetting than talking to someone with a sweet, gentle voice who implacably talks to the patient as if they are a problem, and in this case, will not meet the patient’s request for a new case manager unless the patient gets abrupt and brusque and refuses to discuss working with the problem case manager.

She began with miscommunication. If I wasn’t so upset — and one thing she knows as everyone in the brain injury community knows is that people with brain injuries have labile emotions, you never know what you’re going to get — I’d have laughed. She was talking to the person labelled articulate. I am always and immediately labelled as someone who communicates well by every therapist, every rehab person, every psychologist and doctor I’ve ever seen right from 2000 on. Any miscommunication was on my case manager’s part, but by wanting to discuss this with me as an issue, she was implying that my case manager had listened well and got down all the information correctly, thus it was me who had not communicated my needs well, who was the problem. I told her I had no trouble working with anyone else and in communicating my needs to anyone else; everyone but my case manager knows what they are.

She moved on to the issue of computers that my case manager had said I talked about. Basically, if I expected their case managers to have computers or iPhones, I should consider not receiving service from them. They don’t have funding, she said. (Why would a therapist need an agency to fund their own smartphone anyway? In today’s society, every professional should have one regardless, but apparently in the eyes of OTs, not.) Yet my very bringing it up in the first place, then suggesting we discuss it outside of the case manager issue was seen as a reason for me not to receive service from COTA. She told me I have until next week to think about it, to think about whether I wanted to receive service from them or not when she would call me back — next week because the case managers weren’t in the office (not at work?) this week and she wouldn’t be able to find out who’s available to take on my case until they come into the office next week, not that she’s hopeful there would be someone available.

It seems to me that by using that nicest-possible-we’ll-talk-to-you-when-you’re-less-upset voice and suggesting I need a week to think about it, she is threatening to remove services from me if I don’t behave. It isn’t about me having a choice, for COTA is the only publicly funded entity that provides case management services to people with brain injuries, and she knows it. Imagine what effect this would have on an ill or very injured person? They would comply and drop their request. They would put up with bad health care for fear of even that being taken away. And they would not have their needs met plus have their health worsened through the stress of thoughts of abandonment as well as the stress of being forced through gentle, implacable persuasion, to work with someone who doesn’t listen and doesn’t meet their needs.

Update 11 Jan 2012:

On Monday, the COTA case manager boss called and gave me the name of my new case manager. That’s it. Short and sweet. I was so astonished. And relieved. The only strange thing was her reaction to me asking her to spell out the new case manager’s name. I have a hard time understanding names over the phone, and so I’ve gotten into the habit of asking people to spell them out. I usually get an uh, well, never-had-to-spell-out-a-simple J-A-N-E before kind of response. But they do spell it out. She wouldn’t. She spelled out the case manager’s last name but neither spelled out the first name nor repeated it. You’d think someone working in the area of brain injury would be familiar with auditory processing or hearing problems and would not only ensure a clear phone line, but also enunciate names clearly and repeat them slowly. Sheesh.

The new case manager called me today to make an appointment to see me and right off the bat spoke slowly (not loudly, which is what people usually do when asked to speak slowly, much to my ear’s distress) and enunciated every word. It was a bit irritating, but then I told myself I had no — zero, zip, nada — problems understanding every word, including the name. He repeated his name at the end of our conversation without being asked to. How unusual after my recent experience. Hopefully, auspicious.

Personal

Voting the Rejecting Way

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I don’t want to vote. The First Past the Post system means if I want to vote for a particular party but don’t like the candidate, I have to vote for the candidate to register a vote for the party. And if I like a particular candidate out of all of them but not the party they represent, I have to choose between candidate and my preferred party. It’s nuts.

To make matters worse, our Parliament and Legislatures are becoming more and more about The Leader and the MPs or MPPs are simply seals that bark to command. And so voting for candidates because of who they are and their background is becoming meaningless. You’re simply voting for a human to keep a seat warm in their party’s section of Parliament or the Legislature. It’s disheartening.

But then I’m reminded that people died to keep Canada a democracy, to keep it free from fascism and totalitarianism. I’m reminded that we have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, with teeth, that came about because we’re a democracy. And a key way to keep Canada a democracy is to vote. I’m reminded that it’s the people’s voice that keeps the police and politicians from blanketing our highways and cities in CCTVs, which allow tracking of our every move and strip us of anonymity, a hallmark of democracy. Autocracies need to, and like to, track its citizens wherever they are. I’m reminded that it’s our voice expressed through votes that decide how much of our privacy will be stripped from us, whether we approve the arbitrary use of police force okayed by Premier Dalton McGuinty and the Liberal government during the 2010 G20 in Toronto.

But what to do when the First Past the Post system disenfranchises you, when you don’t like the three big parties, when you don’t like the candidates in your riding?

Remember first that if you don’t want your democracy usurped by something else — by an autocracy, by one man deciding your fate — then use your vote.

If you don’t like the three main parties, check out the Greens. They may surprise you as reflecting you and your political wishes. And perhaps see a vote for a smaller party as sticking it to the big guys.

And most importantly remember you can reject your ballot. It’s a protest at the ballot box.

If everyone who sat home on voting day went to their polling station instead to reject their ballot and have that rejection registered, then the politicians — and the media — would have to take notice. And maybe then our leaders would seriously bend their minds and actions to improving our democracy.

So go and reject your ballot! I am.

Brain Health

Brain Injury: the Government Ignores, the People Remain in the Dark

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BIST (Brain Injury Society of Toronto) was founded in 2004 and has grown to 469 members, as of this week’s Annual General Meeting (AGM). I looked around at the 50? 40? 70? or so members in attendance and was rather surprised. But as the AGM progressed I thought about those growing numbers and BIST’s new focus this past year on fundraising and awareness, as reported by the various committees and 11-member board.

But from the abysmal brain injury care in Ontario, you wouldn’t know there is an epidemic out there.

When I first joined, I had no idea who was on the Board and who volunteered, even though I had a good sense of who were the active members with brain injuries from falls, meningitis, crashes, tumours (no hockey). Today, members of the Board are making a concerted effort to get out to the meetings and making known who they are. And by the end of the evening, it struck me that like the Board, putting ourselves out there where we live and engaging is what we people with brain injuries need to do.

Everyone knows about cancer; breast cancer is the charity du jour. Half the population suffer from heart disease, and the other half know someone who’s had a heart problem. Rick Hansen has done a stellar job of bringing attention to spinal cord damage, and people in wheelchairs are visible representatives (even if that is not the reason why they must use a wheelchair). But unfortunately brain injuries are invisible, though plentiful.

The Brain Injury Association of Canada says “thousands of Canadians incur a traumatic brain injury each year the majority being young adults.”

And so, as usual, we Canadians must look to the US for detailed stats (and that was true even before Prime Minister Stephen Harper nixed the scientifically sound and comprehensive look at our population, the long-form census). Every year, 1.7 million Americans sustain a traumatic brain injury. Using the ten percent rule, that means 170,000 Canadians have their brains damaged each and every year. And like Americans, twice as many men as women.

As I listened to the reports at the AGM, I thought how daunting the task and how needed to make people aware of brain injury and its devastating effects on the injured. Hockey fans are becoming aware, but only as it applies to hockey players and with incomplete understanding of its lifelong effects.

Sidney Crosby appeared recently with his doctors to talk about his concussion and their expert opinion that when he is one hundred percent better, it will be like he hadn’t had a concussion, that his risk of another concussion will be back to what it was before his two.

Hahahahaha!

How can they know that? There is no technology that can look at the brain in such detail so as to know the brain matter is one hundred percent healed and regrown, that there are zero changes in neuronal metabolism and structure.

The science is so new and still in the dark ages, relative to heart disease or cancer treatment, that to say we know with certainty the future and the risk is full of hubris. But then I’ve discovered too many doctors, particularly neurologists, are like that — think they know it all in the face of great ignorance, think they recognize brain injuries when the cognitive ones zip right over their heads — and so why would the population be any more knowledgeable?

Researchers are finding that people who have traumatic brain injury have a higher risk of Alzheimer’s, Parkinsons, and so on. Yet they cannot say if the long-term effects of brain injuries are different in people like me who’ve had active treatment for cognitive deficits. But to assume not is a dreamy, potentially dangerous assumption.

I’ve met people who’ve experienced bad bangs to the head but with no broken skull, maybe only temporary unconsciousness, which they’d shrugged off and if they saw a doc, told it’s just a concussion, watch for a couple of days, then should be fine. Yet when they hear about some of my difficuties, they go, “hey, I have that too.” They always thought whatever “that” was was normal. It isn’t. I never had these injury-related issues pre-car crash. Most people don’t. Yet they had an impact on these people’s lives, and because they never made the connection, they didn’t understand the problem, never mind how to heal it and improve their lives.

It doesn’t help that even if you recognize you need to see someone about it, you can’t in Ontario because of lack of funding for neuropsychiatrists, no funding for psychologists who are on the forefront of active treatments, and severe cutbacks to community care. When no one knows about brain injuries, except as hockey concussions, why would the government fund adequate care?

Crosby and his docs have presented his concussion as healable as a simple broken leg, just takes longer. Even when concussions are recognized as real injuries with bad effects on the brain, they’re still represented as happening only to hockey players and having no lasting effects, thus no big deal.

Yes, the AGM theme is right: we need more awareness to stop injuries, to have access to good treatment, and to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of the walking wounded.