I believed in reading strategies because I believed in my therapist—until I finally had to admit they were an illusion. I sat opposite my therapist, focusing effortfully on her lesson. She was teaching me how to read post-concussion using strategies: highlighters to highlight words I needed to remember; pens to write notes in the margins…
Tag: Reading
Cognitive Empathy For Reading Loss After Brain Injury
Cognitive empathy lets you imagine a client’s experience, puts yourself in their shoes, and act accordingly. How you can use it to help restore reading post concussion. Dr. Brian Goldman, a Toronto ER doctor and host of White Coat Black Art on CBC Radio, was on CBC Radio’s Ontario Today at noon, Friday, May 4,…
Three-Week Concussion Treatment Update
The horror fest of concussion recovery, a job nobody wants, contains dramatic improvements. As I continue the treatment protocol I outlined in my last post, my reading is almost back to normal. I doubled my reading time on Sunday to 16 minutes without experiencing dizziness or nausea. Unfortunately, a concentration headache comes on with reading…
Graduating to New Reading Level
The book I finished reading yesterday is the last one I time and recorded to the minute. I’m graduating to the next level of returning to pre-injury reading when it was as part of my life as breakfast, lunch, and dinner are. From today’s book on, I’m scheduling my reading sessions as a 15 to…
Gamma Update and Changes
I’ve been using gamma brainwave audiovisual entrainment since April with the Mind Alive’s DAVID Delight Pro device. On May 18, I switched it up to gamma 38-42Hz on Mondays and Fridays and SMR/gamma on Tuesdays and Thursdays and maintained the effect. My writing and photography work went down because I began using my cognitive energy…
Appearing on Lindamood-Bell Radio
I’m pleased to tell you all I was interviewed for Lindamood-Bell radio, a weekly podcast about personal experiences with their courses, research on their methods, and education. Being a student with a brain injury, I wasn’t sure I’d regain my pre-concussion book reading. Lindamood-Bell not only evaluated me fully, unlike the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, they…
Reading Reward Among Brain Injury Ruins
Last year after completing 81 hours of intensive reading-comprehension re-learning via Lindamood-Bell’s visualizing and verbalizing program, I promised myself the reward of an e-reader if I finished The Lions of Al-Rassan. I’d begun reading that big book during the application weeks of the visualizing and verbalizing program, but I had to finish it on my…
I Read a Whole Chapter With Comprehension After Concussion
Surreal. I read an entire chapter, start to finish, using Lindamood-Bell visualizing and verbalizing method. First time since my brain injury. OMG! I got to the point of being able to read an entire chapter of The Screwtape Letters about 2 months ago but not in one go. Instead, I read for 5 minutes at…
Watching Like I Read: Visualizing and Verbalizing
As a NaNoWriMo winner last year, I received a sweet deal on a subscription to Great Courses Plus. I signed up for it because it had a series on Philosophy of Mind. My thinking was that if I couldn’t read my Philosophy of Mind texts and course work from 2012 well enough to remember, maybe…