I guess the most important thing in my rehab journey has been not being afraid to bang my head against the wall at times! This is me hitting a wall in Warth, Austria, already back in 2008…
The world is abundant with precise, even microscopicly, fine information about almost every little nuance these days. This is such an exciting time to be alive! And if I had to suffer a traumatic brain injury at some point of my life… the timing may have been perfect for it.
Don’t get me wrong… of course I would’ve just loved to continue living my dream, the life of a professional skier, which had only just begun. I was hungry, SO hungry to accomplish big things. Then I hit the ground and it ended. I suffered a very severe traumatic brain injury and everything seemed to be over.
But human brain is an incredible organ. Even though an unbelievable amount of my nerve connections were cut and gazillions of neurons kaput, my life was far from over! It was just a new, very different kind of and difficult of a beginning. I kept on believing for a better future and that gave me the motivation to try basically everything hypothetically beneficial for my rehabilitation. Some of the techniques were recommended by a doctor, but the information about the most of them came out from elsewhere.
I have not been sure of anything I have tried. In the beginning everything was handed to me by doctors and the physiotherapists in hospitals, rehab center ect. but since then, I have trusted certain people and done my best. Here’s a few photos of what I’ve done:
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- In the beginning I thought I could get better by physically exercising. This is me doing CrossFit in 2012.
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- Then I started going to the Sport Science Lab, because I still considered myself an athlete with an injury.
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- I got the chance to rehabilitate myself like an athlete in Sport Science Lab back in 2012.
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- I have done my fair share of cold exposure as well! This is icy lake from 2019.
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- This is how my cold exposure begun. I was going to these Cryotherapy rooms back in 2014. -100 was a nice number in my opinion, but I usually went to the extreme cold when it was below -170°.
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- I tried out this method called Vasa Concept for years.
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- The Vasa Concept was A LOT of work, but it gave me a lot of results as well. This is back in the beginning of me doing it in 2015 and my buddy AJ is helping me out. <3
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- This was the physiotherapy provided by my home town in 2023.
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- This is something I’m still trying out at home.
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- This is fabulous exercise from Kuortane this summer!
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- I visited Pro Performance Academy in my HOMETOWN yesterday!
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- I had no idea this fabulous place was here, but I for sure am going to start working there!!
I haven’t studied medicine or physiotherapy formally in any school, but I feel like I possess a lot of know how about it anyways. Becoming an expert by experience in TBI rehab isn’t fun or easy, but I feel like that’s what I’ve done. There may be many possibilities left for me in the future filled with information, computers and artificial intelligence in medical care.