Peggie the Pig is your average 8 year old energetic little girl until things take a turn in Peggie's life and everyone is wondering why. What is it going to take for Peggie the Pig to find her happiness and start feeling better again?
The Invisible Brain Injury recounts, in her own words, the experience of Aurora Lassaletta, a clinical psychologist who suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) after a traffic accident. Presenting her unique dual perspective as both a patient and a clinician, Aurora highlights the less visible cognitive, emotional and behavioural symptoms common to acquired brain injury (ABI). This moving account showcases Aurora’s growing awareness of her impairments, their manifestation in daily life, how they are perceived, or not, by others and the tools that helped her survive. Each chapter combines Aurora’s perspective with the scientific view of a professional neuropsychologist or physiatrist who provide commentaries on her various symptoms. This book is valuable reading for professionals involved in neurorehabilitation and clinical neuropsychology and for clinical psychology students. It is a must read for ABI survivors, those around them and clinicians, who are all an essential part of the rehabilitation, adjustment and acceptance process involved with ABI.
A former sufferer of PTSD, David Kinchin tell his story and those of others. He describes in plain language what it is like to suffer from PTSD and explains all the complications the disorder can include.
Hit by a car while bicycling Osborn, an internist at a Detroit hospital, suffered injuries. Recounts the struggles and frustrations of a gradually learning strategies to compensate for the lack of certain brain functions. An exceptionally well-written and engaging account. PW review.
If you or someone you love has suffered a traumatic event, you know the devastating impact it can have on your life and your spirit. Life-threatening accidents, illnesses, assaults, abusive relationships—or a tragedy like 9/11—all can leave deep emotional wounds that persist long after physical scars have healed. Survivors become “invisible heroes,” courageously struggling to lead normal lives in spite of symptoms so baffling and disturbing that they sometimes doubt their own sanity. Now there is new hope for the millions affected by posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Drawing on more than thirty years’ experience as a therapist and on the most recent cutting-edge research, Belleruth Naparstek presents a clinically proven program for recovery using the potent tool of guided imagery. She reveals how guided imagery goes straight to the right side of the brain, where it impacts the nonverbal wiring of the nervous system itself, the key to alleviating suffering. Filled with the voices of real trauma survivors and therapists whose lives and work have been changed by this approach, Invisible Heroes offers: • New understanding of the physical, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral effects of PTSD, who is most susceptible, and why symptoms can get worse rather than better with time • Important insights into how the brain and body respond to trauma, why conventional talk therapy can actually impede recovery, and why the nonverbal, image-based right brain is crucial to healing • A step-by-step program with more than twenty scripts for guided-imagery exercises tailored to the three stages of recovery, from immediate relief of anxiety attacks, flashbacks, nightmares, and insomnia, to freedom from depression and isolation, to renewed engagement with life • A helpful guide to the best of the new imagery-based therapies, and how to incorporate them into an overall recovery plan Belleruth Naparstek concludes with the inspiring words of survivors who have found their way back to peace, purpose, and a deep joy in living. Her compassionate, groundbreaking book can lead you and those in your care to the same renewal and healing.
This important book provides a firsthand account of a university professor who experienced traumatic brain injury. It tells the story of Michael Arthur, who had recently accepted a position as vice principal of a new high school. After only two weeks on the job, he was involved in a car accident while driving through an intersection in northern Utah. Through his personal account, he takes the reader into the dark interworkings of his mind as he tries to cope with his new reality. He provides insight into how he learned how to process information and even speak without stumbling on his words while also sharing how his significant relationships suffered as he tried to navigate the restless seas of doubt while trying to circumvent his unyielding symptoms. The book is about finding optimism and gaining insight into the struggles of the brain-injured patient and about trying to understand the perspectives of loved ones who can’t quite grasp the idea of an invisible injury. From the sudden onset of garbled speech to the challenges of processing information, the changing dynamic of the author’s life is highlighted to help family members and healthcare workers better understand.
Life can change in an instant; one bad decision can change the course of a life forever. Everyone deserves a day off, righta much-needed day off that provides a little relief from a very busy schedule. But what if that day changes everything and your life is never the same? My Invisible Injury shares author Katie Pattersons inspiring story of a life now changed after one fateful day, when she took a chance and suffered a traumatic brain injury. Katie chronicles her life since an accident caused not only major trauma to her brain but also severe injuries to her left leg. She recalls three years of recovery, lots of rehabilitation, and countless surgeriesremembering both her good days and bad days. She shares the struggles she encountered throughout her recoverythe months of aggressive therapy, surgeries, and hospitalization. My Invisible Injury illustrates the sheer power of Katies determination to recoverthe strength to overcome her injuries and grow as a person. By learning how to deal with the challenges that are associated with such a devastating injury, Katie has found the way back to her life.
A comprehensive guide for improving memory, focus, and quality of life in the aftermath of a concussion. Often presenting itself after a head trauma, concussion— or mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI)— can cause chronic migraines, depression, memory, and sleep problems that can last for years, referred to as post concussion syndrome (PCS). Neuropsychologist and concussion survivor Dr. Diane Roberts Stoler is the authority on all aspects of the recovery process. Coping with Concussion and Mild Traumatic Brain Injury is a lifeline for patients, parents, and other caregivers.
In these personal reflections on his thirty years of clinical work with victims of genocide, torture, and abuse in the United States, Cambodia, Bosnia, and other parts of the world, Richard Mollica describes the surprising capacity of traumatized people to heal themselves. Here is how Neil Boothby, Director of the Program on Forced Migration and Health at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, describes the book: "Mollica provides a wealth of ethnographic and clinical evidence that suggests the human capacity to heal is innate--that the 'survival instinct' extends beyond the physical to include the psychological as well. He enables us to see how recovery from 'traumatic life events' needs to be viewed primarily as a 'mystery' to be listened to and explored, rather than solely as a 'problem' to be identified and solved. Healing involves a quest for meaning--with all of its emotional, cultural, religious, spiritual and existential attendants--even when bio-chemical reactions are also operative." Healing Invisible Wounds reveals how trauma survivors, through the telling of their stories, teach all of us how to deal with the tragic events of everyday life. Mollica's important discovery that humiliation--an instrument of violence that also leads to anger and despair--can be transformed through his therapeutic project into solace and redemption is a remarkable new contribution to survivors and clinicians. This book reveals how in every society we have to move away from viewing trauma survivors as "broken people" and "outcasts" to seeing them as courageous people actively contributing to larger social goals. When violence occurs, there is damage not only to individuals but to entire societies, and to the world. Through the journey of self-healing that survivors make, they enable the rest of us not only as individuals but as entire communities to recover from injury in a violent world.
"This portrait of many months recovering has much to teach the physicians as well as lay readers. The condition she struggled with is neither rare nor trivial, but unfortunately, remains medically unaddressed." - Bruce Beutler Nobel Prize Winner & Laureate 2011. "As a close friend to Hannah and no stranger to brain injuries after playing in the NFL as a wide receiver for the Buffalo Bills for sixteen years and being ranked 10th in NFL history, I watched Hannah regress slowly. I had just lost my friend, Junior Seau, to suicide resulting from a brain injury. I couldn't sit back and let her fall too. Today, the controversy over concussions and post concussion syndrome is growing rapidly. This timely book sheds a light for all those who have suffered from it." - Andre Reed NFL Hall of Fame 2014.