Let’s Fix Forward

So many discussions on brain injury are centered around what has already happened. Well, that makes sense. We talk about and write about and blog about and even bitch about the damage we’ve endured from injuries suffered to our brains.

When I go out to speak, in many of my blogs, and in my Fork Bytes audio downloads, my focus is increasingly about moving on and heading forward.

A lot of that is just the natural commentary of my life. It’s been 18 years now since I was brain injured and a lot has happened since then.

I have moved on and thank God for that. I’m in a super place now. I’ve created a second life after injury that accommodates the symptoms that never healed and I’ve found ways to be successful in many jobs and activities. I am in a great relationship, I have great friends and family. I’m truly in a terrific place.

One of the inspirations for any of us to emerge from a brain-injury-consumed life was highlighted today in the news and I couldn’t wait to share it.

My brother is an eye doctor and I’m so proud as punch of him. Over the years, he has developed a keen expertise in disease detection. Not just in the eye but using the eye as, literally, a window to our well-being.

Today, all over the news, reports came out that there is exciting confidence in an eye doctor’s ability to perform routine eye exams which can detect brain plaques, an early marker of Alzheimer’s disease.

This is exciting news because this early detection could come YEARS before any symptoms show up, allowing a patient to get further testing and enjoy earlier medications which could prolong their cognitive health.

In recent years there’s been a lot of impressive research linking brain injury to a higher incidence of Alzheimer’s and dementia.

Now, I happen to think that sucks.

For those of us with brain injuries, we should automatically be disqualified from any future damage or disease to our poor peanuts. I mean, geez, really? That’s a bit of piling on, don’t ya think?

One of my dearest friends (Happy Birthday, Kim!) turned 50 the other day and her birthday always makes mine six months away. I’ll be turning fifty six months from now and I’m already acutely aware of the changes that aging is taunting me with.

I feel an increasing urgency in the belief that we really need to get our engines all firing as hot and high as we can and soon. If there is a higher incidence of cognitive problems for those who have suffered previous head trauma, then we all have to realize that the battle is not yet over.

It might simply be the calm eye of the storm.

There is an exciting new research result out of Finland that finally proves right all the blah blah blah our doctors have been droning on and on about for years.

Ha.

Two groups of aging people were watched for several years. The one group followed a healthy nutrition plan, increased their physical activity, improved their cardiovascular health, regularly socialized and engaged in brain games.

The results were encouraging and exciting. They proved that, indeed, we CAN DO SOMETHING to protect our brains and keep more of our futures bright.

It’s conflicting news for the brain injured who, by necessity, often rely on routine and dependable activities to help create ability. What I’m suggesting now is that we need to do more. Our of our norm. Out of our element. Out of the box.

We need to create safe environments which encourage and nurture new activities and talents. We need to learn again and still and constantly. We need to challenge ourselves, to surprise ourselves, to walk down the halls of our minds and blow open those doors and flip on those light switches.

All of us.

Yes, we may be war-weary warriors but I find it hard to imagine a fight more important to stand up for. Many of us have spent years cursing our brains for what they forget, for what they mess up, for what they fail to do.

I submit it’s time to raise up those precious peanuts of ours. To celebrate them and cherish them and feed them. Arm them.

It’s time to get busy learning new things. Learn a new language and music is a language itself so pick up that tarnished trombone in the basement, go buy a harmonica, find an old banjo at a garage sale.

And let’s rock!

We can do something positive for our brains. Something that can help us, not only rise out of the past that often shackles us, but something that propels us into a positive future that we can actually affect.

Let’s learn how to polka. Let’s watch movies with subtitles. Let’s eat brain foods and improve our cardiovascular health. Let’s put ourselves through brain happy boot camp and come out the other side ready to wage war on Alzheimer’s and dementia.

I want to be writing this blog when I’m six months from turning eighty. Will you be able to read it?