Today@Dal

Published Wednesday, July 16 by CTV Atlantic:

Halifax’s Dalhousie University is offering a program that gives new hope to those living with brain injuries.

Interact is an intensive month-long rehabilitation program that helps people around the world and is offered in the Maritimes.

“The Interact program started in 2002 and what happened was, we were looking at the fact that individuals, post-stroke and post-brain injury, often don't receive as much therapy as the research would advocate for,” says aphasia clinic director Linda Wozniak.
Interact is a program for people who live with aphasia, a communication problem that results from a brain injury.

“When a person has aphasia, it's as if they've gone to a different country, where a different language is spoken,” says Wozniak.

Program participant Colin Pilipchuk was diagnosed with cancer in 2008. He underwent surgeries and chemotherapy in Edmonton and just when he and his wife Cheryl thought they were in the clear, he was diagnosed with cancer again.

“Testicular cancer is usually something that happens once,” says Cheryl. “Second time, this should be done. There’s been enough surgeries, enough chemotherapy, there’s no chance it’s going to come back again.”

But it did come back again, for a third time, while Cheryl was pregnant with twins.
While battling cancer, Colin then suffered a stroke - a rare side effect of chemotherapy.

“Colin was paralyzed on one side of his body and communication was affected the most and comprehension,” says Cheryl.

Read the rest of this story (and watch video) at the CTV Atlantic website.