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I’m baaaaack

I took a break from this blog.

The break turned into a hiatus. The hiatus to an absence. And now, here I am – more than two years since the last helping from the Brainfood Cafe.

The point of the break-hiatus-absence was to focus my writing on finishing my book – the tale of an average fella who one day wakes up dazed and confused with a misfiring melon.  As you may recall from past blogs, it turns out that this fella – me – had a stroke, losing the ability to read, write and do arithmetic. My memory was shot and much of my cognitive skills were set back 40 years or so. Not too good as I was 45 when the stroke struck.

Me, my lady & my girls.

I figured finishing the book would take a few weeks. Maybe two or three months.

As well as I’ve recovered from the stroke, my math must still not be too great ‘cause I didn’t put a bow on the book until the summer. This past summer — 2020 COVID-19 Summer.

Why so long?

Because it was damn hard. Re-living the worst months of my existence took an emotional toll and required regular stoppages to reset my mind and rest my soul. And I had to get the writing right. Hemmingway said writing is easy, just sit down at the typewriter and bleed. There’s even more bloodletting when what you’re writing about is so personal. In the book I write about demons that haunted me as I fought to recover. Those demons also struck me as I wrote, making me question my words and my recovery.

But I finished.

And that felt great. My life’s goal was to write books, which is why I became a newspaper reporter way back when. It made sense at the time, but that trade left me with a lot of good ideas and partially thought-out beginnings. After career changes and years of starts and stops with my writing, along came the stroke, wiping away my ability to read and write and presumably putting a definitive end to my dream.

But now the dream is reality (I hate when cliches fit).

I’ll never forget the morning early this past June when I stopped typing, re-read what I’d just finished and realized that this was it with the book. I’d tied the yarn together, it was complete. At least complete enough to get it out in front of other sets of eyeballs.  My bride, Patricia, had a final read for me with some suggestions. Then I reached out to writer friends of mine about agents and advice on the path to publishing. I got some great feedback and advice.

Edmonton writer Wayne Arthurson (The Traitors of Camp 133, Fall From Grace, The Red Chesterfield) gave my yarn a spin and suggested an epilogue. That was a brilliant idea. Then it turned out that Wayne is also working as a successful agent. We shook hands electronically and Wayne is now shopping my book around.

I’ve been warned about how hard it is to get a book published. Told not to get my hopes up. Cautioned how difficult it is even to get a good publisher to just read a synopsis. But so far, Wayne has managed to get these folks to take notice.  I’ve even had the most inspiring rejection that I could ever imagine from a major publisher.

“Tim writes with poise and emotion (not surprising given the ordeal he’s been through!) and I feel he has a good voice here, and a sense of what he wants to convey.”

This publisher feels that my book isn’t the right fit for his company, but also believes that it is worthy of seeing the light of day in book stores.  I’ll take that – for now.

 At last count, five publishers are considering my yarn. It really feels like this thing will be hitting store shelves and e-readers sooner or later.

So, with that happening, I figured, the extended Brainfood hiatus is over.  I can take you all on the journey with me as I wait for news on a publisher, write about the talks I’m preparing to start giving again and share with you the new writing I’m working on. Oh, and you’ll also get the scoop when a publishing deal is (is, not if it is) struck.

The other inspiration for getting back on the blog horse is the milestone I hit while we were all dealing with the new Covid-19 realities. March 15 marked 10 years since my mind was sizzled by the stroke. My plan had been to celebrate that day with a book on store shelves and an incredible trip somewhere. I didn’t finish writing in time for that and the Coronavirus killed the dream of sipping Corona beer on a warm beach, in any case.

So, while I put all that on hold, I want to get back to writing stories that inspire stroke survivors, and the people who love them. Stories about different paths to recovery and to great new normals that can be even better than before. Like, for instance, writing a book after a stroke wiped out your ability to read and right 😊.

I also want to write more about the big beautiful brains we all have and explore with readers how to get the most out of them, how to treat them with the love and kindness that will keep them firing on all cylinders. And that can maybe coax just a bit more brain power out of ‘em, too.

All of this is what you can expect in future helpings of Brainfood.

Stay tuned!

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RIP John Le Carre

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Sometimes breaking vows is a good thing. I think.

I vowed that I wouldn’t blog again until I’d finished my book.

Well, I haven’t quite finished that humdinger yet, so it seems the fact that you’re reading this is pretty clear evidence that I’m breaking that vow.

For new readers or those who’ve forgotten what I’m on about, I’m penning the story of the stroke that sizzled my brain’s ability to read and write, made a sieve of my memory and took my average-ish math skills to a new low. That’s among other important, life altering things. Generally speaking, I was not capable of doing meaningful work or meaningful just about anything.

But I battled back and — despite some pretty deep scars — I’ve made quite a remarkable recovery.  Even if I do say so myself.

dontevergiveup

What gnaws at me, though, is I promised myself if I ever got my words back, I wouldn’t let them go to waste. I’d write the books that I’d been putting off all my life, either too afraid of failure or too lazy pre-stroke to complete.

But even for an ex newspaper reporter well accustomed to pumping out copy every day, writing a book is quite a grind. Especially, it seems, when virtually every page conjures up painful memories. I’ve had to put together a process that works for me and my turtle slow, technology aided reading style. And that’s taken some time to figure out and try to perfect.

At the same time, I’ve had to learn to deal with the gut ripping pain that reliving the memories of my brain battle conjures up. Hemmingway, I believe, said that writing is easy – just sit down at the type writer and bleed. OK. But sometimes I need a tourniquet when I’m penning this brain battle stuff. It’s good not to forget, but it’s also hell to remember.

Sadly, what I’ve noticed is that dealing with the hurt sometimes – often, actually – has led me down the path of avoidance. Back to that old nemesis of wasted time.

There are loads of powerful quotes that drive home the importance of spending one’s time well. Stuff like:

Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can’t afford to lose. ~Thomas Edison.

An ounce of gold will not buy an inch of time. ~Chinese Proverb.

Until you value yourself, you will not value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it. ~M. Scott Peck.

Those quotes have a sting to ‘em for me. Especially that last one. But what really stings is that I’ve been battling this wasted time demon going way back to high school. That’s when my amazing English teacher John Rollins gave me a graduation present in the form of a short letter. The gist of his epistle was that hours turn to days, days to weeks and weeks to years in the blink of an eye. He warned that I wouldn’t want to blink too many times and find that my aspirations were untried with the last few minutes on the clock of life ticking away.

It struck me as I’ve been working on the book in recent days that time can be pretty cruel, even when it’s not wasted. Things – life itself – can end pretty abruptly. Even with my best efforts I may never get to see my book completed or published whether or not it finds its way to bookshelves and e-readers.

I’m not meaning to be a downer, but it’s true.

Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy novels are worldwide best sellers that have been turned into movies. One was a Hollywood block buster. But he died of a heart attack at age 50 before seeing the success that was coming for his stories.

Pondering some recent events, it struck me that I’ve been wasting the gift of blogging. Its instant nature means that no matter what, I can get at least some of my story out there every week. If all goes well, a book, maybe books and who know what else will follow. But nothing can stop the blog. Nothing can stop it but me, that is.

So Brain Food is back, not instead of my book and not as a drain on the process of writing it.  It’s back as a piece of the pie. And if I lose my way again?

Well, if I start feeling lazy, there is Simon Fitzmaurice to think about. If he can’t inspire effort and dogged determination, there is no hope of inspiration. In 2008 the multi award winning writer and film director was diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, as it is also known.

He was just 34 with a young family.

The determined Irishman had two more children following his diagnosis and kept on writing. He uses a wheelchair and is attached to a ventilator that enables him to breath. He can’t speak and he’s immobile. But he continues to write and communicate using his eyes via an eye-gaze computer.

I can’t imagine how tough that must be. It seems that it would be furiously frustrating and that it would be simple – understandable, even – to give up. But Simon doesn’t seem to think that way. In fact, he wrote and directed his first feature length film, My Name is Emily. And it wasn’t just good for a guy with disabilities. It won a wack of awards last year.

Amazing. Inspiriting!

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Oliver Sacks – an inspiration to all, especially those of us with sizzled noggin!

I was sad – at first – when I saw the news Sunday night that Oliver Sacks had passed away. The writer and neurologist died following a battle with cancer at age 82.

But when my frown on this news turned quickly into a smile, I realized that this was a man who really lived and that no passing like his can spend much time on the gloom before being overwhelmed by the joy and healing he provided so, so many. Both through his words and science

I never got to meet Oliver Sacks. For that I’m sad. But I did correspond with him once through his assistant and a note that he sent me that I’ll always treasure. Not long after my stroke, as I was struggling to learn to read and write again, I stumbled on to a BBC piece featuring some of his cases. One was about the Canadian crime writer, Howard Engel, whose words had been taken from him following a stroke.

It was the first time I’d heard of anybody with stroke damage remotely like my own. And it was my first time seeing Oliver Sacks through the broader lenses of his amazing work.

I connected with Engle and Sacks within days of seeing the piece. And I started to devour their books with this new lens.

There are loads of docs out there and likely many more writers. I can’t think of many whose work has touched so many people so profoundly. One of Oliver Sacks’ careers would have been a huge blessing to the world. How awesome and inspiring it is that his life was so profound and unselfish serving as both a writer and a neurologist!

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Wow, thanks!

It may not be Thanksgiving, but with Canada Day and Independence Day this past week and with summer in full swing, it’s pretty hard not to be thinking about what a fella is thankful for.

There’s life itself, great parents, an amazing wife and daughters who’ve managed not to inherit my faults and have taken in all the good stuff – and there’s plenty of that — their mom was able to pass on to them.

There are friends, travel, work, volunteering and seemingly random experiences that have enriched me and challenged my thinking.

There’s also a great country and province to call home, a place where the son of a bricklayer and secretary gets the same breaks and has the same opportunities as anybody else.

Of course, there’s also the shite. But there’s even stuff to be thankful for there.

Post stroke Tim looks at a stunning mountain range, a perfectly maintained ’64 Porsche and hears the subtleties of a Jimi Hendrix guitar solo differently than pre stroke Tim did. The moment isn’t to be taken lightly; I drink it in and savor the taste. I try to lock it in my memory banks as brain food to draw on later. This sounds a little dorky when I play it back out loud with my robo reader.

But it is what it is. And it’s true.

Post-stroke, I write every day, I put out this blog, I’m sprucing up a book and I may even have a bead on a publisher. Pre-stroke Tim mostly just thought about writing.

I’m also thankful for timing and science.

If I’d stroked out when Canada was born – 148 years ago – I’d have been done for. The damage would have been even worse and the rehab non-existent.  I can’t bear to think about what life would have been like if I’d had a family. I’d have been useless to them and myself.

Even if I’d stroked out 10 or 20 years ago, I’m not so sure that I’d be working and living a life I’d call living.  There has been loads of improvement in stroke awareness and treatment. I’m sure that I benefited from this knowledge and thank God for that.

Had I stroked out today in another part of the world, I fear that my brain buzz would have had more dire consequences.  Would I have gotten the treatment I needed when I needed it? Time is money when it comes to this stuff. The more a brain fries, the more damage is done. And that makes it much harder to put humpty dumpty back together again.

I sometimes wonder if there’s another guy about my age who stroked out at the same time that I did in the same part of the brain, the only difference being that he lived in a part of the globe without the access to care that I had. What’s that guy’s life like today?

Yikes.

I’m also thankful that there’s hope today for the hell and the fear that people are facing right this second. I’m thankful that there are folks – like you and me — that can lend a hand. And that there’s hope for a lot of great moments to come.

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Dummy! Or, stupid is as stupid does

Brain buzz or no brain buzz, I can be a first class fool. And, sadly, I can’t blame it on sizzling my melon when I stroked out.

Last week I was cut off while driving.

“Idiot!” I shouted to myself in the car as I hammered on the horn. “Where do these people learn to drive?”

A day or two later, I cut somebody off. I figured it out when their horn sounded an attack. They went with a long first trumpet then followed with a series of short bursts. It sounded to me like; “Idiot! Where did you learn to drive?”

“Jerk,” I thought. “He must have been speeding. Where’d she come from, anyway? I bet they changed lanes. Where do these people learn to drive?”

It was only later that I pondered my reactions. What did I mean when I thought “these people?” I didn’t see the driver in either case. Man, woman, young, old, race, I had no clue. Did I have an unfortunate stereotype of what a bad driver looks like? My pondering made me uncomfortable, so I shelved it.

But I couldn’t forget what shelf it was in and I had to open it up again when I went out for a walk with my wife a little while later. Patricia is convalescing from a major, painful and scary surgery. Among other things, it’s made it tough for her to walk. And speed, right now, is not an option. But she has to walk as part of the rehab.

Some of this walking has been outdoors, but shopping malls have a nice even track with no worry of rain or wind, so we’ve made use of them.  The down side of malls is that they can be very busy. And choppers and staff are often intensely focused, determined and aggressive as they get from their Point A to Point B. I’ve learned they’re not super keen about slowing down to get around slow pokes convalescing from major surgery.

Now, the surgery was such that I can’t have my bride getting checked by aggressive mall types.  So, I’ve developed a few blocking techniques. Turns out that those years spent playing football weren’t a waste of time even if there was no room in the pros for a 5’10’ slow corner linebacker and special teams dude. I know how to block and, if necessary, how to tackle. Maybe not to the level needed in the NFL or CFL, but I do fine in a mall.

However, needing to run interference to protect Patricia from contact while in a shopping mall put me in an ugly game day state of mine. And I’d become tense and angry that people were putting her in harm’s way.

“Can’t people see that you’re not ship shape?” I steamed. “Jerks. Where did these people learn to drive, I mean, walk through a mall?”

Then Patricia said something I hadn’t considered. Something that somebody with my history of stroke and being the one time victim of stereotypes should have had top of mind.

“You don’t know what’s going on with them, Tim, just like they don’t seem to know what’s going on with us,” she said. “Maybe their boss just screamed at them, or fired them. Maybe their child or their mom is in the hospital.”

In Patricia’s job she drives a lot from client to client and walks through harried stores. She always has stories about bizarre road mayhem.  So if she can throw out a little empathy I suppose I can. And should.

She made me think about a story I heard Stephen Covey tell years ago when I went to an event he spoke at in Edmonton. Covey was a thought provoking speaker and the author of many books including The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

On the day I heard him, Covey told of being on a New York City subway on a weekend morning when a man walked on with a pile of rambunctious kids. To hear Covey tell it, they were running amuck on the train, yelling, knocking in to people while the dad did nothing.

Covey eventfully became too angry and frustrated to stay silent and asked the dad why he didn’t do something about his kids.

The dad, a stunned look on his face, took a peek at his marauding brood and said something like; “Ya, I guess I should. We’ve come from the hospital where there mother just died. I guess I just don’t know what to say or do.”

Covey told us that he immediately made the shift from anger to empathy. A few words changed everything. The circumstance made the facts seem different. Nothing practically had changed. Yet everything had changed.

We can wait for these shifts of points of view to happen and maybe they will or maybe they won’t. If Covey hadn’t said anything, he’d have left the train, angry about the many and disgusted with his children.  But, if as my wife suggests, we try to shift our point of view on our own, well, we’ll be in a better place. That’s good for our own minds and souls. And we may even be able to lend a hand to somebody else from time to time.

Go figure.

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Brainy laughs or, Keep chuckling to prevent madness

This week’s offering was born in a public men’s room at a highway diner outside of Red Deer, Alberta.

It was a Sunday evening and my wife, Patricia, and I were on our way back to Sherwood Park from a couple of days in Banff, where we’d gone to soak in the energy of the Rocky Mountains and to steel ourselves for some upcoming tricky business.

I spotted an odd sign the moment I stepped in to the men’s. It was hand written on white computer paper. It seemed very important, as if I’d better read it before doing anything else. So I put my stroke damaged free style reading skills to work to make out what it said. At turtle speed, I worked through the words. Then I shook my head and gave it a second scan, not sure that I’d gotten it right the first time.

But I had.

The sign said: As a courtesy to the next customer, please flush the toilet.

Now, I thought, why was that sign necessary? Then, before taking another step I had a second thought. If the sign was necessary, maybe I don’t want to be in here.

If I read this pre-stroke, I’d likely have paid it no attention.

But there’s something about putting extra effort into reading that makes a fella put a little more thought into the words read. It’s like investing the added time into making sense of the words has the effect of making you ponder those words more deeply once they’re worked through.

Over the past five years post having my reading skills buzzed by a stroke, public reading has led to some interesting times. Most signs and posters aren’t super text heavy. But one often encounters them on the move, so giving them a full read requires extra effort. And sometimes when I give this scan short shrift, skipping over parts or making assumptions, it’s let to some regrettable moments.

Sign art can ramp up my reading misfires, as well. A symbol or drawing that clearly means one thing to its creator is often clear as mud to me.

Recently out for dinner during a trip in Arizona I encountered unclear restroom door signage. Not an M and a W. Not a man picture and a woman picture. So, figuring I had a 50-50 chance of guessing right, I opened Door Number One.  The shrieks told me that I’d guessed wrong.

“Sorry,” I said, spinning around to door number two.

Earlier, I’d made a similar mistake in another eatery with creative restroom signage. This time I just wanted to wash my hands before dinner and had walked straight to a sink of the seemingly empty room. As I went to dry my hands I noticed a terrible thing.

No urinals.

Then I noticed that one of the stalls was in use. I had to get out of there pronto.  I started stepping toward the door, but I was too late. A woman opened the door before I reached it and gave me a confused look.

“You’re in the right place,” I told her. “I’m not.”

For me, when it comes to signage, globally recognized symbols are manna from heaven. Creativity and details are hell.  This is especially true while driving.

Traditional road signs are easy. Nice, simple symbols pretty much the same throughout Canada, the US and everywhere else I travel.  But street names, especially long one – Sir Winston Churchill Avenue – are trouble for me, often causing a missed turn or two if I don’t have a co-pilot.

That can make you feel like a dunce.

It’s the same but different for others who’ve suffered strokes and other attacks on their brains. Those whose speech is stilted often tell me they’re treated as stupid. People here how slow their words are, not the quality of what they say and they make judgments. They respond to them like they’re talking to a child. I don’t think that slow teachery talk is appreciated by kids and it’s much less so with adults struggling to get their words out.

Abnormal gaits to a person’s walking, wheel chairs and other ‘abnormalities’ seem to also have this ‘let’s treat them as though they’re stupid’ effect.

It’s very, very frustrating.  But a little humility can actually be a good thing.

It can make you just pissed off enough to try harder. It can remind you that you have to try harder if you’re going to heal to your maximum capacity and/or make up for the scars you’re stuck with.  It can even make you better than you would have been without the scars. Sometimes the undamaged waste their gifts. But for those of us who’ve had them ripped away, we’re often able to make better use of what we’re left with.

By the way, this is the first blog I’ve posted without having a trusted second set of eyes or two read through. It may show. But I wanted to test my stroke mind’s free bird, technology aided editing skills. Hapfulle their arnoot to maany typooos, ah, I mean, hopefully there aren’t too many typos.

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Technology & research are key helpings of brain food

I always talk, think and write about being back to normal. After a stroke, that’s what a fella wants. Normal = good. You want to blend in. At least for me, there’s still a fear that somebody will notice a slight hesitation in my speech or catch me struggling to retrieve a memory. If a regular Joe or Jane forgets a name it’s just a sign of a busy life. If someone whose brain has been sizzled does the same, could it be a sign that they aren’t firing on all cylinders? Are they damaged goods? Are they capable? Do they require pity? Arggg! I imagine it’s much the same for folks who’ve suffered other assaults on their minds. The fact is though, that you’re never the same after your brain has been blitzkrieged. The difference can be in how you feel, how you function or both. It doesn’t mean that you’re not capable. But it might mean that you need some help or tools to do what you used to do. Imagine if a mind like Stephen Hawking’s was trapped inside his disability? What if he was born in a time and place where sharing his mind with the world wasn’t possible? Or if his part of the world had been cut off from the possibilities that helped set his brain free? I fear that that could be happening today. I’m actually pretty sure that it is. I’m certainly not in Hawking’s league. But whatever I have to offer would be largely muted without the help of technology. As I’ve written before, even the healed Tim Seefeldt’s reading speed is just over 50 words per minute. An average person reads at between 150 and 190 words per minute. You can’t do the work I’ve done through my career without being able to read and write. And, you sure can’t write without being able to read. Or to find a cheat. It doesn’t take a mind like Hawking’s to figure out that I’d be up the creek without a little help. More than a little. My equalizer is software originally designed for kids with learning disabilities called WordQ. WordQ literally allows me to keep up to the rest of you in reading the reams of material that comes across my computer each day. It allows me to edit my own writing to make sure that it’s up to snuff. I use it to edit and review everything I spit out, with the exception of very short emails. Bottom line is, without it, I don’t make a living the way I’ve been trained to make a living and I’m in a spot of bother when it comes to paying the bills. And, there’s no book (BTW, agents/publishers I’m still waiting to hear from you!) and there’s no blog. Beyond the practical, a large part of me would be gone without being able to write. Technology is a game changer for many of us in regular day to day life. And it can be especially critical for those of us who’ve suffered a few bumps along the way.  It’s not just high tech tools that can help heal damage and improve brain function for the unbroken, either. I’d also like to be a clearing house of ideas for stuff that’s working for folks whether it’s some form of physical exercise or meditation.  Personally, I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without the spiritual piece. And today, a big part of my day to day is yoga. My downward facing dog looks more like a rat, but it’s helped me a lot, from shoulders to toes and between the ears. The thing is, there’s so much out there and things change so quickly that it’s virtually impossible to keep up to speed without help. And to separate the good, the bad and the ugly. So, in that spirit, here are a few things readers have mentioned. What do you think? Some American readers have noted the work done by Bioness Inc. Their electrical stimulation devices are being used to help people with arm and leg mobility issues. Their stuff is aimed at helping folks with foot drop or hand paralysis as a result of stroke, multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain injury, incomplete spinal cord injury or cerebral palsy. I’d love to hear from more folks who’ve used this and to see if there are other tools targeting these issues. I’ve also heard from readers who’ve read about potential benefits of hyperbaric oxygen therapy for those suffering ischaemic strokes. This one’s right out of left field for me. Are there any professional readers who can shed some light? Let’s try to work as a clearing house of sorts for some of the stuff that’s out there for stroke survivors and those suffering other brain trauma. Also for brain health. The way I understand it, it’s never too late to start trying to make the ole ticker work better. As well, the thinking that the clock was ticking after a stroke and that you could only make improvements within a short window of time is now, I believe, considered bunk. I’ll be waiting to hear from you. Meantime, I’m also waiting to hear from a concussion expert. I’m expecting some pretty interesting stuff to share with you on this front soon. -30-

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Brain health clearing house

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last blog, but I’m back with a different state of mind.

Some travel set me behind. Then, interviews I was planning for a few posts on concussions were delayed. I didn’t want to just tell my story all of the time. I felt I’d hit a wall. And it was compounded by that personal issue I wrote about a few blogs back.

Then I got an email from fellow ex-reporter, Ron, that set my mind right.

Ron’s wife had a stroke 18 months ago. He’s by her side at their home just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. Ron read about my story while doing some research on the National Stroke Association’s website (http://www.stroke.org/) where I’d posted a piece on their ‘faces of stroke’ page.  He tracked me down.  Reporters, even us ex-reporters, are good at this stuff.  Now two ex-newspaper guys — one from the South Eastern US and one from Western Canada – were connected.

Reporters — again, even us ex-reporters — are also good at asking questions. And in his emails to me, Ron asked a lot of good questions about life after stroke and support, tools and the like that are out there for recovery. He made some excellent points, like the ‘facts’ on the time after stroke that a person can still make gains seems to be greater than the experts used to think.

I realized from his questions that I’d forgotten one important thing about my recovery. As much as we now know about stroke, we’re still at the early stages of understanding the brain. New ideas are being floated every day. And advances and aids for stroke victims – and those suffering other brain conditions and injuries – are being made and discovered all of the time. And it’s happening all around the world. The point is, if you suffer a stroke or a brain injury in Vancouver or Miami or anywhere in between, all of the brain power you’ll need to help you isn’t sitting in a neat package in one convenient spot. You’ve got to do some digging.

As I’ve written, I had amazing care in Edmonton. And still, I learned about the reading feature in the Amazon Kindle through a speech language pathologist I connected with in Chicago. In our conversation, I told her how I was getting books from the library, then finding the same book on CD. I’d play the CD while following the words in the book. As I’ve said in earlier blogs, I can ‘read’ along with words being read out loud at normal speed, but I slow down dramatically when the recorded voice is shut off. Letter combinations don’t immediately appear to me as they do to you.  But they do when I hear the word along with seeing it. Weird, I know. At first I used this technique to speed up my reading. I seem to have hit a wall with speed, so now I need help just to keep up with the rest of you and not spend a frustrating month reading a short book.

The Chicago speech language pathologist asked me why I didn’t just get a Kindle, which has a feature where a computerized voice reads out loud, allowing me to follow. I’d not heard of this before. What a breakthrough that was for me.

I also craved having someone like me to confab with who understood exactly what I was going through with my lost words. Nobody I met or heard about had my reading issues. Then, by chance, I spotted a documentary featuring Oliver Sacks, the UK born, American based writer/neurologist who suffers a unique brain issue himself. The special talked about a Canadian novelist who had a stroke and lost the ability to read. His circumstances were different, but still. I tracked Howard Engel down and had some great, helpful and inspiring telephone conversations with him.

These were watershed moments for me. Colossal breakthroughs, huge inspiration.

Ron reminded me that I can use this blog to help spark some breakthroughs for others who’ve suffered stroke and brain injuries. To provide a voice for those who’ve come up with devices, tools and techniques to help with brain function and improvement. Whether it’s help for those of us who’ve been buzzed or those trying to fight off decay.

So, please, reach out to me with what you know and what you have. Share research you’re working on or have heard/read about.  I’ll share them in this blog. I’ll dig into them and do some old fashioned reporting on them.  I’ll spiderwep from your ideas and tips and dig up more exciting and helpful stuff.

Ron’s already started me with some great ideas you’ll read about soon.

Thanks, Ron!

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Tricky brain

A brain under extreme pressure is a tricky thing.

In my experience, it does one of three things.

  • It shuts down completely, leaving the man or woman it serves unable to function or at the very least, it badly cripples how they function, or;
  • The screws tighten, increasing pressure, pumping up stress and making it run rougher than the ’74 Dodge Duster that I drove in grade 11 , or;
  • It makes a Rocky Balboa type 15th round comeback.

But without a Hollywood scriptwriter pulling the strings, how do you end up like Rocky, bloodied, bruised but victorious?

I’ve thought a lot about the role stress may have played on my 2010 stroke. I have no family history of stroke and had no known risk factors. Yet, my brain didn’t seem to care about this when it started to fry early on the morning of March 10 five years ago.  I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m a stress junkie. I feel like I have the most success when I’m under the most personal pressure. I even think I kinda like the buzz I get from stress. And I don’t think that’s a good thing.

But I’m not sure that it’s entirely bad, either.

Perhaps it’s one of those things that can be friend or foe, depending on how it’s used?

How many times are we able to up our game when we’re under the gun? Stress may have helped zonk my melon, but I think that it may also have helped me recover.

Stroked out and facing a life without words, meaningful work and threatened with not being able to support my family emotionally or financially – that was pretty good motivation to do everything I could to claw back. It was also pretty stressful. And all through my professional career I’ve been drawn to the stressful stuff. In a weird way, I’ve found the pressure of stress comforting.  But have I hurt myself seeking out stress, or even creating stress that didn’t need to be there?

It’s cool to be able to step up under pressure. But are there some folks and organizations that thrive too much on this and who do their brain’s harm by being adrenalin junkies?

The Calgary Flames got me wondering about this.

If you’re a hockey fan you’ll know that the Flames made an unexpected resurgence this season and at the time of this writing were up in their National Hockey League playoff series against the Vancouver Canucks. The Flames have some odd qualities to their game this year. Both exciting and frustrating is their ability to come back from behind. During many games and in their fight to clinch a playoff spot, which took until the second last game of the season, they were fighting back against the odds. It makes great copy for sports writers and causes grey hairs for Flames’ management.

I find it fascinating to watch the Flames continue to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. I actually seem to prefer it to watching them get a lead and keep it. I love seeing them as underdogs clawing back all of the time.

A little background is probably required here. I’m born and raised in Calgary and believe in sports loyalty. As such, while living in the Edmonton area since my mid 20s, I’ve had a number of sports related ‘moments’ where folks in the Alberta capital didn’t appreciate my loyalty. There were a few sucker punches thrown at me while wearing a Calgary Stampeders jersey at Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium during CFL football games back in the ‘90s.

And in 1989 when the Flames were drinking from the Stanley Cup after being crowned NHL Champions, for the first – and so far – only time, I was having a few problems with members of the Edmonton Police Service who didn’t seem to be Flames fans.

So there’s a pretty deep connection with me and the southern Alberta NHLers.

The cardiac kid thing makes for exciting games and movies. And who knows how far the boys in red can take it in the playoffs this year? But does there come a point where living on the edge and all the stress associated with it is too much?

In sports, I’m not sure. Maybe the Flames can go all the way. If they do, it’s sure to be with a number of stressful moments and come-from-behind wins. But at least professional athletes have the offseason to recover. And hefty pay cheques to help them unwind in style.

But what does too much stress make of those who live their lives that way all year round? Are some of us inclined to shape our lives this way? And for those of us who do this, does something happen to us, to our brains, when we’re not under stress? Do we need it like a junkie needs his fix? And what really is too much stress? Another thing, what’s so called good stress? And what’s good about it?

I don’t have any answers here. But I’d love to hear from those of you who do. Theories would be interesting, too.

Really, please connect. You’ll stress me out if you don’t :-).

Oh, BTW, back to sports, I’m lining up some interviews with experts and survivors of concussions for some upcoming pieces. Stay tuned.

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Confessions of a brained blogger

brain5

Shortly after tapping out last week’s blog offering, I started to work on the next piece. I poured out my heart and my soul. It was great stuff. At least it was good stuff. But nobody but me will ever know for sure.

That’s because it’s gone.

Early Sunday morning after I warmed up my aging laptop to start putting the finishing touches on, my words were gone. They’d vanished into thin air.

A few colorful word combinations were followed by another search. But there was nothing.

This happened to me once way back in the ‘90s when I was an Edmonton Sun reporter. I was about 15 minutes from deadline. And I was working on the lead story. A few very choice words were hurled at me. Sun editors back then weren’t the warm and fuzzy nurturing types.

I spent five minutes trying to retrieve and coax my piece from wherever it lay trapped in the beat up work processor. Then I spent the next nine re-writing it from scratch. I’m pretty sure that the final offering was better than the first.

Harkening back to that experience, I first decided to re-trace my original blog steps. A few minutes into this, I decided to change gears and address the elephant at the laptop.

Being a rookie brain buzzed blogger is coming with some unique problems. Problems which I’ve looked for some help with, but mostly which I’ve been fumbling and stumbling along with on my own, trying to find solutions.

The tools I have are great. My reading device is a literary life saver. But navigating the WordPress site when I’m trying to build my blog isn’t smooth sailing for me. Trying to figure out the Tweeting and re-Tweeting world leaves me feeling a bit like a student taking university classes in a foreign tongue. And I confess that I haven’t perfected the nuances of using Facebook to its maximum potential.  Nowhere close, actually.

It’s not the tools, it’s me. With my turtle slow reading speed and the ‘new’ way my memory works post stroke, I’m not the model blog student. It’s kinda like being back in junior high school for me, actually.

So I’m swallowing my pride and turning to all of you readers for your help. My pride is swallowed.

Please share with me your ideas of making the blog look and navigate better. Please give me the skinning on getting this blog out beyond my network so that I can share this brain food was many, many others.

I’m working on a piece about concussions in NHL players and other athletes. I’ve got a piece coming on brain games to increase mental power. I want to make sure that I don’t fail potential readers by being a remedial blogger.

Oh, by the way, you’ll see on the site a couple of nods for some great brain books. One by Howard Engel, the other by Oliver Sacks. I plan to continue to share books and movies that do a mind good. Please take a look and share any ideas that you have on other brain books or movies.

So, last week, I shared the last of the Edmonton Journal piece I wrote last year. For the final wrap on this, here’s the side bar that ran with the piece.

Warning signs of stroke

You don’t fight back from the devastation of a stroke without a lot of people in your corner.

For Seefeldt, it started with his family recognizing the signs of a stroke and calling an ambulance.

Faster treatment means a better chance of recovery. The longer you go untreated the more your brain is scrambled and the tougher the road back.

There are five main signs of a stroke:

Weakness – sudden loss of strength or sudden numbness in the face or leg

Trouble speaking

Vision problems

Headaches;

Dizziness Seefeldt had all five, but any of these may be worth a call to 911.

There are risk factors to be aware of, like high blood pressure and cholesterol, obesity, diabetes, smoking and stress, according to the website for the Heart & Stroke foundation. Sometimes strokes happen for reasons that aren’t fully understood.