#5ThoughtsFriday
05/11/2018
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GET OUT YOUR CALENDAR
AND SAVE THESE DATES!
JUNE 23, 2018
Strike It Big For Brain Injury
AMF Pikesville Lanes
BIAMD's Premiere Bowling Event
AUGUST 19, 2018
Blue Crabs for Brain Injury
Key Brewery Taphouse - Dundalk
SEPTEMBER 30, 2018
Scarecrow Classic 5k / 1 Mile Walk
UMBC - Catonsville Campus
DECEMBER 3, 2018
#GIVINGTUESDAY
www.biamd.org
MARCH 28-29, 2019
BIAMD's 31st Annual Conference
Red Lion Hotel - Baltimore North
Lots More Details, Websites, and
Registration Info to Come.
WATCH THIS SPACE!
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#5ThoughtsFriday is Powered By
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Here are the 5 things we thought were
worth sharing with you this week:
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Johns Hopkins University neurosurgeon, Dr. Nicholas Theodore, has been named chairman of the
NFL’s Head, Neck and Spine Committee, the league announced Thursday. The committee is made up of independent and NFL-affiliated physicians and scientists, including advisers for the
NFL Players Association
.
Theodore and other experts who volunteer on the committee will advise the NFL on medical policies, procedures and protocols, in addition to identifying and recommending medical research that affects the health and safety of NFL players.
The Donlin M. Long Professor of Neurosurgery, Orthopaedics and Biomedical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Theodore, 54, is also director of the Johns Hopkins Neurosurgical Spine Center.
“I have a passion for football, but also for caring for patients who’ve suffered traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries,” Theodore said. “The exciting thing here is how we can better diagnose the problem, point the research in a specific direction and, ultimately, come up with things that we don’t have right now, like imaging for mild and traumatic brain injuries. That research is going on right now, and our goal is to get that data together and make everything safer.”
For more on Dr. Theodore and his new appointment:
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Lily, Riley, and Brandon of the Park School Stop By The Brain Injury Association of Maryland's information Table at Brain Injury Awareness Day in Annapolis this Past March.
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4) Park School Students Apply What They've Learned About Brain Injury This Year and Create a Video to Teach Kids About Brain Injuries
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On Wednesday Morning, May 9th, three
Park School
students presented the culmination of an amazing long term project in which they researched, created, and presented a series of educational sessions on brain injury. Geared towards introducing younger students to brain injury education and prevention, the three conducted independent research, met with brain injury professionals, and even attended Brain Injury Awareness Day during the 2018 Legislative Session in Annapolis.
They also hope to use what they have learned and produced to educate Maryland legislators on brain injury to ensure that every Marylander who sustains a brain injury gets the care they need to heal and recover.
Three cheers to
Lily, Riley, Brandon, and their
Park School
teachers for this wonderful contribution to brain injury education and advocacy.
Click the Video below to Watch "Chats With Murphy: Brain Injury".
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Taylor Kracht, age 23, the daughter of an Air Force nurse, requires round-the-clock care. (Courtesy of Amber Kracht-Smith)
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Taylor Kracht, 23, was born with a congenital malformation of the brain that has left her dependent on others - 24 hours a day.
Unable to speak or walk, she requires a feeding tube for nourishment, several breathing treatments daily, medication, and therapy. She functions at a level of less than 1-year-old age equivalency.
The daughter of Lt. Amber Kracht-Smith, a U.S.
Air Force
nurse, Taylor's story is an example of a challenge some military families face and is part of a national conversation about what happens when an incapacitated child turns 21 with one or both parents in the military.
In Taylor's case, she was turned down as "an incapacitated child over 21," leading her mother to advocate for a clarification of dependency policy and how it is interpreted - both for her daughter and other military families.
For Kracht-Smith and others, there often are more questions than answers.
"Taylor has profound physical and intellectual disabilities that will render her incapable of self-support for the rest of her life," Kracht-Smith says. "Despite this, she was denied dependency as an incapacitated adult."
The gap in services for "our most vulnerable" must be unintended, Kracht-Smith says, "a misunderstanding or an oversight."
She shares her family's experience to raise awareness of barriers and challenges that active duty families with incapacitated and/or medically complex children face and "to bring attention to the broader issue of dependency determinations - as they relate to incapacitated adults/children transitioning into adulthood."
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2) What We're Reading We Think You Might Enjoy
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For Clark's Video Talk about these ideas:
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In 1999, Clark Elliott suffered a concussion when his car was rear-ended. Overnight his life changed from that of a rising professor with a research career in artificial intelligence to a humbled man struggling to get through a single day. At times he couldn’t walk across a room, or even name his five children. Doctors told him he would never fully recover. After eight years, the cognitive demands of his job, and of being a single parent, finally became more than he could manage. As a result of one final effort to recover, he crossed paths with two brilliant Chicago-area research-clinicians—one an optometrist emphasizing neuro-developmental techniques, the other a cognitive psychologist—working on the leading edge of brain plasticity. Within weeks the ghost of who he had been started to re-emerge.
Remarkably, Elliott kept detailed notes throughout his experience, from the moment of impact to the final stages of his recovery, astounding documentation that is the basis of this fascinating book.
The Ghost in My Brain
gives hope to the millions who suffer from head injuries each year, and provides a unique and informative window into the world’s most complex computational device: the human brain.
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1) Quote We Are Contemplating...
“Nothing is impossible;
the word itself says ‘I’M POSSIBLE’!”
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Did you enjoy #5ThoughtsFriday? If so, please forward this email to a friend!
Want to find a story from a past #5ThoughtsFriday blog posts, visit the archive by clicking
HERE
.
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info@biamd.org
or contacting us on Twitter.
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@biamd1
and put
#5ThoughtsFriday
in there so we can find it.
Thanks for reading! Have a wonderful weekend.
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