Rehab and Recovery for Brain Injury

Rehab and Recovery for Brain Injury

Hey, it’s Jenny with Life’s a Polyp and I’ve 
been meaning to make this video for a while,   but I had a really cool uh learning seminar 
that I went to. It was hosted by the Centre for Neuroskills. They are based in 
Texas, but they have other locations uh like I know in California. and they were 
talking about brain injury and how that affects daily living and things that can actually 
help with it. Uh so before we get into that,   I want to remind you if you haven’t subscribed, 
I would love for you to join the Life’s a Polyp family on YouTube. So please make sure 
that you are. So if you guys remember, uh if you’ve been following, I a few years ago 
fell and hit my head and I actually did that 10 years ago also. And both times I ended up with 
a brain injury. The first time we didn’t realize really that’s what I had. Um because I didn’t 
we didn’t connect the signs, the symptoms until six, seven years later actually um when I was 
diagnosed with abdominal migraine. And we came to the conclusion that that started when I 
fell and hit my head the first time. Well,   the second time I fell and hit my head, it 
was apparent within a few hours that I had a concussion and it led into postconcussion 
syndrome. It has been over a year or two maybe by now. And so I’ve been left with migraine and 
it’s a constant migraine. I take preventative migraine medication to help keep it in check. Uh 
but life has really changed for me and it is much easier now than what it was. But I experienced 
a lot of emotion dysregulation. I it was as if I had lost all my coping skills. Um I still have 
trouble with cognitive u with executive function sometimes. Memory is an issue. Even my speech I 
have a hard time sometimes thinking of the word I want. Um like I can’t think of the word. It used 
to be that I could only think of the definition.   Now I can find a similar enough synonym, but I 
say things backwards sometimes. I make up words. I do word salad sometimes. Um it’s not just the 
normal uh with age that we forget things here and there type of thing. It’s more than that. Um, and 
so I learned a lot at this seminar and I wanted to share that all with you because brain injuries 
can be a lot of different things, right? They can   be strokes, they can be falls, uh, anything that 
happens to the brain is a brain injury. And from what the Center for Neuroskills has learned 
through their research and their programs is that it doesn’t matter when it happened. you can 
receive rehab for it and see improvements. And I really liked not only their breakdown of what 
was happening with a brain injury, why it leads to these different issues, but also their um 
model for treatment for brain injury. Now, yes, some brain injuries are going to be permanent. 
Um but um what they’ve seen is that through treatment you can see improvements. Um you may 
not be able to return to work um but that there will be improvements. And the ultimate goal that 
they have in their rehab is getting people back to   work, getting them back to their daily living, 
their lives that were before the brain injury. So I’m going to share with you what they shared 
with me and they talked to about uh with any type of brain injury what happens is that our physical 
functioning I our psycho psychosocial interactions uh visual perpetual skills our cognitive abilities 
memory processing speed and problem solving multitasking those were all things that get 
affected um by a brain injury and so what happens is that wherever the injury is, there’s a that 
part of the brain is not communicating the way that it should to the rest of the brain. And there 
can be multiple areas within the brain that are   damaged. And what happens is so you have a neuron 
and it has an axon. They called it like a noodle cause it it’s like a tell. And so if you have a 
the communication of these neurons in your brain, what they do is like it’s here and it’s a chain 
of command type of thing. Well, with brain injury, there’s going to be neurons that are damaged. 
And so that communication gets messed up. And with neuroplasticity, meaning that it can grow 
these axons to reach different neurons, but that takes time and it takes a lot of repetition. 
um using the brain to be able to rebuild those connections to have that plasticity to rebuild. 
So what happens is if it’s supposed to connect here and communicate to here but this axon has is 
damaged or the side is no longer connecting to the next one. it has to uh grow either a new one if it 
can or a different neuron is going to have to grow to be able to connect to communicate to back into 
that line of communication. And when these things are happening what we can what we’ll see according 
to the Centre for neuroskills is that uh you may see symptoms in either your hormones so your 
neuroendocrine function, your sleep, or your gut um your microbiota organisms the microorganisms 
in your gut um you’ll have gut dysbiosis and if you have one they’re going to connect and it’s 
going to affect the other two and so there’s a lot of disruption that happens, a lot of different 
symptoms that can happen from a brain injury. So, what is their model and what is the model that I’m 
wanting to uh to start practicing? I’ve done some in the past and I want to add more on to it. 
So, they really recommend a holistic approach of physical therapy, occupational therapy, 
speech therapy, and mental health counseling. Uh because like I mentioned, there’s a lot a 
lot of times and it’s understandable. Not only you’re trying to process and navigate something 
that’s happened to you, but your brain is not   functioning. It’s not communicating the way that 
it was supposed to before it became injured. And so there’s a lot of dysregulation of emotions. Um 
so that helps also with being learned through the process to rec to learn coping skills again and 
also helping with the brain to heal itself. Um, physical therapy helps with, you know, 
not only just muscle strength, but safety,   increased blood flow and decreased inflammation. 
That can be very important for healing as well. Occupational therapy can help with kind of 
treating those cognitive deficits that interfere with daily functioning. And occupational therapy 
is a really interesting, really great therapy that I don’t think gets highlighted as much as 
physical therapy. Um, I’ve used it for tendonitis, um, in my wrist and my elbow. And yes, that 
has nothing to do with brain injury for me, but it’s things that I wouldn’t necessarily think 
about. And it’s kind of the way I look at it was that it was learning how to do things and that was 
not it was not needing physical strengthening for, but it was learning how to do things um, in a 
different way perhaps so that would allow for it. But you combine that with the brain injury and 
because you’re learning things in a different way,   it also can help with those cognitive deficits. 
And then speech therapy is not just about speech. It involves cognitive training. So that can help 
with executive function, with brain processing, with um cognitive processing, all those different 
functions going on there. I think a lot of us, at least I know, I do when I think of speech 
therapy, I mainly either think about learning how to speak or with difficulty swallowing and 
doing um improving that. I didn’t ever think about really speech therapy as far as the cognitive 
functioning and improving that. And that’s what I’m wanting to actually add on because I have done 
physical therapy. um not necessarily for my brain injury, but I have done physical therapy um at 
least once if not twice since my last fall. I’ve done occupational therapy. Again, that wasn’t 
for my brain injury. Um but I did receive that for two and a half months or so, but after my 
fall at some point, but I haven’t done speech therapy and I I’ve never done speech therapy. I 
would like to see what that can do for me. Um, I’ve done counseling. I’ve I’m in counseling 
still. That was very helpful working through all these things. Um, now I do know that sometimes 
I know at least with home health agencies, which I’m not needing home health. I’m able to leave my 
home. Um, I’m not sure if this is the same way for outpatient though, is that speech therapy cannot 
be done by itself. Um, and so they would need to do physical or occupational therapy. Also, I’m 
not sure what the guidelines are for that um in outpatient settings. I’m going to find out because 
my plan is to ask for speech therapy and if they need me to add on another therapy, I will. Um, I’m 
hoping I can just do the speech therapy unless it really would be beneficial with my fall um to add 
on one of the other ones. I’m physical therapy is always beneficial I think at least for me cause I 
can always use some exercise and with guidance so that I’m not messing it up. Um I’m always needing 
to restrengthen my core again which helps protect uh from hernias and it helps with um managing 
eliminating chronic back pain from my abdominal surgeries. So I know I could definitely benefit 
from physical therapy. actually do better with exercise if it’s under physical therapy versus 
on my own or even a personal trainer. Um, but these are some of the things that I learned 
from the Centre for Neurosklls. And this was   not a sponsored video or anything. It’s just 
something that was I found really interesting, very helpful information that I wish I had had 
before I fell. Um, I think my um it would have changed the trajectory of my recovery from a brain 
uh injury. Had I had this information before, it was not any information that was shared with 
me and by any of the providers that I had. I don’t think this is necessarily a wide well-known model 
for brain injury rehab, but I think it should be. It absolutely sounded incredible. They actually 
they started their um program, their center, and I’m trying to retell the story. It’s been a 
little bit, but so the founder, their brother had some type of brain injury and it had been like 20 
years before. And so the center they opened up, they were doing research and things like that 
and really kind of with a goal of helping their brother um and people like them. And they found 
that even 20 years after that brain injury, they implemented this model um for their brother 
and their brothers showed signs of improvement with their functioning mentally, physically, 
cognitively, all those different things. Um and so it’s it sounded incredible to me. It’s 
something I’m looking into more. There are I know at least in my state there are other similar 
programs. Um, again, I thought I did not know about this. Nobody talked about any of it when 
I had my uh my falls. And so, I have some places that I’m looking at locally. One of the nice 
things with the center for neurosklls um is that uh during this presentation they shared that if 
they accepted a patient um into the program and they were out of state, they would come get the 
person and take them back to the to the rehab center um for free. it wouldn’t add there wouldn’t 
be an additional cost or anything for that which   I thought was really an amazing um service that 
they’re doing for for individuals. Uh they did really neat things um that would that were even 
uh helpful for different patients. For example, as part of a therapy, um, someone needed this, 
they had trouble getting into this vehicle, not a real vehicle, but is like a simulator 
type of thing that they could work on learning, relearning skills with this. Um, so they had 
another patient build a stole. Um, so you know, you may have with your with certain jobs or 
skills that someone has, they give them real life experience to help practice and relearn how to do 
those things and how to do them safely, too. Um, and that’s also beneficial for other patients and 
how they were able to really think out of the box. Um, really give hands-on things that, uh, is real 
life experience for individuals in their program. So, it was just really cool. They have uh they 
even had like if someone was electrical um job of some type, they made like these components for the 
for the person to practice on uh to help relearn those skills, relearn how to do those things. Um 
because it’s not just about physical um ability, right? It’s not just like a strength or dexterity 
thing. is also the brain communicating to the   rest of the body to operate in a certain fashion 
whether that’s um you know we’re speaking or we’re doing um and so there’s a lot that goes into what 
a brain injury can affect and a lot of different things that can actually help with it. So I hope 
that you found this helpful. I was just I’m still in awe by this information. Um, and yeah, if 
you’ve had a brain injury, I’d love to hear   your experience, what’s helped you, what you might 
be looking at later down the road to try to help with it. Um, and I will I’ll give updates on my 
journey, my experiences with speech therapy. Um, you mean I I’m going to ask for it. That doesn’t 
mean that they’ll give it to me, but I’m going to   ask for it and I will uh update on what that 
comes what comes from it. Uh, I do a lot of updates mainly on Facebook though. Um, so you may 
want to check out their over there also. But I will continue giving that information and updates 
and things here too. So if you guys have any ideas or suggestions of things that you would like to 
learn about, um, please let me know down below.

Jenny shares what she learned about an all-around holistic treatment model for brain injury rehab and how she plans to incorporate what she learned

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