Showing posts with label cognitive. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cognitive. Show all posts

Sunday, October 16, 2016

Disabled or Idiot?





This is what they get for not updating their records- a bright person in a supposedly unconscious body. Initial indicators pointed at permanent unconsciousness, but when did people gain the ability to see the future? It didn't go that way, though. I didn't fall into expectations. I'm not unconscious. Now I write this and it is ignored. "La, la,la, I can't hear you" is how I'm treated. Maybe they think I'll go away.

I did not get this way over-night. Much information has already been lost in the treatment and recovery of brain injury. I propose there are other less fortunate recoveries. For starters, there is an entire category called "semi-vegetative." One of which I am part of. This category starts as unconscious, but then starts to show signs of consciousness. I'd like to know when I am unconscious now. Is it when I am sleeping? If that is the case then I am permanently semi-vegetative. I would say some of the other people I have seen have returned to consciousness with cognitive damage (it appears to be severe). 

Those who were multiple language speakers need to be tested in their primary language. I remember a girl who reported her father did speak, but only to family from Thailand. He forgot English.

It has already been warned that a person can return to consciousness.
Severe brain damage represents an immense medical, social, and economic problem that warrants further research. Chronically unconscious or minimally conscious patients present unique problems for diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, and everyday management. Theyre vulnerable to being denied potentially life-saving therapy if clinical research remains solely focused on the acute stage of the disease. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1483158/

So people deserve it. They had already been warned.


This is probably what happened to me, "Their quantification of white matter reorganization shows long-distance rewiring in posterior medial cortices, possibly reflecting axonal sprouting or neurite outgrowth, maybe even related to neurogenesis (known to occur primarily in associative cortices in normal primates)." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1483158/

I have this written elsewhere and it is much simpler, http://braininjuryknow.blogspot.com/2013/04/getting-there.html
"The nerve fibers from the cells were severed, but the cells themselves remained intact." Nerve cells that have not died can form new connections." 


I have been writing on-line for folks who have brain injuries, disorders, or are just interested. I have some background in the area and a brain injury of my own. I've taught (last was a lecture in 2002 on Special Needs Children). Writing this stuff on the brain comes natural. 

In my case, those tiny "nerve fibers" seen in the study of the man who was in a coma nearly 20 years would have hooked up to my cognition areas. If you knew me before, then you are not surprised by me writing this. My old cognition areas were known to be quite high. (High enough to attract a school psychologist when I was 9.)

The brain is more than cognition. It is also motor skills. Gee, I don't walk and I typed all of this with my left index finger. I'd say there is brain damage to the motor areas of my brain. There is nothing wrong with my thinking.

Brain damage makes me disabled. It does not make me an idiot.


YES, SOMEONE IS IN THERE.
They can't nod because there are no motor skills.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Working My Way Back To You

Do you remember this?

 

That's a bit like what I've done. There isn't any technology, though. I'm all natural me. I have used technology. I've used it to communicate. Like right now to type this I've used one hand, yet I've done things requiring two (like capitals).

It has probably taken me so long because it is natural. It has meant doing the same thing everyday for the last few years. A special education teacher who has had  the same student for 5 yrs would know what I mean. Ask any PT (or an OT, or a special ed teacher) you will make progress, although it may be slow.

That's what I am doing with my motor skills. I am slowly making progress. But my cognitive skills are a different story. Cognitively I'm okay.You're supposed to be messed up after a brain bleed like mine. I'm not, and in some ways "better than before (like the video says). That would have to do with re-wiring, which takes more time than allowed by current insurance for rehab.

Now, I'm just working my way back.


Early On

Last Hospital

Now At Home
Before


You can see I'm getting back (You can actually see it in photos!).