A week after I got back from England, my neurodoc called me up and gave me my new reading homework. Same regimen as before: read two paragraphs after doing the skeleton, read out loud and slowly enough to avoid a headache and to enhance accuracy, and read every two days. I did my homework one…
Tag: Reading
Poetry: A New Reading Strategy
The English are big readers. When I mentioned my problems with reading while I was over there, instant brainstorming began. It’s interesting seeing how different people react differently to my predicament. All are sympathetic, but most kind of shrug helplessly, speak platitudes, or say information-free positive things. Over there though, it was like I…
An Amazing Meeting About Reading
I met with a psychologist at the University of Toronto to talk brain, to get a different, “not-an-expert” perspective on my reading, which as regular readers of my blog would know I’ve come to think of as the best perspective. It was fascinating. I hugely enjoyed our conversation. And I don’t know about that…
Reading to Not Get a Headache After Two Paragraphs
My neurodoc is used to thinking about something quickly and telling a person to do x, y, z five seconds after you’ve given him feedback, whether you’re research staff or a patient. I’m not used to taking orders sans explanation. But sometimes I’m just too tired to care. Of course, that only lasts for so…
Slower and Reading Out Loud Leads to Less of a Headache
I managed one moment of working on my reading last week with all the emotional upheaval I was in. Emotional upheaval really stalls one’s recovery. I also went over the advice I received from non-experts and forwarded it on to my neurodoc then discussed it all with him. His first comment: do you think you’re…
PTSD Freezes Reading Homework Out
Relearning how to read comes in fits and starts when you have PTSD in addition to brain injury. Reading is probably more vulnerable to being sidetracked than other aspects of recovery because it is so difficult cognitively and, for me, fraught with issues of loss and identity and being part of mainstream society. One of…
Non-Experts and Healing Damaged Reading After Brain Injury
I’ve recently had a few people tell me they’re not experts, as if that’s a bad thing. I bring this up because in the old days, pre-brain injury, I held experts in high esteem. I respected their education and experience and saw them as authority figures. Well, okay, I had no problem challenging them in…
Early Days in the Reading Homework Trenches
Another reading observation stint. This time an easier article, my neurodoc assured me. The Wall Street Journal piece he handed me was on Rosetta, the European Space Agency’s mission probe to a comet, and her findings. (Aren’t ships, even space ships all female? They do have to be smart and strong, able to ride the…
Reading v. Learning: A Thought Exercise
Is reading learning? Are the higher cognitive aspects of reading really just learning and concentration? Are my problems only learning issues and not reading ones? If it’s solely a learning issue, then logically I would have the same kind of issue with any kind of learning. If learning is the issue, then the modality of…