Ponoka team helps clients recover their speech, language and cognitive abilities

PONOKA — For people who have experienced a brain injury, recovery can be slow and painstaking.

This is where speech-language pathologist (SLP) Carolyn Fleck-Prediger comes in.

For more than three decades, the senior SLP at Recovery Alberta’s Halvar Jonson Centre for Brain Injury (HJCBI) has worked with her team to maximize recovery for patients with acquired brain injuries.

“By the time the patients get to us, they're not spontaneously recovering like they might earlier on during the course of their condition,” says Fleck-Prediger. “So anything the patient accomplishes at the HJCBI is the result of blood, sweat and maybe even a few tears.”

Carolyn Fleck-Prediger has been making a difference in the lives of patients with acquired brain injuries for over three decades. Photo Credit: Photo courtesy of Carolyn Fleck-Prediger

Whether it’s traumatic brain injuries acquired from accidents and falls — or non-traumatic injuries such as brain tumors and strokes that affect an individual's ability to think, move and speak — an extended course of rehabilitation is often required to help patients make a smooth transition back into their community.

As a SLP, Fleck-Prediger helps clients recover their speech, language and cognitive abilities. She’s also an active member on the team that addresses feeding and swallowing issues. While progress can be slow, she says patients admitted to the facility in Ponoka typically make steady gains throughout the duration of their stay.

“We really try to get them to the most independent level possible,” Fleck-Prediger adds.

Having completed her PhD in neuroscience in 2019, Fleck-Prediger continues her research at the Halvar Jonson Centre, spearheading a new project involving the treatment of stroke patients.

Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) is a quick, non-invasive and painless technique that applies magnetic pulses to change electrical activity in specific areas of the brain, selectively exciting underactive, or inhibiting overactive, brain activity near the area of stimulation. Used for years to treat conditions such as depression, Fleck-Prediger is hoping rTMS will improve their patients’ response to stroke rehabilitation.

“You're using rTMS to prime the brain,” says Fleck-Prediger. “Once that brain is primed, it's more receptive to neuroplastic changes that are being targeted by the inter-disciplinary therapists such as occupational therapists, recreation therapists, psychologists, physical therapists, teachers, and speech-language pathologists here in the facility.”

On top of her duties at Halvar Jonson, Fleck-Prediger is a mother of five adult children and a sessional instructor and clinical educator at both the University of Alberta and Grant MacEwan University. During her 34 years of service, she’s supervised more than 100 student placements from these universities and Norquest College. She adds she’s grateful for her immediate and extended family, saying that she could not have accomplished all that she has without their unfailing support.

Theresa Harmse, manager of HJCBI ‘s Navarre House, hails her colleague as a positive force and patient advocate, with the rTMS research being yet one more example of how she wants to improve recovery for their patients.

“She stays up to date on research — and she’s always very enthusiastic about improving the program," adds Harmse. “She’s a visionary type of person who's always looking at how we can make things even better than they already are.”

Fleck-Prediger says that seeing patient gains, supporting families and working with an amazing interdisciplinary team makes every day worthwhile.

“It's so reinforcing for us to see our clients make these changes that surprise everyone,” she adds.

“Even the small gains can make big differences in the patients’ lives.”