Personal Perspective: Recovery is more than restoring neurons. Pre-existing insults to the brain and social support matter too. Intelligence Alone Doesn’t Mean You’ll Question Out-of-Date Knowledge A doctor once told me I’m doing better than 90 percent of those with brain injury. Even so, after 24 years, I’ve still not fully recovered. Sarah [in the…
Tag: Psychology Today
One Word? Only One?!
What is one word that describes you? One word to describe me? That’s a toughie. How can you use one word to describe a person, after brain injury, which makes your future unrecognizable and changes you and changes you again and again and again? Does the core you vanish under the onslaught of damage? Or…
Hey Docs! Innovate Long COVID Care!!
qEEG and neurostimulation have improved the lives of people with brain injury. It’s time to study it for the treatment of people living with long COVID. While clinics and docs “innovate” medicine for Long COVID by bringing back 1980s’ methods for blood pressure instability*, I’ve been looking and asking around about 21st medicine. We’ve progressed…
Psychologists Have Rules For Client Care, Doctors Don’t When Illness Strikes
Why do health care providers not have automatically triggered plans to inform patients when they suddenly sicken or die? I wrote a piece for Psychology Today on this topic after my neurodoc had a personal medical emergency. I tried to find out what happened, what College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario mandates (hint: nothing)…
Why Should Health Care Professionals Use Neurostimulation?
Why are neurostimulation techniques not adopted widely, given how effective they are? I believe it comes down to trust, anxiety, and being overburdened. I want to talk today about why it’s important for health care professionals of all kinds to learn about and use audiovisual entrainment (AVE) and cranioelectrical stimulation (CES) in their practices. I…
CTE: Mysterious Syndrome or Untreated Brain Injury?
Instead of studying CTE as a mystery syndrome divorced from untreated brain injury, let’s challenge assumptions that seeming recovery from concussion is real recovery. The brain is the final frontier. Although much scientific research has been done toward trying to understand it, research funds haven’t kept up with basic research needs, and we have only…
A Concussion Diagnosis Is Impossible to Understand
“Early in March 2001, my psychologist sat me down to tell me gently that my brain had plateaued. This is my life.” Receiving a diagnosis of concussion doesn’t prepare you for how much your life will change. Not just your own life, but the lives of the people around you as they grapple with the…
Is Mental Work the Same as Exercise?
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…
‘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…