One of the doctors that has been at the forefront of the battle against traumatic brain injury (TBI) and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is Dr. Daniel Amen. He has been working with athletes, military servicemen, and other brain trauma patients to provide a treatment regimen to help them to better cope with living with the effects of CTE and TBI — memory loss, dementia and depression. As Dr. Amen said recently, “My hope is that through increased awareness and education we can help these athletes before it’s too late.”

Since people with the CTE and TBI condition often do not have visible scars, it is hard for most people, including some physicians and other medical providers, to understand the extent to which short-term memory loss affects one’s ability to cope with daily living. Things that other people take for granted just takes much longer…

i’ve been doing some reading on parenting. yesterday in one of the books, i read this now famous statement: children learn what they live. growing up, i remember there was a wall hanging in our home that had this saying. (i think there’s a whole poem that elaborates this…) despite the fact that i’ve seen it since i was a child, it is only now, as a parent of a stunning, amazing 2 year old girl, that i understand this statement so completely. it got me thinking: what is my daughter learning from how i live my life?

i wondered: is she learning that caring for your neighbour, near and far, is important? am i modelling what it is to care about others? is she learning that justice is important and that we must contribute our voice and our actions to ensure it where it is missing? is she learning…

Anniversary: 1. The yearly occurrence of a past event.  2. A celebration or commemoration of a past event.  (Dictionary.com)    There’s no celebration here.

April 25, 2011.  My life changed forever in less than a second.  I was in a roll over motor vehicle accident and sustained a Traumatic Brain Injury.  I survived.  But I will most likely never be the same.   This past year in recovery was a mixture of hope vacillating with fear and anger.  Getting an actual diagnoses of TBI was the first hurdle.  The ER treated and streeted.  I presented “too alert” and with an “unknown history of LOC”  to be sseriously injured.  Really?  If someone responds, “I don’t remember” when asked if they were unconscious, guess what?  Something is not right there.  Most likely they were unconscious.  Not surprisingly, as the swelling in my brain grew, my symptoms progressed.  The medical field finally got it right when I had unequal pupils…

The 10 myths of Head-Injury

DEBUNKING TEN MYTHS OF “RECOVERY”
~from CH2 “The Nature of Head Injury” by Thomas Kay, Ph.D. and Muriel Lezak, Ph.D., the book is entitled “Traumatic Brain Injury and Vocational Rehabilitation”, Published by The Research and Training Center, University of Wisconsin-Stout.

Myth #1: The Concept of “Recovery”
Throughout this chapter we avoid such phrases as “recovery after head injury,” There is a reason for this. Most people’s experience, and therefore expectations, regarding illness and injury is one of temporary reduction in functioning, followed by a gradual return to normalcy. People get sick, go to hospital, and get better. Bones are broken, casts applied for a period, muscle strength regained over several months, and scars fade.

When commonplace notion of recovery is applied to head injury, however, considerable harm can be done. Almost never does a patient “recover;” the residual deficits are usually significant and permanent. The…