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)…

CTE: Mysterious Syndrome or Untreated Brain Injury?

This entry is part 5 of 3 in the series Psychology Today - Concussion Types

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…

Is Mental Work the Same as Exercise?

This entry is part 5 of 4 in the series Psychology Today - Fatigue and Brain Injury

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

This entry is part 3 of 4 in the series Psychology Today - Fatigue and Brain Injury

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?

This entry is part 3 of 4 in the series Psychology Today - Fatigue and Brain Injury

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…