what it feels like: brain trauma and regaining control through fitness
6 minute read
emily webster says that a 14-week voluntary inpatient program to treat complex post-traumatic stress injury and fitness regimen at orangetheory "has literally saved my life.”
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“the brain is such a wild machine. it’s amazing what the brain can do. it’s all about neuroplasticity and having the ability to push through your therapy,” says emily webster, a barrie, ont. woman who knows what overcoming brain trauma is all about. hearing her talk about the human brain, the body’s most complex and fascinating organ, is inspiring—she’s so determined to live well despite her health challenges.
fyi: the brain has about 86 billion neurons, 85 billion other cells and more than 100 trillion connections. psychology today calls the human brain the most complex known structure in the universe.
and the more we learn about neurogenesis, the more we know how the brain can rehabilitate and even grow new cells and pathways when we help it along with lifestyle habits and therapy.
emily, 43, is proof positive. a year ago, blood vessels in her brain hemorrhaged causing multiple seizures. “i woke up in the icu and i was like, ‘what the heck happened?’ i couldn’t move.” it was the worst bleed she’d experienced, robbing her of any movement in her right shoulder, arm, wrist, hand and fingers. the bleed also caused weakness all the way down her right leg to her toes, leaving her with a “foot drop” so walking looks like a stomp and a limp.
this is someone who swam competitively for a decade growing up, became an aquatics coach and was biking and running triathlons in her 20s and 30s.
brain trauma led to loss of function
in 2014, she was diagnosed with cerebral cavernous malformations (ccms), which are groups of tightly packed, irregular small blood vessels with thin walls. ccms can cause blood to leak in the brain, leading to seizures and strokes, which is exactly what has happened to emily. the cause of ccms isn’t known, although they can affect people of the same family.
her bleed in 2014 caused a focal seizure (a type of seizure that affects one side of the brain and body), that limited movement in her right arm and right hand (her dominant hand). she had just completed her registered nursing exam and was ready to start a job in a hospital when she noticed she was tripping over things. she wasn’t sure what was happening and then she lost the feeling in her right hand. she went to see her nurse practitioner who sent her for physiotherapy where the therapist told her she had a compressed nerve. sent home with exercises, she followed the regimen, but nothing helped. a visit to urgent care didn’t offer any further tests or insights with the doctor telling her to simply carry on with her exercises.
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“it was a friday night and i was doing my exercises in the mirror and all of a sudden my arm went limp. i was like, ‘oh my god, what’s happening?’” she remembers. she called a friend who drove her to emergency but when she tried to talk as they were walking into the hospital, she couldn’t speak. she couldn’t find her words. “and then my whole world changed,” she says of learning about her condition. “the doctor came to me and said, ‘this is bad news, you have some bleeding in your brain.’”
living with constant worry of seizure and stroke
emily says she’s an open book about the whole ordeal and her life since. “i had a real hard time coming to terms with the diagnosis and then the unknown of is it going to happen again? where are you going to work and what are you going to do?” she was off work for 17 months working to rehabilitate her speech, cognition and her hand. it worked. she moved to a job in long-term care and was bleed-free and seizure-free for seven years.
she has three ccms that are deep in her brain tissue, so surgery isn’t an option. there’s no medication to target ccms, but she’s been advised to eliminate stress and avoid getting sick (not a simple prescription). she needed to get as strong and capable as she could, so she joined a gym in barrie, orangetheory fitness, to start regular workouts.
then the pandemic hit, derailing her life as it did to so many people. in the chaos of the healthcare system that followed, she changed nursing jobs several times, moved to an apartment outside the city and then moved again. she felt her stress balloon—likely the cause of another brain bleed in 2022 that affected her cognition, she says.
rock-bottom, she needed help and checked into a voluntary inpatient treatment program for complex post-traumatic stress injury. the program, not covered by public health insurance, cost her thousands out of pocket but was worth it. “the 14-week program and orangetheory, the combination of those two things has literally saved my life,” she says.
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fitness club offers community and support
the brain bleed that happened last year has been the most devastating of her seizures, but her continued therapy and community support of the fitness club has pushed her up and over physical and mental hurdles of paralysis and disability, the kind most of us can’t even imagine facing.
“i’ve gone from being completely unable to move my right shoulder, arm, wrist, hand and fingers to bench pressing five to eight pounds. i can hold a plank, do wall push-ups, and row over 3,000 metres,” she says, adding she even does the tornado class where participants spend four minutes doing intense cardio or weight-training and then change to another exercise for four minutes and so on for an hour of full-on sweat.
her mindset has shifted to working through her limitations and never giving up. she can’t chop vegetables or write more than a few characters, noting that fine motor movement deficits have taken a toll on her self-esteem and she often gets frustrated. “i couldn’t wear jeans. i couldn’t do up my zippers for a long time. i could work the button, but the fly, not a chance,” she says of everyday struggles. while she’s not able to go back to a job yet, she is learning to write with her left hand, and she finds the best way to vent her frustration is exercise.
exercise is lifestyle medicine for recovery and rehabilitation
“i’m living proof that if you work at it, you can make great gains, but if you don’t work at your rehab and you’re not paying attention to the signals that your body is giving you, you won’t get there.”
she joins the one-hour workout class at the gym four to five times a week. just getting through the door gives her a reason to assess how she’s feeling physically and mentally. “it’s a wonderful check-in and then there’s the feeling of accomplishment when you’re done. and just the support in the room changes your body chemistry.” she says her workouts are a way to honour her body, building strength, endurance and power, along with recognizing when she needs to rest and have a few days away from the gym.
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going through recovery is a slow process, though, and she’s felt the sting of healthcare professionals telling her, “this is your new normal. accept this as your new normal.” she’s on a mission to change that phrase to, “this is your new baseline. this is where you started.”
in fact, she stood up at a meeting of community healthcare professionals to send a message: “i said ‘please stop saying that to people. you are dismissing their hope and painting this illness as a permanent thing. and we know that the brain can rewire.’”
this is your new baseline is rooted in possibility, she explains. “wherever you take that, it’s up to you, but this is where you’re starting now.”
emily lives that phrase with hope, pushing herself daily to regain the strength and function of her right side. and her message to others trying to overcome adversity is to get active in whatever way you can.
“just move your body. you will feel better, mentally, physically, emotionally. just move your body.”
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