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Lee Woodruff: the Bob Woodruff Foundation, and You, can help Traumatic Brain Injury survivors

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You have may have seen a few weeks ago the inter­view between for­mer US pres­i­den­tial con­tender John Edwards and reporter Bob Woodruff. All the result­ing media cov­er­age cen­tered on Edwards’ dec­la­ra­tions. How­ev­er, there is some­thing much more remark­able that sur­faced at that inter­view: Bob Woodruff’s spec­tac­u­lar recovery.

This is the same reporter who suf­fered a severe trau­mat­ic brain injury when a road­side In an Instant - Bob and Lee Woodruffbomb det­o­nat­ed next to his vehi­cle in Jan­u­ary 29th 2006 as he was cov­er­ing news devel­op­ments in Iraq.

Today we are for­tu­nate to inter­view Lee Woodruff, Bob’s wife and pil­lar through­out his recov­ery. Lee and Bob co-wrote the fan­tas­tic book In an Instant: A Fam­i­ly’s Jour­ney of Love and Heal­ing.

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez: Lee, many thanks for your time. I was amazed read­ing your book, where you share your jour­ney, and then watch­ing Bob inter­view John Edwards, the best dis­play I can imag­ine of his recov­ery. Can you please sum­ma­rize for us what Bob ‑and you- went through since Jan­u­ary 2006?

Lee Woodruff: As you know, Bob suf­fered a life-threat­en­ing trau­mat­ic brain injury in Iraq. He was prompt­ly tak­en under mil­i­tary care and under­went a series of surg­eries for head injuries, with a joint Army & Air Force neu­ro­sur­gi­cal team in Iraq, in a US Army Med­ical Com­mand hos­pi­tal in Ger­many, and at Bethes­da Naval Hos­pi­tal, back here in the US.

Dur­ing this time, span­ning around 4 months, he spent 37 days in coma, and his skull had to be sur­gi­cal­ly rebuilt. The cog­ni­tive reha­bil­i­ta­tion process start­ed then, at a med­ical facil­i­ty clos­er home.

Can you please explain what kind of cog­ni­tive rehab Bob has gone though-both in a for­mal way, with a ther­a­pist, and infor­mal­ly, on his own?

The first thing I’d like to say is that rehab is a long process. Doc­tors told me that Bob, despite the sever­i­ty of his injuries, had bet­ter chances to recov­er than oth­er vic­tims, because of the reserve of neu­rons and con­nec­tions he had built thanks to [Read more…] about Lee Woodruff: the Bob Woodruff Foun­da­tion, and You, can help Trau­mat­ic Brain Injury survivors

Cognitive, Brain News RoundUp

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Brain Health NewsInter­est­ing recent news:

For more on these news, and com­men­tary: [Read more…] about Cog­ni­tive, Brain News RoundUp

Brain Health for lawyers

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The Com­plete Lawyer, a legal pub­li­ca­tion dis­trib­uted to bar mem­bers in sev­er­al states, just pub­lished an arti­cle on Ten Impor­tant Truths About Aging: How we age is at least par­tial­ly under our con­trol, By Elkhonon Gold­berg and Alvaro Fernandez.
We were hap­py to con­tribute to the ongo­ing debate about ethics and aging in the legal pro­fes­sion, build­ing on our pre­vi­ous post on the topic.
What are those “Ten Truths”? Well, here you are the outline:
  • Neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy Indi­cates That We Can Con­trol Our Aging
  • Aging Means Life­long Devel­op­ment, Not Auto­mat­ic Decline
  • Some Skills Improve With Age
  • Some Skills Need To Be Con­tin­u­ous­ly Nur­tured And Trained
  • Not All Instances Of For­get­ting Are Of Equal Concern
  • We Are In Con­trol, To A Large Extent
  • There Are Four “Pil­lars Of Brain Health”
  • Cross-Train­ing Our Brains Builds Up Cog­ni­tive Reserve
  • Com­put­er-Based Brain Exer­cise Pro­grams Can Help
  • Embrace “Good Stress”; Elim­i­nate “Bad Stress”
  • Retire­ment Is Overrated

Here is the full arti­cle: Ten Impor­tant Truths About Aging. We hope you enjoy it. The impli­ca­tions, for peo­ple of all ages, are sim­ply astound­ing. Anoth­er relat­ed post is The way we age now.

We are look­ing for more oppor­tu­ni­ties to reach more peo­ple with these impor­tant top­ics, so let us know if you have ideas!