neurorehabilitationFromTheTrenches

This month's article has a very specific, target audience. Namely, people who stutter. According to National Stuttering Association of the USA that's about 1% of you. I am an ex-stutterer. One of the consequences of the accident, to me, was that I began speaking correctly and I feel it's only correct that I share with you, how I feel that was achieved. Firstly, a short disclaimer; I am not a medical professional, nor have I studied anything in the area of speech. I simply find myself as part of a rare group (definitely more rare than 1%), of people who used to, but no longer stutter.  The brain controls everything; the infrastructure that is responsible for human speech involves an extensive subset of those systems. Although I don't know anything about the speaker here , he outlines the basics around my journey from stutterer to regular person (normal), although I didn't know much about that journey while I was on it.  I'll guesstimate that I was around 10 yea...

Some problem with the editor meant that I was unable to upload any pictures this month This month will see a book review of The Four Horsemen You may have noticed a pattern; that only positive book reviews make it as a subject of a coma2tri blog article. That's because life's too short to invest time reading something that might be no-good. In this case, I knew I was on a winner, having watched the conversation , upon which this book was based. As the four contributors are listed on the cover, they each, in turn, alphabetically, contributed an essay, on the subject of religiosity, all following an excellent foreward by Stephen Fry. I allowed myself to suppose that Hitchens would get his turn, by way of an essay he had completed on his death-bed. Well -- spoiler alert -- there is no such essay. It gets started, as I've said, with an excellent forward by Stephen Fry. The three :( following essays whet the appetite sufficiently, for the extremely well conducted discussion...

It's been a while, and a taste of things to come. For too long have I allowed myself to become stressed out, trying to submit an article per week. I've decided that enough is enough, so I'm lowering my expectations as follows; this is May's article and you can expect a monthly article from now on. So you can expect a new article sometime in June. Obviously any guest articles will be a bonus in the month, in which they arrive, but they've been pretty thin on the ground so don't expect many of them. This week I'll address Biokiste . This is another positive development of the corona crisis. For some weeks we have been receiving a crate (see picture) of fresh fruit and veg, One can pretty much choose the contents but we seldom deviate far from the standard offering. Every Thursday, we could receive, for example, some tomatoes, parsnip, asparagus, carrots, lettuce, mushrooms, onions and then some of the following fruit; apples, bananas, blueberries etc..  As you...

I could not have picked a better time, during which to be housebound. Oh, is it very inconvenient for you? not to be able to leave the house, or dart to the shops to grab a bit of fruit, or whatever, well, welcome to my world. Claire wonders how I do it. I just do, but hopefully I can give you some pointers that can help. My first piece of advice is around sleep. I recommend using this forced lull to improve your sleeping habits. 7-9 hours is the recommended amount of sleep a human requires in order to function correctly the next day. I recommend experimenting by starting to aim for 9, slowly curtailing your slumber daily until you find the optimal duration for you, because it's different for everyone. Further to this, I recommend adhering to the old adage, as though going to bed early and waking early will make you healthy, wealthy and wise. This has the added bonus of regulating a healthy diet, consisting of three square meals, no snacking. The secret to fending off boredom, ...

As the title suggests, I'm going to talk once more about my double vision. What do you mean that wasn't clear? OK, I'll admit it, that was a cynical ploy by me to appeal to my Japanese and Honduran readerships. More on that in the Appeal section. One of the many take-homes I had from Autonomie was a factoid I learned from my Logopädin. Namely, the reason for the ubiquitous eye-patch seen on a pirate, is not what you might believe. My memories of pirates, from my childhood, were based on the stereotypical pirate with the eye-patch and hook-for-a-hand. I put 2 and 2 together, with no google to research, and deduced that he must have accidentally gouged his eye out. I thought it was safe to assume that an eyepatch is to prevent infection of, and staring at, a wound the pirate had received or inadvertently given to himself. I could not have been more wrong. As I have since confirmed, the eye-patch was used unintuitively to give the wearer the power to see in the dark. Imag...

Happy brain injury awareness month! I failed in my new year's resolution, to submit an article each week. This necessitates two actions. Firstly, and most importantly, I need to urge you to submit a guest article, as I've said, in any language, declan.treanor@gmail.com -- we have google translate, so it's not too much to expect readers of this blog to use it -- and, secondly, I mean to compensate for a weak February, with a busier-than-usual March. We might even break our current record of 8 in a single month. This month is perfectly primed for a record, given that it started with a weekend and has 31 days. Last weekend, I enjoyed a visit from my friends Cathal and Stephen. As you can see Cathal introduced sophistication to Bergedorf with his coat. It even got its own seat on the plane, both ways. This was helped by the corona virus, but who'd expect a coat like that to have to stay crumpled in a ball in the overhead luggage compartment? ...

As promised, here is my review of the wonderful establishment, that is  Autonomie Therapiezentrum Aschaffenburg .  I have it on good authority that their website will be updated soon. I made it home on Friday with the help of Claire's brother, Jack. This was my second 2-week period of neuro-rehabilitation there, and it won't be my last, here's why: They offer an intensive neuro-rehabilitation program, consisting of Logopädie (speech, in my case), Ergotherapie (equivalent to occupational therapy), and, of course, Physiotherapie. All this therapy occurs, for the most part, with the aid of  'cutting-edge' technology, with an emphasis on the brain. So, the clientele include patients with neurological conditions, such as Stroke, Parkinsons and TBI. The practice is staffed with young, enthusiastic people, complete with murals such as the following on the wall. Thanks to therapy that focused on my breathing, while talking, the logopaedie helped me to make gain...