Check out this post about how a blogger/journalist was treated at the Brain Injury 10th Annual Neuroscience Conference. Read it, and then come back.
It just boggles the mind. Who’s the brain-damaged one in this picture? Surely, not the blogger, to all appearances.
In all fairness, I have no idea what prompted the response like that, and I’m not sure what was behind all the hostility, but really… I just don’t get it.
This highlights for me one of the current tragic travesties of brain injury survival and recovery — the folks who profess to help us, live off in a walled city of sorts, doling out shreds of carefully guarded and dispensed information in such small pieces… and then they issue disclaimers about “everybody’s brain is different, so you can’t really listen to this piece of information”.
It’s maddening. And only rarely does someone like me come across someone like my neuropsych, who is actually committed to the relief of human suffering. Imagine that — someone in the health-care industry… who cares. And not only cares, but does something about it.
Can I tell you, if I could, I would nominate my neuropsych for sainthood, a Nobel Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a truckload of cash from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, so they can continue their excellent work — and possibly train others to do like them. I am extraordinarily blessed to have the help of someone who is intelligent, competent, compassionate, and not sitting astride their cache of information with an AK-47 in hand to ward off any “info pilferers”.
People are suffering. Thousands, even millions are impacted, both in terms of being injured and being friends/colleagues/loved-ones of TBI survivors. Who in their right mind and right conscience can withhold lifesaving information and advances from people whose very injury makes it next to impossible for them to even understand that they have been injured?! Where is the justice, the sense, the sanity, the humanity?
It boggles the mind.
So, let’s all blog about it.
Thanks, rewiringangel, for writing and publishing about this.
Broken Brain - Brilliant Mind 