As part of her recovery she designed a motivational psychological programme and she has now developed the app "Recovery After a Brain Injury" to help people faced with similar challenges. Now I still tell stories, but I tell visual stories. The world sounded loud: a passing ambulance; human laughter; a howling fox; birdsong everything passed through me at the same piercing pitch. One night, Lotje goes out to watch fireworks in London, her hometown, and at the end of the evening, she goes home and . Filmmaker Lotje Sodderland documents her recovery process from the hemorrhagic stroke she had at 34 and the new life she builds in the aftermath. Add or change photo on IMDbPro Add to list More at IMDbPro Contact info Agent info Awards 1 win & 6 nominations Known for My Beautiful Broken Brain 7.1 Director 2014 Limbo Short Director 2021 Can You Rebuild My Brain? .LS: I did. The world is much more visual and much less cognitive. Can You Rebuild My Brain? My date of birth? I would need a code made of numbers. Nov 2011 - Sep 202210 years 11 months. The research study investigates whether this non-invasive brain stimulation can speed up language recovery after stroke. I felt that he would understand my situation. Focus on who your true friends are. This was always a possibility due to her stroke, it turns out, with or without the experimental therapy, althoughthe TMS may have contributed. I enjoyed the daily trip, and being surrounded by neuroscientists; Iliked the sense of being an active participant, rather than a passive patient. The hospitals language therapist had promised to get me discharged as soon as possible, assuming I was eager to go home. And then we stayed in touch. Almost as an excuse, Lotje explains: I was a prettynormal, busy, kind of a clever person. First of all, something terrible has happened. He started explaining that Lotje had started filming herself and would I come and meet her? It helped me to communicate - sending messages to friends and remembering what questions I wanted to ask the doctors. Every three minutes and 27 seconds, someone in the UK has a stroke. At the same time, Ive learned to look at the world in a really different way. "We started filming that day and she was still very confused and there was a big part of me that was wary because I knew she was very vulnerable and had to concentrate on recovery. She drew her brother a picture of a TV and a horizon because she remembered that Robinson had made a documentary for the BBC series and after "a few hours" he figured it out. Sodderland is lucky to be alive, having suffered a massive stroke which left her unable to speak, read, write and perform even simple tasks. It was decided I would go and live with my mother. The initial goal of 30,000 was exceeded by 7340. Lotje improves, she can now speak fairly fluently. But I found the therapies a constant reminder of what I couldnt do, rather than what I could. I realised I didnt know the names of any of my body parts, and started to cry. I was found unconscious on the toilet floor at 1pm that afternoon. It is run by a team of dedicated speech therapist volunteers. I had spent the weekend with friends, watching fireworks over London, and trying to make impossible things happen for a deadline at work, where I was a documentary producer. The day of the stroke was fairly typical for me - a Sunday in November 2011. I have no idea how I walked down four flights of stairs, orhow I found myself across the street in a hotel, trying to ask the receptionists for help. First, the research assistant would measure my skull to make sure it wasnt growing or shrinking (it wasnt). As though possessed, my hand was making words and my eyes didnt recognise them. Upon returning home, Mrs Tan, who was once fluent in English, Mandarin, and Teochew, would practise speech and language exercises up to eight hours a day with her husband to regain her communication capabilities. I had no idea how to meditate and was too fragmented to listen to the teacher, but the sweet silence of the shrine room had me instantly hooked. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. Doing simple daily activities such as accessing your bank account or doing anything bank-related after a brain injury can be so complicated. n the short term, I had to re-learn many words and struggled to put them in the right order. Midway through the night, she wakes up with an excruciating headache that is so strong thatshe thinks she is going to die. 2016 will see a ninth X-Men film. I was looking at my clothes and I knew that I needed them, but I didnt quite know how they worked.. We see Lotje typing a text but she cant read what she has just typed. Her doctor explains that the paths between her visual areas and her language areas are broken. Do you remember Lotje? A white name tag was strapped around my wrist. I was fascinated and enthralled and terrified by [that new world]. My therapist took me to the bank to get new pin codes and cards, so that I would be able to get my own groceries. Things change constantly for everybody. See also Other Works | Publicity Listings | Official Sites View agent, publicist, legal and company contact details on IMDbPro Lotje Sodderland "But I knew that I'd need some help.". March 22, 2016. This first standalone 'anthology' film centres on a Death Star heist, but may prove to just be filler while Star Wars 8 is in production, 'A spacecraft traveling to a distant colony planet and transporting thousands of people has a malfunction in one of its sleep chambers. Lotje Sodderland Sat 22 Nov 2014 02.30 EST Last modified on Fri 1 Dec 2017 12.22 EST A trailer for My Beautiful Broken Brain, Lotje's documentary about her recovery, made with director Sophie. Thoughts occurred to me. One night, Lotjegoes out to watch fireworks in London, herhometown, and at the end of the evening, she goes home and goes to bed. I woke to hear a voice debating the benefits andpitfalls of dipping a ginger nut biscuit in tea,and knew I must be in hospital again. Lotje: Im really fortunate to be born with an optimistic personality, and that really helped me as I kept thinking that everything was going to be OK and that the illness is actually not terrible. Its impossible to prove alink between the testing and the seizure, and Iwas later told that I was always at a higher risk ofseizures in the first year after a stroke. Thedrugs numbed my brain, but I was paranoid and panicked. While there have been moments of mourning for my old life, my new limitations mean I have been forced to unravel exactly what I was made of. Filmmaker Lotje Sodderland documents her recovery process from the hemorrhagic stroke she had at 34 and the new life she builds in the aftermath. Then she asks: What if all this evidence is removed? As a result, a single passenger is awakened 60 years early. A WORLD WITHOUT WORDS. She became very quiet and withdrawn, while my brother went into saviour mode and wanted to do many things but yet, did not know how. Q: Can you share any practices or therapies that you found useful in your recovery? My Beautiful Broken Brain is an intensely personal story of a 34 year old woman, Lotje Sodderland, who documented through film her 1-year journey of recovery from hemorrhagic stroke, which resulted in Aphasia. My vision was overcome with lurid green and purple grids. He had called the ambulance asmy eyeballs disappeared into the back ofmyhead. Q: What kind of negative feelings arose during your recovery, and how did you manage or overcome them? I had regressed. Now, he says, I dont interact with people in the same way, that I have become introspective. If it feels weird and uncomfortable, well hold off a bit or maybe we just wont do it.. It left her initially unable to read, write, speak or think coheren. She hears intense sounds. I didnt know it yet, but I was experiencing anunprovoked bleed to my brain a stroke. I began to draw, bringing to life the monsters I had seen in visions and dreams. This prompts her to enroll in an experimental therapy that uses Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) a non-invasive methodto stimulate a small part of the brain through magnetically induced electric currents. Ad Choices, 5 Key Signs That Indicate Youre Going Through Menopause, SAG Awards 2023: FashionLive From the Red Carpet, Phil Ohs Best Street Style Photos From the Fall 2023 Shows in Paris. She makes it to a local hotel but she cant speak and so she cant explain whats wrong. I would then spend a further 140 minutes a day on the laptops visual and sonic word repetition training app. She made it her mission afterwards to understand. The timetable was strictly regimented: psychotherapy, neuropsychology, occupational therapy, language therapy and physiotherapy. Videos I really wanted to discover what my limit-less possibilities were in this new world, but I did find it very challenging as the process took a long time, and I am not a very patient person. She managed to get herself dressed and stumbled to a nearby hotel, before blacking out completely. Ive worked on a new character, becoming more patient, more accepting, kinder to myself and to the people around me. Whats not to like? In 2013, Lorna Smalley was rushed to hospital with encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain. Lotje is asked to read words from a screen while the TMS is stimulating regions of her brain throughher skull in the hope that the brain would be able to find new pathways between her visual and language areas. She acknowledges that therapists need to assess a person and define what the patients deficits are in order to conduct a proper therapy and figure out how to improve the persons capabilities. An acquired language impairment, aphasia typically occurs after a stroke or traumatic brain injury and can affect a persons ability to communicate, both verbal or written. Sodderland still struggles to read and write and has had to accept the differences in her new life. As well as the new series of Twin Peaks. I would lieon my bed stiff with anxiety, looking at the ceiling, wishing that sleep would just take me away and return me in the morning. Lotje Sodderland makes candid, vulnerable films laced with pathos and humour. I remembered being put on a stretcher as paramedics asked the standard questions: what was my name? But it also helped me to recover the narrative aspect of my mind and brain -the ability to tell stories, in a visual way. Filmmaker Lotje Sodderland documents her recovery process from the hemorrhagic stroke she had at 34 and the new life she builds in the aftermath. A bullet hits his right frontal lobe, and another hits the left subclavian vein in his chest. He laughed and said, Well, Im happy youre still here.. A more deep seated confrontation with my mortality manifested itself through panic attacks, but theydidnt really kick in until after I had aseizure -months after my initialstroke. Falling in love was as immediate, raw and unfiltered as if I were doing it for the first time. I put it on Vimeo with a password. By making videos and telling the story of his stroke, David found that he was able to visualise the physiological progress he had made and still needed to make. At some point I was able to communicate with my brother that I really needed to get in touch with this woman. I opened my eyes as a young medic walked to mybedside and gave me anti-convulsive pills, tellingme to keep taking them twice a day until furthernotice. Starring Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett and Natalie Portman, it sees a man return home from New York and get sucked into the hollow hedonism of LA, fighting to extricate himself from it, Based on journalist Kim Barkers 2011 memoir The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan, this dark comedy sees Tina Fey play a foreign correspondent reporting in the Middle East during Operation Enduring Freedom, where she develops a weird relationship with a fellow journalist played by Martin Freeman, The wind seems to have gone out of the sails of the Man of Steel series in spite of the addition of a new Batman, and there's a more palpable anticipation for Suicide Squad (which arrives later in the year), Coming off the back of multi-Oscar winner Boyhood, this Richard Linklater film looks a lot like Dazed and Confused if it was set in the 80s, albeit pitched more towards comedy, Disney is trampling on its own hallowed ground with this live action remake. Two months after the stroke, my brother took me to a nearby hospital to be assessed for eligibility. There was a chance, Iwas told, that I would be cleverer, faster, altogether better, than I had been pre-stroke. But also I used it just on a practical level, to remember things, like meetings with doctors, and to communicate with friends, because I couldnt read or write. She woke up in her east London flat with a blinding headache and in a state of frightening confusion. I was put on a waiting list and while I waited, received what the NHS calls therapy at home. Lotje Sodderlands long journey to a happy life with what she calls her new brain began early on a November morning in 2011. Lotje: One of the therapies I found very useful was Occupational Therapy. She helped me figure out the navigation system on my iPhone, which meant Iwould be able to walk around without getting lost. With a black hood pulled up to hide her surgery scar, she haltingly says, Okay, Im alive, then smiles and gives the camera a thumbs-up. Videos It didnt, she says, After her stroke Lotje Sodderland tried electronic pulses to fire up parts of the brain responsible for reading. I didnt want the experience to pass through me. But light has atendency to emanate from the darkestplaces. Lotje asks: If the physical body the brain is damaged, does this extend the damage to ones self? Watch trailers & learn more. Yet, she also shares her perspective as a patientduring this process: The experience of being defined by what you can no longer do or how you are limited becomes devastating. Lotje describes herself as hard-working, a traveler, someone who has lots of friends, someone who loves to read. I remember the cognitive psychologist drawing a diagram to indicate where on the scale my old intellect had been, and where it was now. Mr Tan quit his job and poured his heart into finding the best care for his partner by doing his own research and seeking the advice of family and healthcare professionals. I began to use Siri on my iPhone, to listen to what I was writing, and it felt great. When a sudden illness robbed Mrs Tan of her communication abilities, find out how she and her husband sourced for creative ways to recover while continue to enjoy the sweet moments of married life together. In celebration of Aphasia Awareness Month this June, we caught up with the Lotje after the free screening of her documentary and had an intimate conversation with her to find out about her post-recovery struggles and how she overcame them. 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