neurorehabilitationFromTheTrenches

This date (yesterday) marks the start of my, hopefully, long and successful crutch usage. This was requested by me, prescribed by my G.P, and finally, collected by Claire. The thinking was that it has some of the height that the cane lacked, while keeping the stability that the hiking pole lacked. In other words, I can put lots of weight on it but still maintain a taller posture. I used it yesterday to walk 100m for lunch in Taverna Corfu , and early reports are not good. I seem to recall early attempts with the crutch being fraught with terror even though, intuitively, it should  work. I tried to get a head start on this article but most of it was unusable, although I was able to save the above paragraph with some shrewd, negative editing. Instead, as the title suggests, I'm going to give a week-late, 18-month update on my double vision. One of the things I took with me from Reha Hamburg was some advice Dr Ottes gave to me. Basically, she recommended that I dispense with the eye

There has been some suggestion that, through reading my blog, one would think it's all gravy, this TBI business. It's true that I've been keeping things positive, as much for me as for anyone else, but, make no mistake, these are incredibly hard yards. Neurorehabilitation is the hardest thing I've ever trained for. Unlike regular rehabilitation, I can't just rest up and wait for my brain to fix itself. Neurorehabilitation requires constant input and the improvement rate is non-linear. Yesterday, for example, I spent some hours with the Gehbarren, trying to walk with my hiking pole. I would have fallen quite a few times, were it not for the Gehbarren, so how then can this be, since I managed passably well last week. From my point of view it's clear, my coordination and balance are far below the levels that they should be. But I had been training specifically to use the hiking pole as a tool to counteract my poor balance and I thought I'd nailed it. Back to

I'll start by stating that I'm unsure if it's the result of trauma endured through the accident because, it's not entirely uncommon for an Irish person for reasons I shall go into, but I have an under active thyroid ( hypothyroidism ). I can take a daily tablet (L thyroxin), which sorts me out, so much so that I feel it my duty, to warn everyone, especially my Irish readership, to get yourselves checked out, with a simple blood test, see your G.P. I certainly remember being the person who was more fond than others of calorific foods, I was always carrying a little more weight than was standard. Another symptom, of which I suffered, was cold feet and hands. Especially the hands burrrrr! Those days are behind me now. My new metabolism, coupled with my new sleeping habits, should mean a healthier, happier Declan 2.0. Check this out. Fortunately my iodine levels are taken care of now that I live in Germany. I have already lost some weight, as my BMI dropped, for possibl

I'd like to thank Alex for providing the first non-Claire guest article, also not in his mother-tongue. For shame! everybody else Guest Blogger: Alex Marginet Declan and I met at work for the first time and we often tended to skew our conversations toward our territory, of software development. It is interesting to see how bright one’s face can become while discussing a new software technique, algorithm or programming language properties. I saw this kind of face once, when Declan was preparing his jump to Germany in 2016. He was about to be interviewed by a company in Hamburg and had an assignment to be submitted before flying there. It is very common these days to receive an exercise and a deadline. Thus, the candidate has the opportunity to show his/her skills and the recruiting committee can find out many interesting facts about the candidate’s skills, mental processes and personality. Declan’s assignment was a variation of  the fam

This has been a very fruitful week, where my rehabilitation is concerned. Firstly, this has been the week of my long awaited participation in a Bobath physio workshop, from Tuesday to Sunday, inclusive, where I got some intensive physiotherapy for an hour each day, I was even the subject of a demonstration a couple of times. This week coincided with A) An increase of my daily step count to 6000, and B) my taking a huge, figurative leap foward in my cane-walking. We had to use the wheelchair to transport me as far as Altona on the S-bahn, there were some stairs to navigate at the Ergo Praxis that housed the workshop. The morning typically started with a coffee, but I, throughout the week, built up the courage to take that 50m cane-walk from the canteen to my bench for 9am for some work. I used the cane to walk ~80 meters for dinner when we ate out in Taverna Corfu on Paddy's night. Thursday saw a welcome distraction from training, when my Eon colleagues, L-R Wolfgang and Sebasti

This has been a heck of a week. Firstly, I(Claire) got my turbo trainer up and running. It's early days but I don't see why I can't begin my triathlon training right away. I have also ramped up my Gehbarren training as follows: My garmin forerunner has a step counter feature, so I have set myself a daily target of 5000 steps, which is alot harder than it sounds. It has resulted in 5 separate Gehbarren sessions of ~40 minutes, more on that later. This week saw the arrival of my new Steckspiel. Claire organised it from her dad, Franz (Gaesteartikel auf Deutsch oder Bayerisch bitte) who knocked it together. I was first introduced to a Steckspiel in Reha Hamburg and I had missed it terribly, following my discharge. Now I can work the Steckspiel into my personal rehab rotation, which now looks like this: Steckspiel: The 5 Gehbarrens are a constant feature. Then I have 3 or 4 vacancies which can be filled alternately by Electrostim, Coins, book stacking, codin

This week I'll address my expectations vs reality. But first, this weekend saw the arrival of my family (I'll name them for the usual reason; Jim, Triona, Cathy and Siobhán. Mam is off the hook for a guest post, owing to her having transcribed my earlier interviews, there's another on the way, by the way, but the rest are encouraged to get blogging) Saturday, when they arrived we made plans to go for dinner in my usual haunt, the Burger Lab . As usual, they delivered, figuratively. I enjoyed a vegan blackbean burger, with sweet potato fries. My sisters left on Sunday but my parents and I had a pleasant Sunday lunch in lavastein and a dinner in the evening, in Taverna Corfu , which was able to cater for us, including vegan options. I'm brought back to my fan-email to Professor Robert Sapolsky, in which I outlined a symptom I had been portraying. Basically, from very early on, I had been expecting to be "up and at 'em" in ridiculously little time. I expec