Here are some surprising statistics: approximately 1.7 million Americans experience some type of traumatic brain injury each year. In addition to this number, 795,000 people suffer a stroke each year, with approximately 8 million stroke survivors currently living in the United States. Of this massive group in the midst of recovery, approximately 30% may have suffered a visual disorder as a result of their stroke or brain injury.
Traditionally, the view has been that your brain is hardwired during early childhood so it isn’t possible to significantly recover the function in an adult’s injured brain. However, more recent findings show that in fact your brain has remarkable plasticity that is retained throughout an adult’s lifetime, so specific therapies for both motor and visual impairments have since been developed leading to significant recovery.
NovaVision’s Vision Restoration Therapy is supported by 15 years of research with clinical studies published in more than 20 leading journals. Although the scientific studies and statistics supporting VRT are impressive, the people stories behind them are even more moving. We’d like to introduce you to Carole Urban – here is her story directly from her:
“On October 10th, 2010 I was Involved in a motorcycle accident; the police reported me as a fatality, but I fooled them.
Unfortunately I suffered from vision loss attributed to homonymous hemianopsia. After being seen at a prestigious local hospital by the Clinical Professor of Ophthalmology & Visual Science and Neurology, he told me I would never improve and should become accustomed to my vision loss.
My Family researched therapy options and we insisted on trying NovaVision. The therapy was easy to start. I meticulously followed the instructions. Vision is so important; I believe I had to give it my all to get as much of it back as I possibly could. I continued the therapy for several months and only stopped once my therapy advisor and I believed I had achieved the maximum vision improvement, which in my case was 92%. I am actually surprised this is not the generally accepted treatment like other physical rehabilitation are. Before NovaVision everything was difficult such as, reading, cooking, walking stairs, all the simple like things. Now I have a new job, I ran my first marathon and finally published a book.
Life is a challenge, but I do believe I accomplished all these wonderful achievements because I found NovaVision and did the daily exercises and monthly tests I needed to do. The wonderful encouraging support I received made the hard work easier.”
Since her amazing recovery, Carole has been a huge advocate not only for TBI recovery but specifically the ability to recover your vision through VRT. You can listen to Carole’s amazing story first hand in an interview she did on the Lucy Ann Lance Show or you can download Carole Urban’s testimonial here to share with your loved ones. For more inspiring stories of recovery, please read the rest of our patient testimonials here.
