Post #10 Neurocognitive Rehabilitation

Because a year’s worth of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) took away so much cognitive functioning and memory in 2022, I was referred to receive Neurocognitive Rehabilitation, which I called Brain Rehab for short, in 2023. It took place at a hospital in the same department that helps patients with dementia, Alzheimer’s, and brain injuries. What confused me was that I worked with a speech therapist, even though I had no problem speaking. She explained speech therapists cover the damage done anywhere above the shoulders, which includes the brain’s functioning.

Brain Rehab relies on the brain’s neuroplasticity, meaning your brain can rewire itself to relearn old things and learn new things at any age. Your brain isn’t “fixed” your entire life – it can strengthen or weaken depending on how hard you work on a particular thought process or skill. My speech therapist said there are ways around the damage like a traffic accident; the brain can find and strengthen new pathways to get to the same destination.

Calculated for my age group and education level, this was how I placed out of 100%:

• 2% Memory
• 17% Quantitative Reasoning and Speed
• 16% Processing Speed and Attention

Fortunately, there was nowhere else to go but up with hard work on new strategies and creation of new systems (processes, habits) in my life. These are just a few:

• Utilizing brain games like Lumocity, Taboo, Scattergories
• Establishing routines and structure in your day
• Fatigue Management, such as listing what you have to do for the day but putting priorities FIRST on the list when you have the most energy
• Strategic ways to use a calendar for medical appointments, birthdays, etc.
• Learning the importance of exercise because more of it links to higher cognitive ability in research
• Improving memory with attention and intention to a particular thing you want to remember
• Using devices and and planners as reminders: alarms for taking medication, recording notes on cell phone, use of a white board on the fridge for lists, etc. These things are called the “external brain” to use as aids, kind of like using a cane for walking.
• Creating a habit to go through the notes you took in previous days – otherwise, what’s the point of taking notes? 🙂
• Maintaining focus on a task, such as mindfully repeating the task in a loop until the task is accomplished
• Pairing tasks, such as doing a chore together with another related chore in close sequence to help with coordination, association, and making connections
• Breaking down goals into small manageable chunks with reasonable work-rest intervals

I’m grateful for receiving neurocognitive rehabilitation as it gave me the skills and motivation to keep using my brain for increasingly harder things, without feeling bad or stupid. I wasn’t ashamed to work on reading comprehension and sustained attention starting with children’s books.

Learning about neuroplasticity just gave me so much confidence that I wouldn’t, for example, stay in the 2/100 percentile at memory forever. After about 3 – 4 months in 2023, I was able to practice the things I learned on my own without going to the clinic, and I haven’t been back since.