Challenge Your Injured Brain

If you have any anoxic brain injury or another type of brain injury that affects your cognitive abilities, continue to challenge your brain. I continue to be amazed at the power of the brain to overcome obstacles. We’ve all heard that we have much more brain power than we choose to use – so why not tap into that available brain power? It seems like a perfect time to do that after a brain injury where part of the brain has been destroyed. I know my brain has found ways around some of the traditional ways of thinking.

First, I had to believe I could find a way around the losses I suffered after my acquired brain injury. It is considered an “acquired” brain injury because it was not something I was born with – but rather due to an injury I acquired due to lack of oxygen that resulted in the partial or complete loss of certain portions of my brain. After getting through the denial phase and realizing I was never getting the use of certain parts of my brain back, Larry and I put together a plan for compensatory strategies that worked for me to be able to live a more enjoyable and productive life. Many of these strategies are in Brain Injury Survivor’s Guide, Welcome to Our World.

Recently, I’ve been thing a lot about all the wasted brain power each of us has – not just those of us who have an acquired brain injury – but everyone. Larry and I bought software to begin learning a new language (French) – a late Christmas gift to ourselves. Even with a brain injury, I am amazed at how much I have learned in a little over a week. It will take me a while to become fluent, but I really believe I can. I think it’s pretty special to be able to say I have a brain injury, but I can speak and write French. That is something a lot of “normal” people can’t do. I already feel I’ve accomplished a lot and look forward to learning more.

Now – some of your may be thinking I didn’t have much of a brain injury to start out with – that is far from the truth. The first few years of my brain injury were extremely tough for both Larry and me. I cried a lot and got frustrated and just got plain mad a lot. Everyone progresses at their own level depending on attitude, potential, and available support.

Anyway, I just think it’s exciting to think about what is possible and encourage you to challenge your injured brain. You’ll be glad you did.

LEARNING AFTER BRAIN INJURY

Not only did I forget a lot of things after my anoxic brain injury, I quickly discovered that learning new things after brain injury requires a planned strategy and dedicated effort. You see, after my anoxic brain injury where lack of oxygen had “killed” the brain cells that provide short-term memory, I had to have a strategy for retaining important information. Larry and I laid out a lot of these strategies in Brain Injury Survivor’s Guide.

But, just because it’s more difficult to get that information into my long term memory, I can’t give up on learning new things and recalling important older information. That said; let me tell you about my newest challenge – learning French!

Larry and I love to go to the island of Saint Martin and the French side is our favorite. If you don’t know much about this island, it is owned by two different countries – France and The Netherlands (Dutch). Just for fun and because the French language is go beautiful, we always learned a few words before we went to the island so we could take in a little more of the culture there.

Well, a couple of days ago UPS delivered us a package containing Rosetta Stone – French. I knew I would have some additional challenges, but am so excited about learning this language. Having delved into it for a couple of days now, I found my biggest challenge is going to be speaking because I have a problem recalling most of the words. I can recognize them, pronounce them and even write them while understanding what they mean, but to come up with what to say out of the blue is where I’m having the most difficulty.

Of course, since I am very familiar with anoxic brain injury, its causes and resulting challenges, I can understand why that part is more difficult for me. However, I am not completely discouraged since I know it may take me a little longer, but I WILL get there.

This is true with any learning after brain injury. It is necessary to know the problem, access one or more strategies and never give up.

STARTING OVER

Well it’s that time again – we’re starting over with a new year – 2012! New Year’s Eve has been one of my favorite holidays for years. It’s like wiping the slate clean and beginning anew. It’s a time to reminisce the past and plan for the future. This New Year is especially exciting and wonderful since Larry is here to celebrate it with me. A few months ago that was somewhat doubtful based on the first prognosis after lung cancer was discovered. If you read my blog regularly, you know he is now in remission and getting stronger ever day.

I remember the first New Year’s Eve party we went to following my near death after a surgery that resulted in my anoxic brain injury. Hanging with our friends and celebrating was fantastic. I saw everything with a new perspective.

The beginning of a new year can represent starting over – whether it’s something entirely new or just taking a new approach to an old situation. With a brain injury there’s a lot of starting over again and again. But – that’s what is necessary to progress. Brain injuries that affect cognitive function are especially frustrating. One of the primary compensatory strategies for learning to live with cognitive impairment is repeating a task over and over again. Finally, that function moves to long term memory and can be retrieved. In my case, I have no short term memory. So – I must continually repeat anything I ever expect to have access to in the future. In the meantime, I WRITE IT DOWN if it is important.

There are many strategies in addition to the memory strategies in Brain Injury Survivor’s Guide designed to help anyone who has suffered from an acquired brain injury. The purpose of our book is to help those who are starting over due to a brain injury. We had nothing like it when begin living with this unwanted tragedy that struck our lives so we wanted to share what we learned with others.
The beginning of a new year is a great time for starting over – no matter the reason.

HOLIDAY STRESS

We all have stress in our lives. Sometimes it’s even good stress. Still, whether it’s excitement or depression, we all experience it.

There are a thousand and one therapists and well-meaning relatives and friends who can give us their profession or non-profession opinion on ways to relieve stress – especially holiday stress. Whether it’s how not to stress over buying gifts or preparing the holiday meal, everyone has advice to offer.

Of course, with all the hustle and bustle of the holidays there is stress – whether it be negative or just plain excitement. But, speaking from experience, I will tell you there is a whole other type of stress when you are living with a brain injury – especially if just newly diagnosed.

My heart especially goes out to those brain injury victims who do not have the support of at least one reliable individual. By that I mean – someone who will be kind but truthful with them as they struggle to learn to live with their brain injury. I say live with it because no matter how far a person has come with cognitive rehabilitation and other therapies, the injury is still there when they have experienced an anoxic brain injury or traumatic brain injury. Often you hear people talk of being “cured” of a brain injury – that’s called denial. The sadder part is you sometimes hear medical “professionals” speak of it. I do hope they keep working on that.

So anyway – whether it’s holiday stress or any other kind, there are compensatory strategies to help us deal with the challenges involved. Many of these strategies are outlined in Brain Injury Survivor’s Guide and on our related websites. I hope you’ll take time to review some of these and then kick back and really enjoy the holiday season free of negative stress.

Happy holidays!

HOLIDAY SHOPPING STRESS WITH BRAIN INJURY

Shopping for the Christmas holiday can cause a lot of stress. It can be especially stressful for someone who is living with an acquired brain injury. As with other tasks and projects, there is a way to make things a bit simpler. For instance – holiday shopping online can be helpful for someone who is living with brain injury.

You have to be careful though (when shopping online). When buying clothing or shoes if you are unsure about the size, color, or texture you should not only check the return policy, but also check with yourself to see how you will “feel” if the purchased item is not up to your expectations. While some vendors will readily accept the order back, you still must go the return process and sometimes you end up paying for nothing by the time you pay return postage. (I did that recently.)

However, I have found I prefer the ease of buying online when size, color, taste, etc. is not a factor. I can take my time and not feel stressed about making a decision and it makes me feel really good to shop around for coupons and the site that has the best price. I know I can walk away from the computer anytime I want without having to drive anywhere or feel guilty about not being able to make a decision at that moment.

Making decisions in a reasonable amount of time was one of my biggest problems after my anoxic brain injury. Larry really had to work with me on that one. I remember being in the grocery store many times ponding over which can of vegetables to purchase. He knew I could stand there for 15, 20, 30 minutes trying to make up my mind, so he would say, “I’m leaving for the next isle by the time I count to ten – just make a decision and move on”. Needless to say, I was not happy with him, but it was the only way to get me to move on.

Now – you could still take an unusual amount of time to make online decisions and that is something that would need to be worked on – but, it’s a bit less stressful (and costly sometimes) than the scenario in a physical store.

Whether you are shopping online or out in the crowds, I hope you will remember to breathe and try to enjoy the real spirit of Christmas or any other shopping trip.

Great News!

The only thing better than hearing great news about your own health, is hearing great news about the health of the love of your life. I now know how Larry felt when he learned I would survive the ARDS which resulted in my brain injury. Of course, at the time, we were unaware of my brain injury since it was an anoxic brain injury that the doctors had not yet discovered.

Our recent good news is that Larry’s last CT scan revealed no more cancer! For those of you who do not regularly read my blog, Larry was diagnosed with lung cancer in April with a life expectancy of approximately three to six months based on standards for the type he had. After eight months of combined chemo and radiation and an excellent oncologist, we learned of the wonderful news on December 1st – a date that will forever be one of the greatest in my life!

Larry stood by me as I fought to overcome the challenges of my anoxic brain injury which included the loss of cognitive skills and the lack of short-term memory that consumed my life. He came up with compensatory strategies on his own to help me live a better life in spite of the brain injury I had suffered. We were in it together – just as we were as we fought against the small cell lung cancer.

Just as we learned more than we ever wanted to know about brain injury, we devoured all we could about small cell lung cancer. You have to know what you’re fighting to be a successful competitor. We credit Larry’s aggressive and intelligent oncologist with a good bit of the success of this fight for life just as we are thankful for some of the doctors and therapists who were involved in my fight for a better life with brain injury. Still, it took a personal will and determination to fight and defeat the odds based on “standard” outcomes.

Now that I have experienced the caregiver side of a traumatic accident/illness, I appreciate even more that Larry stood by me. I’m sure I was a worse patient, but he stuck with me anyway. Having someone you can trust to be truthful and yet supportive after a brain injury or other life changing event in your life is essential to attaining the most from the possibilities that lie ahead.

It was a terrible and difficult struggle – but worth it in the end in both cases. Just as my brain injury was not “cured” since the area of my brain that was destroyed will never be restored, Larry’s cancer is not termed “cured” by the doctors but rather “in remission” even though it can no longer be seen on the scan. I will continue to believe it is gone until I know otherwise. After all, I was told by more than one doctor I would never go back to the type of work I was doing prior to my brain injury. And yet - not only did I go back, I have advanced in many ways. Doctors have their place in our care and progress, but we must never give up on ourselves and our own personal strengths.

EMOTIONS

Every person's behavior is affected by circumstances. We all react at a given moment according to all that is going on in our lives at that particular moment. Anger, happiness, frustration, love, lust, disappointment, fear, greed, hope, guilt, pride, sadness, surprise and distress are some of the feelings that guide our emotions. Everything I have mentioned happens in every person's life. Behavior is shaped by emotions and situation filters.

An injured brain can exhibit problems which prompts all types of emotions. Behavioral issues can result from the situation filters not being used properly or not being available at all. Sometimes these emotional problems are embarrassing to the brain injury survivor and at times certain situations encompass others too.

Lots of people just love the holiday season. They get all caught up in the excitement of the holidays. I used to be one of those people. I no longer look forward to this time of year - partly because I've gotten older, but mostly due to the effects of my brain injury. I struggle everyday (some days more than others) to control my emotions and I don’t ever look forward to the extra stress of dealing with emotions for a whole season. That said, I always look forward to spending time with my immediate family.


In the early stages of brain injury, a person's personality may be flat or, seemingly, not showing emotions at all. The person is virtually in a mental state of total confusion. Nothing is right! Why can't I remember? What happened to me? And they withdraw. A brain injured person wants to sort out what is happening. (That was me in the early years of my brain injury). Not knowing anyone they can trust and confide in, they withdraw to let their brain figure it out. Their injured brain! I did this, but Larry was diligent in not letting me stay that way.


Compensatory strategies can be of great benefit for memory problems and cognitive problems, but behavioral problems need family members and/or professionals who will provide informed training. Dr. Glen Johnson states in his book, Traumatic Brain Injury Survival Guide, "You may be lucky enough to be in a head injury program (I would estimate that only 25% of head-injured people have insurance coverage for this type of programming)."


Dr. Johnson's estimate, then, is that 75% of people who suffer a brain injury can NOT afford the needed treatment. That's why we wrote Brain Injury Survivor’s Guide, Welcome to Our World, and that's why we're dedicated to continuing our living, breathing websites and this blog that will provide help to the growing brain injury community.