Week 16: Clinical Psychologist report.

I have been looking forward to this day for a while. I good old black and white assessment on how I am doing. Head injury is a funny thing. You lose all grasp on what symptoms are the head injury and what are just you and life in general. It is such a fine line and sometimes no line at all. You also do not ever reach a time when you think ‘ah, I’m better now’. Neither can you say when you start feeling better, it all happens incrementally over time.

I had a range of tests, that were spread over three appointments, which spanned around a month. I clearly remember being very concerned about it all when I first started attending the appointments. I wanted the tests to show that I was ok, and I tried really hard. The psychologist said the results are based on data from a large test sample done on what was deemed to be ‘average’ people from a range of age groups. Therefore the results are pitched against what is seen to be the ‘average’ person’s score.

Here is how I did:

Memory: average to above average. She read me a story, then I had to recite back as much as I could remember. The tests continued, then around 30 minutes later, I had to tell her the details of the story again. Apparently my memory retention was great, and I scored higher in that. What that means is that I retained more information than the average person, if the information goes in, it stays in!

Concentration: I was given a range of tests, including deliberately monotonous tasks, and deliberate distractions. I scored 100%. I am pretty impressed. I was quite concerned about this one, it’s one that I had been having trouble with.

Executive function, language use, processing: all average. Processing is how quickly you process and execute tasks. Lots of the test involved random meaningless words, symbols and such like, so you had to think and work it out.

All in all I am pretty impressed.

On reflection, I do think that I can see improvements in the few weeks I have been going to see the psychologist. Each week is a new week, and I think as from today, I need to stop using the ‘knock on the head’ excuse and move on with my life. It OK to forget stuff from time to time, its OK to have a slow day, and its OK to let the whole thing go, and let it slip into the past.

So, all in all i am OK, well, average, and in some cases 'superior'! Hahaha. I'm sure some friends would disagree!!

Inconsistencies

Michelle did point out another few details too. I referred to what the Headway lady said in that she said I had an injury to the cerebellum. In reality, I am told that is very unlikely because of the position, right at the base of the brain. Injury here usually results in a change of gait, balance and co-ordination problems combined.

She also said that from my account of events, she thinks that my incoherent memory was only for about 2 hours. I refer to a time in accident and Emergency where I see my name on the board and the word ‘triage’ and wonder what that means. Apparently that is coherent thought, and therefore all the head injury symptoms that followed on add up and make sense.

All interesting stuff.

her thoughts on helmets?

I did ask her about her thoughts on cycle helmets. She said that wearing a helmet helps protect from skull fracture, and penetration, and also helps to lessen any symptoms and side effects, and certainly shortens the period of time you would be suffering from them. Should you wear a helmet? She says YES every time.