First-person brain injury/concussion stories

• An invisible illness
  “Each moment is truly a gift.”
• I got a terrible concussion – but it taught me the joy of resting, doing absolutely nothing
  “Spending a week in bed – mostly sleeping – feels strange. This is the thing we crave and fear.”
• Diary of a concussion
  “Our brain is a gelatinous mass, floating in a pool of cerebrospinal fluid inside your skull.”
• My Concussion Taught Me Everything We Don’t Know About Concussions
  “I found solace in other people’s concussion stories.”
• How Relationships Can Change After a Brain Injury
  “If you want to support a loved one who has TBI, drop the expectation of what they are supposed to be.”
• How My Traumatic Brain Injury Makes Me Feel Like a Vampire
  “I honestly had no idea what being a vampire was like until I acquired my subarachnoid hemorrhage.”
• Brainstorm: How my ‘mild concussion’ became a dizzying, year-long ordeal
  “Useless. Helpless. Confused. That was how I felt. Who knew my family doctor felt that way, too?”
• Mike Janzen’s Lenten journey
  “Every day I thought: I might get better, I might get better!”
• I Know the Secret to the Quiet Mind. I Wish I’d Never Learned It
  “Perhaps I have discovered the secret to a peaceful mind, and it is traumatic brain injury.”

Articles

• How my dryer door gave me a concussion
  “Determining how to treat symptoms long-term and appreciating how they drive each other is probably more art than science.”
• Many Covid patients have memory problems months later, new study finds
  “Currently, therapy that helps people work around their deficits is the only treatment.”
• Menopause and Alzheimer’s
  “Women’s brains age differently than men’s brains.”
• Study shows ‘disastrous’ damage in brains of retired CFL players
  “In some cases, the EEG results from players were no different than the results that would be seen in some types of coma patients.”
• How Exercise Shapes You, Far Beyond the Gym
  “Physical activity boosts short-term brain function and heightens awareness.”
• The Running Novelist
  “The main thing was not the speed or the distance so much as running every day, without fail. So, like eating, sleeping, housework, and writing, running was incorporated into my daily routine.”
• How writing a novel helped Christopher Meades learn to speak again
  “I really think it was having this as a project, having this as a driving force, something to do with my life and a goal, something I wanted to achieve.”
• Mild brain injury? That’s a misnomer
  “There was a lot of ‘noise’—more brain areas being activated to cope with the same processes than a normal volunteer. [Their brain activity] seems to be more disorganized and inefficient.”
• Eight seconds: The life and death of a cowboy
  “We have a gladiator love for each other.”
• The Healing Power of Yoga for Brain Injuries
  “When you have a TBI, your brain is going in 100 different directions at one time.”
• Oliver Sacks: The Healing Power of Gardens
  “In many cases, gardens and nature are more powerful than any medication.”
• Women getting head injuries from partners at a higher rate than hockey players getting concussions, UBC researcher says
  “For every NHL player who suffers a concussion during the season, picture 7,000 Canadian women suffering the same injury.”
• Amplify: How my concussion changed my relationship with success
  “The concussed condition was an intimation of how terrifying dementia and other brain disorders must feel — the loss of a thread that has so far tied together one’s life and tethered it to the lives of those one loves.”
• Do Brain Injuries Affect Women Differently?
  “In the case of head trauma, almost all the attention is going to football — and so, by extension, to only one gender.”
• A Philosopher on Brain Rest
  “The concussed condition was an intimation of how terrifying dementia and other brain disorders must feel — the loss of a thread that has so far tied together one’s life and tethered it to the lives of those one loves.”
• I Got A Concussion And It Derailed My Whole Life
  “For all of my adult life ― and most of my adolescent one, too ― productivity had been my driving force.”
• Four Unexpected Ways We Experience Grief
  “The word grief has come to be understood solely as a reaction to a death. But that narrow understanding fails to encompass the range of human experiences that create and trigger grief.”
• The Smell Of The Rain Reduces Stress And 7 Other Benefits Of Walking In The Rain
  “The presence of rain carries many benefits.”
• How to Feel Your Feelings and What That Will Do for Your Life (Everything!)
  “Every feeling has a message.”
• Doctors in Scotland can now prescribe nature to their patients
  “The evidence for the benefits of nature on mental and physical health are numerous.”
• Scientists Show How Gratitude Literally Alters The Human Heart & Molecular Structure Of The Brain
  “Happiness is an inside job.”
• A Lineman Became a Doctor, but Dementia Made Him Retire. He’s Only 42.
  “My daughter asks me: ‘Daddy, is your brain getting better?’” Abraham said. “And my heart breaks because I know the answer is no.”
• For the Holidays, the Gift of Self-Care
  “The main point is how to accept yourself when you are living in a world striving for perfection all the time.”
• In a fast-paced world, walking is a ‘radical’ act, says Norwegian explorer
  “Life is long if you use it in a good way.”

Books

• 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works — A True Story by Dan Harris
  “Learn how to be happy before anything happens.”
• Brainlash: Maximize your recovery for mild brain injury by Gale Denton.
  “What did you wish for before you blew out your candles?”
• Conquering Depression and Anxiety Through Exercise by Keith Johnsgard
  “Coming to grips with our own mortality can serve as a springboard for us to take personal responsibility for out mortal and physical health.”
• Falling into Now by Claire Smith
  “I’ve come to realize that excellence has a lot to do with how I feel about myself.”
• Gratitude by Oliver Sacks
  “At eighty-one, I still swim a mile a day.”
• Left Neglected
  “Pre-accident me is shaking her head in disapproval, wagging her index finger, and, calling me a slacker. But post-accident me tells her, in a firm and not-open-for-discussion voice, to lighten up and shush.”
• The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion by Christopher Germer
  “When we’re suffering and feel the urge to help ourselves, we’re experiencing self-compassion.”
• My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor
  “I spend a whole lot of time thinking about thinking because I find my brain so fascinating.”
• Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy by Sheryl Sandberg
  “The disappearance of one possible self can free us to imagine a new possible self.”
• Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha by Tara Brach
  “When we pause, we don’t know what will happen next.”
• The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown
  “Gifts like courage, compassion, and connection only work when they are exercised. Every day.”
• The Story You Need to Tell by Sandra Marinella
  “When we write, we are able to step back and remove ourselves from the unbearable.”
• True Refuge by Tara Brach
  “Wherever we feel most endangered, most separate, most deficient – that is where we need to shine the light of investigation.”
• What Makes Olga Run by Bruce Grierson
  “For building cognition, Sudoku is a shovel and exercise is a bulldozer.”
  “Learning languages… causes new neural connections to grow like asparagus.”
• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanith
  “Before my cancer was diagnosed, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. After the diagnosis, I knew that someday I would die, but I didn’t know when. But now I knew it acutely. “
• My Missing Peace by JoJo Marie Schillaci (2020) “I had spent my entire life running from demons, immersing myself in doing and not feeling.”

Audio & video

• Flooding – Becoming Overwhelmed After Brain Injury
• Wellness webinar: Depression, mindfulness and self-care
• Violinist plays Mahler and Gershwin as surgeons remove brain tumour

TBIs + Long Covid

• DU researchers look for point where concussions and long COVID intersect