Happy Brain Injury Awareness Month

First and Foremost Happy Brain Injury Awareness Month. I am roudly wearing my wrist bracelet.

As always I am continuing to talk and improve awareness of brain injury. I also am trying to find a way to get a national Brain Injury fund raising event started that is just for Brain Injury, however that's another blog entry for another day.

I have been pushing myself pretty hard, I have found a job and just working an 8 hour day pushes my cognitive limits. Physically I am ok, it's the mental of the day that just makes it nearly impossible to do anything else but work. I am often exausted by the time I come home and all I can think about is what I am doing the next day.

I have been trying to get involved socially, with friends and family, and continue with the brain injury world close to me. I am pushing my limits and recently had a pretty bad crash.

I have found that for me, prepping really hard for my day makes it go really well. Having the right gear, habits, co-workers and schedule makes a huge difference. I just have what I need when I need it. While this may sound like common sense, if you think of the things you will do today it get's very difficult to plan every single step from socks, to bus pass, to random events that can just happen.

The other day I had a few errands to do and I lost my bus pass along the way and that just screwed my perfectly planned day right up. Shut me down. I was cooked.

I am also playing with some help some medication. The first 5 years after my injury I did all the cognitive training things, I tried everything I could think of, suggested to me, seemed like a good idea at the time, no idea was to crazy to try, and I believe I reached the limit of what I could achieve.

I achieved allot. I mean I am walking and talking, I am able to work, I can live independently, however I still rely on a lot of "aids" from other people, electronics, strategies, nothing is organic anymore. Every though, every step is prepared, planned, and I am very rarely away from a helping hand. The idea of being able to have an truly independent day again is, well, a dream.

One of the things that has allawys kind of bugged me about some brain injury sights, books, speakers (not all but enough i need to mention it) is this idea that "I survived a brain injury and it was hard, but I have succeeded and life is great now" That to me is a load of shit.

Life is not great now, yes I survived, yes I am grateful, yes I am "successful" yet the reason for that is because I have learned to live with my disability. I have not fixed the issue. I have just "handled it". So I won't through a bunch of crap out there and pretend life is all gold lined potato chips ( I don't know what those are but I want one).

I went from earning a decent income to earning minimum wage. While I am happy I am working and that I can contribute to the household, it still leaves me one paycheck away from huge financial issues. This is not right.

So my next step is to start using "smart drugs" I am have been using stimulants (think of Ritalin and the like) I am also trying out Human Growth Hormones. The theory behind this is to increase the rate of new cell growth and pathway building in my body.

Now I need to put in a clause here. This is something I have chosen to do for myself. I am working very closely with two doctors and a neurologist. This is at the cutting edge of brain injury recovery stuff here. I have become my own advocate and done my own research and then taken these findings to truly educated people and experts in there field. I am closely monitored and don't do anything with a whole lot of "pro's and con's" and close discussion with my wife.

The stimulants have seemed to allow me to turn off the "flooding" allowing me to focus on one task at a time. I recently went two days without the stimulant do to my bad planning and scheduling my Dr's appt. I noticed within the second day that I had a massive anxiety attach, I got confused and got lost and things like finding my way to work were 10 times harder. I was checking and rechecking everything I did. I had not been like this for a couple of years. This was a huge sign to me.

I am more productive, individual, and can accomplish more things. It took trying several diffeent stiumlants and finding the right dose but over all I would say it has improved my cognitive skills. I can actually play a brain injury game and see a difference. That speaks volumes to me.

I am going to start taking Steroids, yup I am going to roids. However they are not so I can get huge in the gym. Its so that I can increase some of the essential chemicals that my glans no longer produce like they did before my brain injury. This will start tomorrow and I will keep you posted.

Check out this guy as well. Troys Run  Troy is a TBI survivor as well and is also running across Canada to raise awareness for TBI.

And please, please get in touch with Jodi Holmes Ginter. Jodi (and her boys) were a great part of my run. She has lot's of the Brain Injury braceletts she will send, so check out her facebook site, make a donation as I can attest the money goes to people who need it.

The movement is on people!! let's change the world. 

My Hardware is Broken.

My Hardware is Broken.

Do to some recent setbacks I have been having a hard time staying positive. It’s not that I won’t be positive again; it’s that I am just going through the frustration of, yet again, another setback after my injury.

You see I am a little naïve. I believed in all the recovery promises. That if I went to the right Doctors, followed the rehab protocol, registered with social service and sought out the services that are offered for brain injury survivors and I put in the work, that there would be eventual pay off.

And I worked hard. I spent my first year just relearning how to learn. Putting up with the bureaucratic bullshit of social service, insurance companies and all the rhetoric of a medical system that likes to sound good, but acts in the opposite. Falling through the cracks and missing out on valuable resources.  Dealing with huge corporations who market how “socially connected they are” yet offer absolutely no social resources, care, or concern for anything but the bottom line for them. I stood up I walked, I ran, I ran across the country.

I attempted to go back to school, I took out student loans. I got in touch with the disability resources for going back to school. I worked so hard. I worked until I was exhausted; I put everything I had into it. It did not work.

So I tried again, and again, I worked myself into mental and physical exhaustion.

I screamed for help from government, from friends, from family. I screamed until I had no move voice in me. I have listened to everyone, from shrinks, to psychologists, speech pathologists, brain injury survivors. I have read books, I have gone to yoga, meditation, I have had sleep deprived EEG’s, I have been poked, prodded, squeezed, analyzed, neglected, “at a boy’d”, talked down to, disrespected and disregarded.

I am clinically depressed, I have an anxiety disorder, I suffer from exhaustion because I don’t sleep. I am broke and in so much debt. The banks don’t care about the brain injury, they don’t care about the run, they don’t care about the progress I have made, or how “I have come accept my situation”. That’s great, I accept it. I accept the fact that I can’t work full time. I get the fact that I am “difficult” for other people.  I accept the fact that I can’t be relied upon, that my family won’t talk to me, that my friends have to focus on their own shit and not mine. I accept all of it. Now what?

My computer is broken. I keep trying to change the software, thinking an update or a new version will work. However I keep running in to the same issues. I keep thinking of fixing the software, but it’s the hardware that is damaged. No matter what I do, I can’t fix that. That is hard to deal with. I don’t think I have accepted that yet. I don’t know if I want to accept it.

What will acceptation bring? That I am almost 40 and I will never earn more than minimum wage part time? That my wife and I will never be out of debt? We will spend the rest of our lives working until exhaustion just to stay broke? We will never be able to afford children, a pet, or improve the quality of our life. I accept this. So what?

What happens next? This? This is it? I mean I am not starving, I have a home, I have food in my belly. So I am grateful. So the next 30 or so years of my life are to fight every day, mentally, physically, spiritually, to maintain this.

I am not trying to be negative, I am really trying to see the positive, where is it? The hardware is not going to change, so I need to change my outlook. I get it. How? How do I be OK with this? What steps do I take to accept this reality that this is as good as it’s going to get? How do I be ok with this?

My First Float Tank Experience

My First Float Tank Experience

 

I had my first experience in a float tank (Isolation tank) yesterday. I have been on a bit of a search as of late to find new ways to “work out” my brain. I mean if I can run across the Country, if I can complete an Ironman, if I can bush my physical limits. What will happen if I push my cognitive limits?

I have worked out my brain with programs, from simple things like Sudoku, Rubik’s cubes, Luminosity and lots of other so called “memory enhancers”. Do they work? I don’t know I still have brain damage. I do believe in brain plasticity. (oh Google  “neuroplasticity and meditation”. There are allot of scientific studies on the changes to brain “wiring” with meditation”)

So this lead meditation research led me to Isolation tank. An isolation tank in a nutshell is a removal of all stimuli, so no sounds, no light, and no gravity. The idea is to remove all external stimuli and leave you in an ability to focus on the internal mind.

You sit in water that is filled with Epson salts so you “float” in the water. The water temperature is a little bit warmer than body temperature. With no outward stimulus you have no choice but focus on where your brain goes.

This is the first time I noticed I have a wringing in my ears. I am sometimes aware of this ringing when I am trying to sleep at 4 am and it’s very quiet. However I usually think it’s my location to electronics, or electrical devices or just the sound of the building we are in. It is not. I have a wringing in my ears. I was able to just say “hey I have a wringing in my ears” and see where that took me. I did notice that the wringing slowly went away.

As there is no pressure anywhere on the body, I was able to really relax. I felt some muscles literally relax. A point in my shoulder just “let go” like a when you realize your holding your fist super tight and you let it go. There was a kind of a pop and what I know is a “lactic acid” release and some blood flow. As I don’t have to focus on finding a comfortable position, a nightly hassle for me when I try to sleep because of the damage to my body, I found new things I was unaware off. What I mean is what is normally hurting seemed to be more a result of me avoiding something else hurting.

That was the physical experience of the float tank, a nice warm, snuggly, place to just float without pain. This allowed to me really focus on “where my brain went”. The first thing I noticed was that annoying ringing. A few minutes of exploring that and I noticed the volume of the wringing went down.

I then noticed I was kind of in and out of a dreamlike state. It was similar to when you are trying to fall asleep and you start to kind of day dream. I noticed my thoughts went to roughly the same place. I kept thinking about Mandy. I kept thinking about a place where she is calm, relaxed, not stressed, and secure.

We both had jobs that provided a sense of financial security so she had the freedom to explore whatever she wanted to. That is where my thoughts kept going. Various scenarios, day dreams, hallucinations, whatever you want to call them of Mandy being able to relax.

So I explored what that looked like and what I could do. That lead me to being relaxed, being unstressed, calming down a bit and finding a place where I am secure and comfortable.

Then a dog barked. I was unable to get back to where I was and I felt like I had had enough. I was in there for close to two hours and yet I felt it was about 15 minutes.

I took the bus home and was able to keep the thought and started to plant the seed of how to make that “lucid” dream possible. That is where I am now.

It was very interesting to go into the tank. The tank is a run by a private group so if you are interested and live in the lower mainland let me know. I will pass along the information. I am going to respect their privacy and not give out the name and location.

I have been doing allot of research on meditation and my understanding now is that meditation is pretty simply to live in the moment. Feel what you feel, notice the little subtle things. The feeling of your butt on the seat, the sound of the keyboard as you type, the smells in the air, all the little details. Don’t judge, assume, just notice and explore. Let it be what it is, notice your reaction to things, don’t act on the reaction, but recognize it and ask “that’s interesting, why do I respond that way”.

I may be wrong but that’s my understanding after reading a couple things online and getting part way through a book. The scientific research (credible scientific research, double blind studies etc) also state that there is a physical change in the neural actions in brain. This just means the electronic firing in the brain actually changes direction and there seems to be evidence of “gray matter’ being rebuild, or increased. Again I am not a scientist these are my opinions and my interpretation of the evidence. So keep in mind I have a brain injury and I am bias. I want to believe in this. I want this to be true.

Today I am out for a long run, and then some training for some martial arts. I will post on that experience tomorrow. I am now telling myself I have had enough coffee and I am exploring how that makes me feel. ;’)

Nice Run Around Town by temporallobe at Garmin Connect - Details

Nice Run Around Town by temporallobe at Garmin Connect - Details

• Distance 11.77 km ( 7.31 M) 
• Weather 9 c (48 F) Ran and windy. 

Good run, a little wet but it was all good. 

Got a craving for Fish and Chips!! Came home and ate a Banana and some drinking some Green Tea!!

Time to stretch and prep dinner for when Mandy get's home

Just a little Jaunt by temporallobe at Garmin Connect - Details

Just a little Jaunt by temporallobe at Garmin Connect - Details

A little chilly. Not as chilly as some of the runs during the Run To Remember.

Ran (literally) into a friend. Vega ;') now I got some green tea steeping and great "go to" after exercise beverage, Chocolate Milk. I know, I know. It's cheep and it's convenient. Crap I sound like a justification for fast food. Sorry, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

Doing some research on Meditation and going to head to a meditation place here 

I don't know what to expect or what happens, however I will do some research and see if this helps "quite" my brain.

Feeling better after the run. Ok time to shower and stretch and eat. 

A quick little run to a job interview by temporallobe at Garmin Connect - Details

A quick little run to a job interview by temporallobe at Garmin Connect - Details

Yup I ran a to job interview. Hey I got hired!!

I am all out of my Vega Stuff, my Prepare, Sustain and Recover drink as well as my Vega whole food health optimizer (the new name is Vega One) You know what I find interesting about eating healthy. I actually feel the difference when I don't.

When you eat, not so healthy, you just don't notice. You sort of slip into this automatic state. When I eat healthy I feel more alive, I more energetic, quicker to laugh, a little more witty and I want to work out a little more. Really enjoy the moment.

When I don't eat well I still do all the same things, I just lack the spunk. Ya know.

So at the end of the month I will replace my Vega products. It is missed.

The run was wet, and cool. My kind of running. I ran to a job interview and it was not the kind of interview I needed to be dressed for. It went well and I have a part time on call job working events.

I also have a fancy dinner tonight with Mandy, Junko, and Sylvia at The Vancouver Brain Injury Fundrasing Gala.  So we all get to dress up and enjoy the high life for a night.

Getting a handle on the new prescription. I actually fixed a frustrating computer issue that I had. So all in all the combination of a successful job interview, a great run, and the satisfaction of solving a pc issue, and heading to dinner with some very pretty ladies. I am feeling good. 

Popping some Stumulants

So after the three day Brain Injury Conference and then an intense couple of days at the Personal Trainer school, I was spent.




Not only am I blogger for the Vancouver Marathon, but I also have to work out in the gym as part of my homework.




This was all while I was dealing with a serious bought of depression and anxiety over not finding a job.




So I spent a couple of days pretty depressed. Not running, not working out. Turns out I was having some manic episodes. So I headed to my Dr. and we are trying a new prescription.




Since my injury was in my Temporal lobe; the functions of the left temporal lobe are not limited to low-level perception but extend to comprehension, naming, verbal memory and other language functions, I have great difficulty in filtering.




This just means that when I am on the bus. I hear, smell, sense, respond to all stimuli the same way. My flight and fight responses are all out of walk. So my brain fires like it is in a constant state of flight or fight.




My brain reacts to the sound of the lady's cell phone beep the same way you would respond to someone driving there car at you.




When my wife sits down to me on the couch, my neurons fire the same way our ancestors did when they were attacked by animals.




I have learned to deal with this. I have some strategies I have learned to be calm. I have learned to not trust my own brain and my own judgment.




However I have not learned how to turn this response to stimulus off.




This is a similar stimulus response to ADHD. It's not that people with ADHD cannot concentrate, it's that they can't filter out what is important stimuli and what is irrelevant. So a stimulant like Ritalin is prescribed.




To someone with ADHD or a difficulty filtering, a stimulant will actually calm them down.


There are different types of attention, including selective attention, sustained attention, strategy development, flexibility and response inhibition. What I am hoping for with the stimulant is to help me 'filter' what I need to pay attention to, and help me 'skip' what I don't need.
















So yeah. I am on Ritalin. No run today. was really sick over the weekend and just getting back to normal.

25kl (15.53 miles) on the Treadmill

Been on the go since last Wednesday. The conference was so information packed. I screwed up my speech and ranted way to much. Then on Saturday I started a personal training course.

The homework is intense and I have just been moving so much. I took Monday off just to decompress and absorb.

On a positive side I got a BAS Body Action System the other day and put it together. It has been donated to me by North American Lifestyle Direct.

I have done an unboxing video and will upload it next week. Been a little busy.

I also went for a long run today. I hit 25kl (15.53 miles) on the treadmill. It was kind of gross outside and I figure after running across the country I did not have much to prove. So I wimped out and ran inside.

The personal training course I am taking is at Infofit and it is super intense. Great people the two instructors so far have been so good. I am learning allot and when you are in a room where the guy who just ran across the country is in the worse shape. Well let's just say I don't know how they do it. However I am learning!!

I feel sorry for my wife as she will be my guinea pig in the healthy lifestyle changes ;')

Still training for the Vancouver Marathon and pumping away in the gym. Need to study now. It takes me 8-10 times the time others do to even have a chance at retaining information.

Oh I also learned for people with short term memory loss that stimulants, like Ritalin, may help me keep focus longer. This increases the time my brain has to make a neurological link. The idea being that the longer I have to process something the more likely it is to stick.

So I am going to talk to my Dr. about it on Monday. Ok time to clean, laundry, make dinner and study!!

22nd Pacific Coast Brain Injury Conference

All I can say is Wow. What a conference. I am so mentally drained. It was so much information. So many fantastic people.

The big things that I took home from this for me personally were I need to research more on Trauma and how the psychological ramifications of what happens after we have suffered a trauma. I never thought of that.

I studied memory, temporal lobe's, some psych, and other things. I learned how to manage anger, frustration, mood swings. I studied Anxiety disorders, I studied depression. I never looked into trauma.

So I grabbed Dr. Gaber Mate's books and started read. Let' see where the journey of understanding trauma takes me.

I was unable to do any running this week. I was working hard doing some dry walling for a friend then three days at the 22nd Pacific Coast Brain Injury Conference

I also start an intense training tomorrow to become a licenses personal trainer at Infofit  So it has been an intense week and it doesn't look like it's going to slow down.

However the one thing that has missed has been my running. I really feel it as well. I need to move. So I am hoping Monday I can go for a nice long run. I am planning on hitting the 32km mark and just going for a really nice, long slow run. Empty my head and just move.

Crap I need to sleep. My head was way over stimulated.

Feeling so much better after my run

Oh the joy of brain injury and short term memory loss.

The last couple of days have left me mentally shot. I did not want to get up today. I slept like crap and did not want to move.

I have the most amazing wife who made me some good old fashioned steel cut oats this morning.

I dragged my lethargic ass out of bed and walked with her to Starbucks in my pajamas. Yup. It was one of those days.

She made a great effort to cheer me up and it worked.

I got back home and checked my email, watched the news and looked outside. Cold and wet. Then I when I was running through the Rocky Mountains and in St Johns in -10 degree weather and a snow storm. This made me remember the joys of an indoor treadmill with a tv on it.

So off to the gym I went. It's in imperial (miles) instead of metric (kilomotemtes) but I packed in 12 miles in a slow 2:20. I started of very slow. Not really wanting to run. However there was a "Walking Dead" marathon on and I got hooked.

People came and went in the gym. I got some energy with my Vega sports.

I did some basic push-ups and sit-ups and few upper body weights.

Got home and realized I forgot my phone and some of my workout equipment.

So I had my recovery drink, and some apples and now I am heading out.

Always feel better after a run.

Workout after Run

So I came home after my run. It was a pretty intense hill training day. I then decided to do some weights. So thinking a great idea after some hill running would be some supper sets

I hit the gym still sweaty from the run. I did some stretches and then I did this.


Superset 1:
Bench presses 5 20-6
Wide-grip barbell rows 5 15-8

Superset 2:
Incline barbell presses 5 10-15
T-bar rows 5 10-15

Superset 3:
Flat-bench dumbell flyes 5 10-15
Wide-grip barbell rows 5 10-15

Superset 4:
Dips 5 15
Close-grip chins 5 12

Stiff-arm pullovers 5 15-20

So after barely making it back to the apartment I then had some of Vega's Recover Protein.

When my wife called I was able to crawl to the phone. Honest. I got there. I had a huge bowl of salad about 200 cups of water. Then I was able to move my hands enough to type this.

I am sitting here in my head going "it's good pain, it's good pain".

Ok time for some bad tv because I don't think my arms could hold a remote for the video game.

GF Strong Attention Program

So today was my first session at GF Strong. I was there with a couple of other people that have survived TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury). We went through some attention drills and some tasks that help work the brain. The way I look at it is that I work my body with my Running, Swimming and Biking. So these are workouts for the brain.

What was really awesome was that I got to meet some people that are or have gone down the same road as I have. It was nice to talk to people that have the same struggles. I am looking forward to the 32 week program.

I will keep you up to date on my progress and any growth or improvements I notice. Check out GF Strong http://www.vch.ca/

Garmin nuvi 650. Navigation for the Brain Injured. Microsoft Racing Wheel & Chiropractor's

One of the issues I face, after my TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury), is finding my way around town. I grew up in B.C. and I know it like the back of my hand. After my accident I find it very difficult to "get my bearings" I no longer have the ability to register north and south. My internal GPS is broken. I got a Garmin 305 to help me when I ran (see previous posts). This was convenient for helping me keep track of where I was, and helped my get back to where I stated. It has a neat feature that sends you back to your starting position. Although I couldnt use it when I needed to drive to school, or go meet Mandy, or even find the local grocery store.

My parents had purchased a GPS for there car and loved it. The cost for a quality GPS though can be expensive. Needles to say, being a student, having a disability, and saving for my wedding, does not make for a financially profitable environment. So shelling out a few hundred bucks for car navigation didn’t seem like a priority.

We were at Costco one day and saw this nuvi 650



After thinking about it, Mandy and I decided to purchase it. What an amazing little device. It is quite intuitive and really easy to use. I mean if I can use it with my damaged brain imagine what you can do with it!

If you are a person with a brain injury or know someone who has had one, or if you just get lost really easy, this thing greatly reduces stress. It also stops those arguments we all have, when we get lost,and the subsequent argument that starts with the navigator/spouse!!

I threw my back out the other day and my Dr. recommended a Chiropractor who has not only fixed my back but fixed some the things that I have been complaining about for years. He was a real, down to earth, kind of guy to. I am also getting clinical massages that are helping me out.

I purchased the Microsoft Racing Wheel and the thing rocks. I use it with my Pyramat Gaming Chair. So I get to sit in my little gaming chair and then set up my racing wheel, and go for a drive. Loving it!!

The wedding planning is continuing. I got a great suit at Holt Renfrew fitted just for me. The cool thing is, while the suit may be hot for a Hawaii wedding. I will have a gorgeous suit I can use later on. I have never owned such a nice piece of clothing.

We are currently viewing a few photographers. The wedding will be in Hawaii, but we are going to have a Chinese ceremony in Vancouver. So we are looking for a photographer for that. Other than that, nothing else is really new.