I just celebrated the nine-month anniversary of my concussion.

I am definitely feeling better than my worst days, which were in June and July.

I feel like my short-term memory is serviceable--I do not often forget things I just did or said, or lists of things I want to do; when I do, I can usually recover them, which was not the case over the Summer. One of the parts of my therapy over the Summer was to try to take words whose letters had been "jumbled" and to figure out what words they were. I had a lot of trouble then, but almost no trouble now.

One of the things I've noticed is that I do not read with the same engagement as I did before the injury; it's not that I don't understand what I read, or even don't remember it (I read an op-ed piece in today's paper this morning and not only do I remember what it was about; I remember the thesis). It's that it takes a while to make connections with my other knowledge; something which happened a lot quicker before. Though I read for a living (I am a medical editor), my personal reading is the problem.

I am a reader, and I do not want to give that up. That, more than residual neck or head pain or anything else, would make me very sad. One of my doctors said that I should read intensively every day, which I try to do, even if on some days it kind of washes over me.

I've been reading mainly poetry—my strong suit has never been plot and most poetry you don't have to remember from line to line anyway.

My medium-term goal is to be able to read Shakespeare again with some understanding.

My questions:

1. What kind of things have people been doing to increase their reading comprehension other than just reading what they can and when they can?

2. What kind of cognitive training/ regimens have people found to be successful? (I'm not asking so much about products as I am about what kinds of exercises do people use and with what frequency and results (there are two that I use which I like and in which I feel I have shown real progress).)

Thank you for your continued support.