Hellooooo, now here?s your mini essay
Some of this might not be appropriate to you as my rehab was for brain injury and post-viral (I had viral meningitis following the encephalitis). So do edit according to what seems sensible to you.
I found it really difficult to cope with the reality of brain injury. By most standards, I was very lucky and it was ?very mild encephalitis?. But so much of my identity was wrapped up in my being quick-witted and the praise I most often got as a kid was ?clever girl?. So having a brain that suddenly didn?t work was really hard. Initially I was just plain terrified, but once the fear wore off I became upset, a bit ashamed, not sure who I was any more. My brain had always defined me and now I was... Well, a bit thick basically! Also when I was in hospital (although luckily for me my stay was very brief) I was on a ward with elderly people, which I think you are too. I remember looking around and thinking ?crikey, is this what it?s come to already? I?m not forty yet ffs!? And I initially seemed just as mentally and physically impaired as some of the elderly people. But I did start to recover quite quickly.
My sister explained the effects of the brain injury in a way that really helped me. Forgive me if you?ve heard this one already. Imagine a map of your brain as a road atlas ? so that all the neural pathways are a spaghetti of different coloured roads. Imagine that the brain injury is like a massive accident blocking a major A road and that your thoughts are like cars trying to get from one town to another. Because they can?t go via the A road, due to the injury, your thoughts are forced along B roads, causing traffic build up and occasional bottleneck/standstill. Suddenly I?d find my brain just wasn?t working ? very scarey and disorienting. It was helpful to me to imagine that road map in my mind ? it helped me to see that I couldn?t overload the system until my brain had had chance to repair the A road, iyswim
So the more eccentric forms of rehab that my sister recommended were as follows:
Watching/Listening to Comedy ? Humour stimulates different sections of the brain apparently and my sister said that while the research was patchy she thought it was a good stress-free way to exercise lots of bits of my brain at the same time.
Colouring for fine motor control ? this was for when I was a bit better. She said that I should practice colouring in with my right hand (I?m right handed) in the beginning, and once that became easy, start practicing colouring with my left hand. She sent me some colouring books and pencils? I did find this oddly therapeutic in a ?regressing to childhood? kind of way!
Physical exercise ? In the beginning it was literally just walking a few yards to the bottom of the street and back. Then just a few more yards the next day. After each little walk I went straight to bed and rested in a quiet dark room ? I got tired very easily. Once I was getting properly better I started going swimming which was nice as I didn?t feel so ?doddery? when in the water!
She recommended doing the same with mental activity ? ie mental activity and then rest ? stopping to rest before you?re exhausted rather than when you can?t carry on. A bit like rehabilitating an injured muscle ? the exercise stimulates it, but it actually rebuilds during the rest afterwards. She said that I should try things like sudoku and puzzles once I was up to it, to get my brain firing again. But to rest afterwards ? ?rest before you need to, for longer than you think you need to, and more completely than you think you need to? was always the phrase she used about rest?
She also recommended that I listen to Mozart, but then she knows that I love Mozart. If you don?t, then it would just get right on your synapses I guess Whatever you love would probably be the same.
Of course I always did as my doctors at the hospital and my GP told me as well ? my sister?s advice was just an add-on.
I really hope that you feel better soon, and will look out for updates on MN. Take care.