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My Beautiful Broken Brain- Netflix Documentary

      This Netflix documentary follows 34-year old woman named Lotje as she recovers from a massive hemorrhagic stroke. I chose this documentary because after reading the description, I was surprised at how young Lotje was to have suffered a stroke. I also wanted to see what her recovery journey looked like, as I might one day be helping those who have suffered strokes regain independence through occupational therapy. 
My Beautiful Broken Brain begins with Lotje’s account of the incident. She went to bed after a perfectly normal, busy day, and was awakened in the middle of the night with a blinding headache. She remembers knowing that something was terribly wrong and that she needed help immediately, and she found her way to a nearby hotel after enduring bouts of nausea and vomiting. However, she was unable to communicate with anyone to tell them what was wrong, and she was eventually found collapsed in the hotel bathroom. She woke up in the hospital after being in a medically-induced coma, and her world was completely different. She could speak, but had a very hard time coming up with the words she wanted to say. She explained that her vision had changed  as well, and that the right side of her visual field was distorted. She could not read or write. She felt alienated within her own mind. 
     Lotje loved to capture moments on film even before her incident, so soon after her stroke, she started filming herself on her iPhone. A large part of the documentary comes from these clips, which allows us to see her perspective in real time and throughout her progression. She also reached out to a documentary filmmaker to follow her story only a couple weeks after the incident. I found it interesting that she made this decision so early in her journey, and it made for a raw, unfiltered look at her recovery, unaffected by hindsight bias. She said that it was so terrifying to think about her potential to forget things, so she wanted to capture her journey to recovery on film so that she could look back and understand it herself. After a few weeks, she was sent to a neurological rehabilitation hospital, where her time was filled with appointments with occupational therapists, speech therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists. They worked with her on addressing multiple challenges, ranging from language/communication, reading, writing, memory, and cognitive processing. 
     The documentary producers made an effort to put the viewers in Lotje’s shoes throughout the film. The screen is blurred and pops of color appear on the right side of the screen at various times throughout the documentary. They also make the sound muffled when Lotje talks about her personal experiences with hearing difficulty. I found myself becoming frustrated with the blurriness and disorienting perspective (as well as the tiny, hard to read font- possibly chosen on purpose?) but then realized that this is only a fraction of what Lotje was feeling, and she couldn’t look away from a screen to get relief like I could. I think that this, combined with her personal videos taken on her iPhone, was a powerful way to let people better understand Lotje’s stroke recovery. 
     While she  experienced a regression period after suffering from a seizure induced by an experimental treatment, Lotje still made a remarkable recovery. This documentary opened my eyes to the vast amount of causes and potential challenges that can come after a stroke. At the young age of 34, Lotje’s stroke was caused by a congenital defect of a blood vessel in her brain. This type of stroke can strike anyone at any time. Her friends and family described Lotje as articulate, independent, and driven. She was a vibrant, young, successful woman going about her day just like any other. No one could have seen this coming. I think that watching this documentary will help me to better understand and empathize with clients who have experienced strokes in the future, whether or not their experience is similar to Lotje’s. Strokes are scary, unforeseen, frustrating, and can entail a long road to recovery. I am so thankful to be entering into a field that can so profoundly help people who find themselves on that road to find meaning and independence in their lives again. I highly recommend this documentary to anyone! 

Home Page. (n.d.). Retrieved April 18, 2018, from http://mybeautifulbrokenbrain.com/

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