Their Story Their Voice
Their Story Their Voice
Navigating Life After a Traumatic Brain Injury
In this conversation, Mandi Dickey shares her profound journey following a traumatic brain injury. She discusses her background in healthcare, the challenges she faced navigating the medical system, and the importance of advocacy for proper care. Mandy opens up about her mental health struggles post-accident, the coping mechanisms she developed, and the role of her support system in her recovery. She reflects on her identity transformation and the lessons learned through her experiences, emphasizing the importance of self-discovery and embracing change. In this conversation, Mandi Dickey shares her insights on brain health, the importance of sleep, nutrition, and exercise, and discusses common misconceptions surrounding brain injuries. She emphasizes the need for proper sleep routines, a balanced diet, and regular physical activity to support brain health. Mandi also reflects on her personal journey from being a healthcare provider to a patient after experiencing a traumatic brain injury, highlighting the challenges and lessons learned along the way.
Please note transcription accuracy may vary.
Music by:
(Neffex - A year ago)
(Neffex - dont want to let myself go)
sources:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNRC2K9?ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_HHQJBH6519XCBJCPKFKF
https://bio.link/brainwellnessnp
Hi, hi, hi. Welcome to another episode of Their Story, Their Voice. This episode is slightly longer because I'm speaking to a lovely, lovely lady called Mandi Dickey. I will put all the links for her website, which also has her published books on there. Hope you enjoy. I hope you get to learn something from her. I learned that I need to drink more water Actually needed to hear it from someone who Is about the brain? So I have actually been doing that. So that was my takeaway Hi, Mandi. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of your story, your voice. Would you mind sharing with me anything that you're comfortable with? Who's Mandy? Whereabouts in the world are you?
Mandi:Oh my gosh, who's Mandy? In a nutshell, I am a mom. I've got three children. I am a wife. I have worn many hats over the years. The last 25 years I've worked in healthcare. I started off as a nursing assistant and then I was a nurse. I taught nursing school for several years before going back for my nurse practitioner. all of my experience has been in neurology To some degree, I've always worked with neurological patients, whether it was at the bedside or while teaching or as a nurse practitioner And I've always had a huge passion for helping people in general, but helping people in the neurological field. And for a long time, I identified as a nurse practitioner and I didn't realize how much that identity meant so much to me until it was. jeopardized I'll get to that in just a second. along that path, I was also a fitness, health coach for a while. I got certified to teach fitness classes. I did, the beach body model for a long time. The beach body workouts, all the big time things trying to get into fitness and health. I've ran 13 half marathons. I was in the process of training for a full marathon when in the spring of 2023, my world came crashing down. It was in a car accident and I suffered a traumatic brain injury and being on the other side of the patient experience was something very eyeopening for me. I've had migraines since I was a teenager. So I've always said that, you know, God kind of gave me these things so that I could be a more empathic provider. But having this experience hit me was something like I've never experienced before.
AO:Would you mind telling me a bit about what happened?
Mandi:Yeah. I've gotten past the point where, where it's, it's a trauma in itself, as I've gone through a lot of, PTSD therapy, so I can talk about it without having to go relive through it again. So I'm always happy to share it because if it helps one other person, I'm, I'm always open to share. And I would say that I'm, I'm an open book now. I will share whatever will help somebody else. I actually had just switched from working in neurology for many, many years to neurosurgery, For the entirety of my experience, I had wanted to see a brain surgery. I was so extremely excited about it. And in my orientation for my new job in neurosurgery, I got to see a brain surgery, unexpectedly one day I was supposed to be shadowing the, the physician that I was working with. And he had a surgery on his schedule for the afternoon. We were removing a brain tumor and I got to go in and watch it. And I was on cloud nine. It was the highest of high experiences in my career. I had just gotten engaged the week before. I was talking to my fiancé's ear off about how exciting this was being in on this experience. And then we were, it was getting later and later, we were supposed to go out for a date night, get to dinner. I kept talking to him, saying we need to get going. His birthday was coming up. His birthday present had come. So he was playing with his present, of course. Finally got him out the door, talking his ear off the whole way to the restaurant. And the stoplight before the, the, at the restaurant, we got in a car accident. The car that was coming from the other direction hit us right in front of my door and sliced off the front of our vehicle and it all happened so fast except for the moment that I could feel my head moving back and forth kind of in slow motion at that point and I didn't realize the extent of my injuries at that point. I was freaking out, obviously. But my husband stepped into gear. He used to be a fire medic and he jumped in and kind of took control of the scene, made sure that everybody was okay. My phone amazingly called 9 1 1 for me. I didn't know phones had that capability, but called 9 1 1 for me. And we were connected to dispatcher. The ambulance took me to the hospital. The hospital never said anything to me about concussion or head injury. I had soft tissue injuries and all the images that they found, and that's all they said, and they sent me home. And I had a really bad headache the next day and a lot of bruising. if it wouldn't have been for my experience in neurology, I would never have known to reach out to one of my neurological colleagues and asked to be evaluated. Because I just knew something was off and I called him up and I said, can you, can you just check me out? Cause I think I might have gotten, gotten a concussion and he said, absolutely. And I went in on one of his lunch breaks and my eyes weren't tracking together and I couldn't stand up straight. And he asked me if I was aware of these things and I wasn't.
AO:When you went to the hospital, did they not do any of that? I'm just asking cause I kind of would have thought that would have been a thing that they would have done.
Mandi:Yeah, nope. They checked, from what I recall, they checked for my pain level. the ambulance had put it in an IV in case I needed something for pain. I never did get anything for pain. They asked me if I wanted something and I didn't want to mask the symptoms before we got to the hospital. Never did get anything. They did a bunch of images. They wanted to rule out to make sure I didn't have blood on the brain, which I didn't. It was the level one trauma hospital that we had here in our state in Minnesota and you would think that they would have been kind of on top of all of those things because of it. But it was several hours before I was seen. It was several hours before the doctor then came in after all of that. And it was a very brief exam. She did a very minimal neurological exam. Had I been more with it at the point, I probably could have encouraged her to do more, but I was a bit out of it at the point.
AO:you were the patient.
Mandi:Yeah. And, in any other scenario, I would have probably pushed for more. Anytime my family's been in the hospital, I've pushed for more. My mom had a stroke several years ago. The nurse did her exam walked away and I went to my mother's bedside and did a full exam on my mom. I've always been the one to do the exam. And at that moment, I couldn't remember the things I needed to do. I couldn't remember the things I needed to tell the doctor. I don't remember most of what happened other than that, that they really didn't do much. I was surprised. At how little that they did, unfortunately.
AO:So you, because of your job, you were able to go to a colleague and I know without saying it, you must know how lucky you were that you were able to do that.
Mandi:Yeah. I had that ability other people don't have And had I not had that knowledge that something was amiss there, I wouldn't have gotten the diagnosis when I did. So if I had been anybody else that didn't have that connection, I wouldn't have gotten the diagnosis and I wouldn't have gotten help anywhere close to when I did.
AO:Throughout your career, did you have people who would say, well, I went to. Is it common for them to misdiagnose or not pick it up when they should?
Mandi:Unfortunately, I would say yes. ER, ED, emergency room or emergency department, we like to confuse people and use multiple different terms for it. Depending on where you go, some of them will be more knowledgeable than others. And if you go to a larger city versus a small community hospital, you might get better care than another one. But it's all going to depend on the knowledge level and the experience level of the provider you see, unfortunately. And it all depends on the busyness of the emergency room at the time that you go. The busier that it is, the more likely sometimes it is that you are to be kind of brushed aside if you don't have as severe of symptoms. If I would have had blood on my brain, sure, they probably would have taken it more seriously. But, the fact that there was no blood on my brain and it was the middle of the night by the time we got in there, there were other things on their minds and that was the least of their, their concerns, unfortunately. It's not uncommon. I had many, many patients come through my doors when I was working in the clinic and, and in the hospital when patients would come in and they said, you know, I've been here before or they didn't want to come in because they know that they weren't going to get the diagnosis that they, that they deserved. So why even come anyway?
AO:that's sad.
Mandi:It's very unfortunate.
AO:And that's so disappointing. come on, it has to be better than that.
Mandi:We don't have great service. And that's one thing that as, as the patient, I was, I was readily aware of it now I had heard it as patients would tell me these stories, but I kept saying it can't be like this all the time. And then when I experienced it myself firsthand. It's like, Oh, crap. It is like this more often than it should be. What happened next? It was a very unfortunate starting. And that's why, honestly, why I'm doing all of these talks, why I wrote my book, why I share my story is because it is a common story. And it is because it's a common theme. Too many people have had the experience that I have that they don't get the care that they need. They don't get the diagnosis that they should at the time that they should, so that their care gets delayed. As it was my care. did not happen probably as quickly as it could have, even with the diagnosis right away. Just because our traditional medical system in the United States, you follow the lines X, Y, Z. This is what you do. But there's so much more outside of that X, Y, Z box that we, that the traditional medical system doesn't always think of. So I went through those hoops initially. We got into physical therapy, we got into occupational therapy. I got into see a neuro optometrist right away because my vision was off. I went to appointment after appointment and my symptoms kept getting more and more complex as I went through. So it started off with a headache and then we identified that my vision was double and that my balance was off. my exercise intolerance was huge. I couldn't walk more than a few blocks before I would get winded. I couldn't go up and down the stairs in my house very well, or I would get winded. I couldn't do more than a couple of tasks at a time. I would get winded and I would have to take a break. I was overly sensitive to lights and to sounds, and I would lose track of a conversation in the middle of a conversation. And at first my neurologist chalked it up to my headache, and it was the pain that was, was causing all these problems. A few months went by, we still couldn't get a handle on the headache, and when it finally started kind of coming back a little bit, my cognitive problems were still there. I still couldn't have a full sentence. I still couldn't remember things very well. I was still missing appointments, or going to the wrong place for my appointment, or completely forgetting to view my assignments, or forgetting to eat, or take my medicine, or whatever, because my cognition was just not working correctly. And then it was, okay, now we need to do some cognitive testing to figure out what's going on. And then we identified that my memory wasn't working where it should be. My thought processes were working very slow compared to what they should be for somebody my age, not even compared to somebody with beyond a master's degree, what I had. Prior to this injury, I was working full-time, plus a side job plus my podcast, plus my kids, plus my fitness. I was an overachiever type a personality person before the accident, so I was super high functioning. So on all of these diagnostic tests, neuropsychological testing, sometimes that doesn't show up because. even diminished function for me is still higher than some, unfortunately.
AO:Okay. What happened from there? At what stage did you actually start to get help? But psychological help because you went through a trauma. So physically That needed to be addressed, but then there was also you dealing with the trauma. So, where did you go with that?
Mandi:I had probably about three months after the accident, I started working with a regular mental health therapist, just because of my mood and my emotions. I couldn't control my mood and my emotions, and I didn't know if it was just because of the trauma. Or if it was because of frustrations because I couldn't do what I wanted to do. I didn't know if I was depressed and she agreed that it didn't really meet clinical depression. It was probably because of the symptoms that I was experiencing, but a lot of it was frustration because of that. And just changes in my brain chemistry, how my brain was functioning. I wasn't able to cope and compensate the way I used to. My coping mechanism prior to the accident was exercise. and I couldn't do my exercise. So I didn't really have a good outlet for, for getting rid of my frustrations for my lack of ability to get back to work at that point, my lack of ability to maintain my family's finances, even at that point. So there was a lot of, lot of frustrations that were outside of my, of my control that I couldn't deal with. So that's where she came into play. And so I met with her on a weekly basis and we talked through some of those frustrations and she was certified in art therapy. So she tried getting me to draw things. And I've never been much of an abstract thinker. I've always been very black and white on that thinking. Trying to get me to draw my feelings was interesting, but, after several months, I was able to get some things down on paper and they were very eyeopening when they occurred, because it was very emotional when they came out, just expressing what I was feeling. I couldn't express it in words, but when I finally was able to put it onto paper, my first drawing was a split page of myself as a provider on one half of it, and myself in bed in a dark room on the other half. And it was very just, I showed it to my family and they just, jaws dropped. It's like, wow, just the way I captured those emotions of going from being one side to the other. In one page was kind of surprising for both of us, I guess I didn't realize that I could capture my feelings that way for one because I'm not an abstract thinker, several months later, I reached out to a therapist that was certified with EMDR. eye movement, desensitization, desensitization and retraining. And we went through the whole PTSD part of it. That was amazing. That was about a two and a half month process where we went through all the stages of the accident into the, the outcomes of the accident. And the fact that I wasn't getting back to work still at that point. And we came up to a barrier where I couldn't get past the financial struggles. I'm like, okay, I don't think we can therapy away my financial struggles right now. But we really got through really well working on, the PTSD part to the point where I could drive down the road and see an emergency vehicle drive past me, or I could see somebody on the side of the road and I no longer had a panic attack. And it was like a normal day driving down the road. And that part of the accident, that part of the response was healed. So that part felt good. Working with my emotions, we got to a point where that part felt good. Still not quite back to my same coping mechanisms, but it took months, months, months, months. I'm a year and a half out now, and I'm really only a couple months out of working with those people. And that has taken me a long time to get to this point. I again, used to be very type a, I was push, push, push, always going, going, going. And I never liked sitting still and trying to learn to actually let go and sit still now is, it's still something I'm working on, but, I talk more. I didn't use to open up and talk to my family members because I didn't want to appear weak. I was the strong one. I have a tattoo on my arm that says strength and I've always been the Model of strength and pushing through everything that I've gone through. And when people were telling me that after the accident, I hated it. I didn't want to be told I was the strongest person they knew because I didn't feel strong anymore. And it took a long time for me to open up and talk to my husband, to talk to my kids about what was going on, because I didn't want them to know. how I was feeling. I didn't want them to know how broken I felt. I didn't want them to know how much I felt like I was letting them down because I couldn't heal fast enough. And in the process of opening up and telling them those things, they learned how to help me. So it was no longer, trying to act strong. It was actually being strong by asking for help. And my 15 year old son was hugging me the other day when I was having a meltdown, as I still do. And he said, Mom, you're one of the most strong people I know, not because you try not to cry, but because you do, you show us your emotions, you show us your feelings. And, By letting my people in, it's letting them help me. And that's my new coping mechanism is by letting people in to help me. So I no longer have to hold it all myself. I can, if I'm having a rough day, I can just cuddle into my husband and just, he lets me cry if I need to cry. Or one of my kids will just come and they cuddle with me and They, we talk about funny things We say bonus in my family, my bonus daughter. We talk about funny things, mushrooms, stupid things boys do, whatever it is that make us giggle. And it's, we each have our own connection they know what I need now so that I don't need to go out and go for a five mile run in the rain. Because I can't. But they can come and help me and I can ask for that when I need it. And if they're not around, I go to my noise canceling headphones and I listen to some relaxing music. it helps bring my blood pressure down. It helps just slow my heart rates and I can focus on my breathing. And then. I can get back to whatever I'm doing.
AO:I'm sorry what happened to you happened to you. But I'm also sorry that, you're defined because you're so strong. Because I'm very much a believer of feel what you're feeling. Are you comfortable with where you are now,
Mandi:Some days yes, some days no. Going through my accident was not a good thing, but it wasn't entirely bad either. So there's always something good that can come from experiences. Was it a life changing event? Absolutely. Did it end my career as I knew it? Yes. Does that mean that's the end of my career? No. It just means that it's a pivot point and I'm learning what that pivot is going to look like. I don't know what the final result is going to be yet. but there are some things that we're working on and trying to create something based on my new passions from this experience. And I've learned that I don't want to go back to what I was. I don't want to go back to that person who was working way too much and pushing myself harder than I should have been. Because I was not very nice to my body. I didn't listen to myself. I didn't stop when I needed to. And I probably didn't spend enough time with my family and now I have time with my family and I can focus on them and we have time to just sit and rest. And if we want to pick up and go camping on a weekend, we can pick up and go camping on a weekend. my happy place is out in the woods and we can do that now. So, was it a terrible thing that happened? Yes. Are there good things that came out of it? Also, yes. So, to answer the question, some days, yes, I'm comfortable with it. Other days, I still really miss what I did. I miss the old me, the abilities that I had. But I don't miss how busy I kept myself.
AO:Did you used to keep yourself busy? Because that was just that version of Mandy.
Mandi:Yeah. It's what I always did. From a young age, it's what I did. Even in high school, I was in band and choir and drama and all the sports. I did sports all year round. I did something all the time and I continued that. I got pregnant when I was 17, so I was a teenage mom, and even then, I still went to college with a baby, and when he was in school, I was his cub scout leader and his assistant basketball coach, and I did all the things. I always did all the things, so I never knew anything other than that.
AO:which I know the reason why you've had to learn the new version of you. And like I said, what happened to you, I'm sorry that happened to you, but I, I don't know. I'm kind of getting the impression that you're realizing that actually Mandy that I'm speaking to. It's different to who you were before, but actually this version of you is also okay. The good days are the good days and the bad days are the bad days. But it looks like you're trying your best to navigate through those.
Mandi:I'm different than I was before, but people who know me now see no problem with me. So it's, I'm not seen as broken, even though I feel like it because I don't function the same as I did before. I've always been a believer that things happen for a reason. Apparently I wasn't doing it fast enough for the universe, so the universe intervened and forced my hand, for better or worse, here I am, learning a new route in life, and as my husband starts to remind me that there are bigger and better things to come, I just don't know what they are yet. There's a purpose for this all happening, and I'm trying to find that purpose, and trying to find the meaning in all of it, and I'm getting a little bit more clarity with it every day, and I'm excited by the things that I'm learning, and excited by the abilities that I'm gaining back, that I can have a difference in other people's lives still, in a different way than I did before, but I can still make a difference in other people's lives, and it'll help other people that have been through the same experience that I have, so that it doesn't have to be so difficult for them.
AO:I definitely agree with what you said about the universe. Maybe it's okay to not know.
Mandi:I know. There's this whole thing of trust the process, right? And I've always hated that phrase because the process is so rocky and you don't know where it's going. And it can be a much longer process than you anticipate or that you would like. And that's where I am, is I'm stuck in the process right now and I'm trying to trust it. And it's frustratingly slow and unclear at times, but I know that it will clear itself up at some point. You gotta have faith in that. My husband has faith in it. I need to as well.
AO:Everyone gets there when they're ready. You will get there
Mandi:I have a really good team Yes,
AO:your profession, did that help with your recovery
Mandi:It helped in that I had resources, so I knew where to reach out. I knew who to reach out to, and I had connections in different places. I knew to reach out to my friend, the neurologist, to get in. When I needed to get into a neuro optometrist, I had another friend who had, recommended one here in the Twin Cities in Minneapolis for me to go see. And so I had this network of people that I already had kind of in my back pocket. I'm fortunate to have that. I know not everybody has that. I definitely think that helped in my favor. If I had not had that network, it would have been a much slower process to get in with all of those people.
AO:When did you start your podcast? when and why, and can you also please share the name of your podcast also?
Mandi:Yeah. So my podcast, brain wellness, the podcast. I started that because it was a whole, series of things I was going to do. I had written a book back in 22 called, migraine help for, from the unicorn nurse practitioner. And it was going to be the first in a series of books, brain wellness. So it was all the planned purpose under my whole, umbrella company, Brain Wellness Solutions. So my website, brainwellnesssolutions. com is the whole parent company. Brain Wellness, the podcast came out in October of 2022, and that came about because I love teaching. I have been a nurse, faculty member, so I taught in a nursing program for a total of six years at various times, four years, and then another two years later. And I absolutely love teaching, love sharing the knowledge that I've gained, love seeing the aha moments in people. And I wanted to share my knowledge beyond the walls of the facility that I was working in. I had thought for a while that I wanted to be an online health coach, and then just didn't have the time to do that and continue my full time job in the hospital. I did know my limits there. Instead of trying to create that all into an online coaching, course or whatever, I took that to my podcast instead. But the one thing that came out of that is in that coaching course that I took, we had somebody, a guest speaker come in and talked about if you wanted to start a podcast, the things you needed to do were come up with your list of your top 100 people that you wanted to talk to top 100 topics that you wanted to do. And I got off that call. And I was so. energize to do this. So I sat down immediately and wrote down my list of a hundred top people, a hundred topics that I wanted to do. And I got down to business like designing my logo and talking to some of my friends and getting it going. And I think within a month I had the show up and running. Cause I was just that excited about it. Actually first I was a guest on somebody else's show and that's what really pushed me over the edge. Cause I'm like, okay, let me try this out. And that's, I got addicted right away. So, I started the show and I started interviewing people, both providers, other providers that I knew, who had taken care of people with different neurological, neurosurgical or mental health conditions, as well as people who've lived with those different conditions. Just getting both sides of the story. It's been so exciting and so fun to connect with people on both sides of it and get their different experiences.
AO:some of the practices that people can adopt to support their brain health?
Mandi:Of the simplest things that people can do for their brain health are the things that people don't want to do. Regular sleep. So regular sleep, meaning you go to sleep at the same time, you wake up at the same time every day. your brain gets in on a routine and it gets on a schedule and your brain likes that routine. So when you do that, it gets your brain into a normal REM sleep cycle. You need that normal REM sleep cycle so that you can process the information of the day so that you can formulate memories and create long term memories. If you're not getting into good REM sleep, you actually can't get those memories in place. Have you seen the movie, Inside Out, the cartoon movie. Oh, So for anybody that has seen that cartoon movie, there's all these colorful marbles that get created throughout the day. And at the end of the night, the characters in the brain pull the little lever down and the marbles get stored in the brain, whether they are, there's a color for long term, there's a color for short term, and then there's a color for just random and they don't get stored. And that's essentially represents what happens to your brain at the end of the night when you go to sleep at night, all of those thoughts that happen during the day get processed. They either go into your long term memory or they're things that necessarily don't need to keep around, but you can't formulate those long term memories unless they get stored properly. You need good amount of sleep for that. So that's why a lot of people will find that they're not getting good sleep at night. They're having memory issues and they start to get concerned. Am I getting dementia? Am I having something else going on? And really they're just not sleeping well. I don't recommend sleeping with the TV on. It also disrupts your sleep pattern. Also, cell phones, all of these things that have blue light on it disrupts our normal production of melatonin. So that disrupts our sleep pattern as well. It's a really simple thing. That's number one thing that you can do for your brain health is making sure that you get enough sleep.
AO:Okay. That's actually really useful. My friend has this thing because I'm not very good with my sleep schedule on a Sunday. I use that as my catch up day. And she said to me, yeah, that's what you do. It doesn't matter if you didn't get enough sleep throughout the week, but. You know, now you've caught up on Sunday and I've said to her, I'm not sure if that's true. It's not true, is it? No, it's not. It's not actually true.
Mandi:Unfortunately, no, we can't actually catch up. It just means that one particular day you got really good sleep. Nope. Nope. But sleep is the number one thing you can do to help your brain. Number two is probably good nutrition and good nutrition will vary from one person to the next but in general it's eating the rainbow and eating foods that are as close to natural as possible. So, meats, fruits, vegetables, things that don't come in a box, things don't come pre packaged. The more they have to put, processed things into it to keep it steady on a shelf, the more you're putting those processed things into your body that it's going to cause disruption in your body.
AO:I have heard that can I just ask, you know when you said the rainbow?
Mandi:It means eat foods of all different colors. So when you eat fruits, for example, berries come in all different colors. You've got red, blue, green fruits, you've got orange fruits, getting all of those different things, green vegetables, yellow vegetables, Even the red with the sweet potatoes, you get all of those different colors, you get all those different vitamins. So each of those different colors represents different vitamins and nutrients. So you can't just eat one thing and expect to get all of your vitamins and minerals covered. You have to get all of them. Even people who are vegetarians and vegans have to then take supplements to get the things that they're not getting in the meats. Because yes, you can get proteins with some of the different beans and things, but you're not going to get the same kind of proteins that you would get in the animals and you're not going to get the same amounts of them. diets that you might be following too.
AO:Okay. How important is drinking of water?
Mandi:Our bodies are mostly made of water. As we grow, we get less and less of it. As infants, we are 60 to 70 percent water. As adults, we're about 40 percent. I might be off on that percentage a little bit, but we're still quite a bit water. We need to be drinking, the good measure is half your body weight in ounces. So take your In the United States, we do it in pounds. Take your body weight in pounds, divide that by two, and that's how many ounces you should be drinking. one kilograms to, to ounces.
AO:In the UK we have milliliters and liters does a liter sound like a lot?
Mandi:Most adults should be drinking one to two liters of water a day, if not three, depending on their size.
AO:What health implications does not drinking enough water actually have?
Mandi:You know, you'd be surprised how often people ask that because they don't realize that it does have implications. There are a lot of effects that you can see. Hydration will affect your ability to have, well, for one, normal bowel movements. You can't have a good bowel movement every day unless you are really well hydrated. You can also have a lot of brain fog if you're not hydrated well enough. People in neurology, I see a lot of people with headaches because they don't get hydrated very well. If people have a lot of edema in their body, so general wellness issues, if people have a lot of swelling in their legs especially, that water is in the wrong spot. You get that water out of being in the wrong spot by drinking the water and it gets more water back into the blood vessels rather than being out into the cells. So if you drink enough water, you won't have as much swelling in your body. Seems odd, but it's true. And if you are someone who drinks a lot of coffee, you actually need to flush out that caffeine and those toxins out of your body. That's additional.
AO:Okay.
Mandi:Water doesn't have to just be water. It can be tea, as long as it's not caffeinated tea. It can be broth. It can be, clear liquids that don't have caffeine in them.
AO:I don't know how many times I, people have to keep telling me this and it's like, I can hear it, but I'm not really, implementing it, which actually is concerning because I'm not actually a child. So Thank you. And sometimes you need to hear things several times.
Mandi:I add electrolytes to my water because I need that for my headaches. Here in the United States, we've kind of ruined our foods and we don't get the right vitamins and nutrients anyway, so hopefully you guys haven't done the same thing in the UK.
AO:I spoke to a lady from the UK who's now in America and she did say over in the UK, we have more options than America does, which blows my mind because you're so big that I don't understand why. You wouldn't have as many if not more options.
Mandi:There would be too many regulations on everything.
AO:Oh, I didn't know that.
Mandi:But not in the right places.
AO:What about exercise? How important actually is that for a healthy brain?
Mandi:It's very important. when I was working clinic, especially, I would always talk to people about ways they could help prevent their brain from aging too quickly. And it was always talking about keeping your brain active physically, mentally, and socially. Physically active, you need to maintain some sort of regular exercise and it doesn't have to be something strenuous It can be even just walking. Walking every day, but you need to walk fast enough so that it's difficult to carry on a conversation because then you're walking for cardiovascular health. You're not just walking to check out the colors or watch the sky. You're walking for that cardiovascular health. So that's the part that you need to get in every day. And here in the US, we typically say 30 minutes a day, most days of the week, should be enough for most people. And if you've had a brain injury, if you've had any kind of, of, kind of detriment to your, to your brain, it's going to be more difficult. You might have to do that in smaller increments. 10 minutes at a time is just fine as well. It doesn't have to be 30 minute chunks and all at one time, but some sort of exercise most days of the week. And that helps with blood flow. It helps with circulation. It helps your general wellness. It helps your mood. Exercise is the most underutilized antidepressant. It helps stabilize your mood. And it just helps with general healing as well. In addition to just general wellness for your brain and your body in general.
AO:This one is a very me question. What are some of the common misconceptions about brain injuries and the recovery? Other than people do need to bear in mind that it's different depending on the person. But what are the misconceptions? Are there any?
Mandi:Oh, I think there's so many misconceptions. Most people think that brain injuries are pretty mild. And that for a long time we've just called them just kind of a bump on the head. People get their bell rung. it's never really been seen as something super severe and you get a little knock on the head and you keep going and people Assume that you're gonna get better really quickly and that you shouldn't have any problems beyond a few days So that's kind of the big assumption is that you should be better quickly and even still I've seen a lot of things about concussion that say, you know One to two weeks. Most people should be healed and maybe up to a month for longer cases, but that's not the case either. it can go on for long, long periods of time, weeks, months, years, even. another big misconception is that at a year you've gotten back everything that you're going to get back. And that's also not true because if you haven't even gotten the diagnosis and you haven't started therapies, You're not going to get back You won't start to get better until you get into those therapies. So even if therapy doesn't start until a year, you're still going to get better whenever you start that therapy. So that's not the end all be all once you get to that mark. I'm at a year and a half. I'm not done getting better. I'm still getting better. I'm still working with my therapies. It's not as fast as it was before, but I didn't start until six months in for some of it. it took a little bit of time to get all of the therapies that I needed. it's another thing that I think that people kind of don't understand is that there's a difference between what men and women look like with concussion. women tend to take longer to heal. Women tend to have more cognitive issues with concussion. the problem with concussions, the problem with TBIs is that they are silent. problems. They are invisible disabilities. People can't see them. So you look just fine, but you don't feel fine on the inside. So other people can look in from the outside and say, well, why aren't you back to work? Why aren't you doing this? Why aren't you doing that? When the person themself is feeling very different from that, it's because it's a cognitive problem. It's an inside your body problem. It's not something that can visibly be seen all the time. Except for when I hit my wall, my husband will tell you that he can see. And if anybody that knows me. They can see because my eyes kind of gloss over and I start staring off into space. But up until that point you don't notice anything physically. So it's all an internal battle and there's a lot going on inside that people don't see. but everybody fights a different battle because it's a different Different pace for everybody. I've seen some people get better in a matter of hours, days. I've seen some people that never get back to their baseline, and I've seen everything in between.
AO:Even before what happened to you happened, you have seen a lot. Did you ever have times where it actually got too much for you? Not really because just the helping people was, that was enough.
Mandi:I'm an empath. I have been all my life, so I Yes you did. Yeah, you did. There are times when I would go home and I would get to my car at the end of the day and I would cry for people. And so I've cried for my patients more often than they would ever know.'cause it's, it would break my heart when I would see that they weren't getting better when they wanted to or. I would feel their frustrations. I just didn't know why I was feeling the frustrations that I did all the time. Now I know better what they were frustrated about.
AO:Because you know better because you've experienced it now. So, reason I actually really wanted you I wanted an author who wrote about something because they'd gone through it. So please would you tell me about your book, what it's called? And can I just add really quickly, I'm going to put a link in the show notes to your website. And what did I say? there was something that made me smile. It was a unicorn. Unicorn horn. And it did make me smile.
Mandi:Yep. I have two books. The one that's on the website with the unicorn on it was the Migraine Help from Unicorn Nurse Practitioner. That was my first one that I wrote, because after years of being both a migraine patient and, taking care of people in clinic for so many years with migraines, I had lots of advice that I would give over and over again. and it was things that not every neurologist would give, vitamins, nutrients, outside the thinking for migraine treatment. So that's the one with the silly unicorn, hairpiece that I wore.
AO:I loved it.
Mandi:It was fun. I had to have some kind of fun with it. my most recent one is, welcome back, the, TBI. story from provider to patient about the first year of recovery from my accident. I didn't know how I was ever going to do it, but I had a couple of different friends who told me that I needed to share my story. I needed to share the experience that I was going through because as I was telling them how about all these things that I was identifying of problems and pitfalls and in healthcare and what was going wrong, I just needed to share it with other people, so I started taking notes, and I kept a spreadsheet of everything that I was feeling. all the phone calls, all of the symptoms that I had, when I would start feeling better, when different things would happen so that I could go back and when I felt up to it, start, turning that spreadsheet into bullet points. And then I turned the bullet points into two sentences and then into paragraphs and then organized it into chapters. And it was a long process, but it was a lot of information that helps both the other people who have had TBI know that they're not alone and it helps people that have Not had a TBI who might be taking care of somebody that's had a concussion or TBI To know what might be going on inside the head of the person that they're taking care of Because you don't often get that perspective of what's happening, because it's hard for us to describe what we're feeling. But once, once my family could kind of see how I was feeling, then they were open to describe to me what they were feeling about the, the experience too. And there's a chapter in there where they shared their thoughts on it. I wasn't the only patient in the whole experience. My whole family became a patient because I was not the only one affected. It affected my whole family. It affected my husband. It affected my kids. So they got to share how they were affected in the book as well. And there's just, there's so much to learn whether you are the one that had the head injury or not. Knowing that you're not alone or just knowing how that you can help the person that that you're taking care of.
AO:Thank you for your time. I can't ever describe the feeling of when I get to speak to people like you,
Mandi:Of course. Thank you for letting me share.
AO:Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to another episode of Their Story, Their Voice. As always, be kind to others. But most importantly, remember to be kind to yourself. Thank you, thank you. Bye!
