Marco’s
incredible
story.

Original text (German) by Marco. His name is changed for piety reasons.

I was very happy to give you feedback. You are welcome to use me as a reference if I am suitable for it.

Maybe I will tell you a little of my story, then you can see how important techniques are that make my life a little more pleasant.

I am 39 years old and live in the deep Ruhr area of Germany. Up to the age of 33 everything went smoothly. I completed an apprenticeship and a degree in business with a focus on finance and accounting. I always worked in parallel as a student trainee in controlling. After my studies I worked as a personnel controller in a large charitable association. I was responsible for budgeting and planning for 1,500 employees. Of course, it was very stressful and you don’t make yourself too popular.

I developed a bipolar disorder relatively insidiously. It used to be called “manic depressive”. I had extreme depressive and manic episodes without the medication helping me. The phases of my illness were really very violent and I was thrown out of my “old” life more or less from one moment to the next.

After three years I underwent ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) for the first time. In combination with the medication it was the only thing that helped me. Nevertheless, my daily life was no longer as before. The ability to perform, remember and concentrate was actually gone. The ECT also contributed to this. From this point on, reading was very, very difficult for me. Unfortunately, I also suffered a stroke at the age of 37. This did not make things any easier for me.

Since that time I have even bigger problems with memory and additionally I had/have word finding problems. Sometimes I was able to pronounce words that I had in my head. But sometimes silence is golden.

Reading was not to be thought here at all! Of course you can imagine that my old employer did not really want me back. But it would not have worked either, because after my rehab I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis by a nerve water examination. But it does not cause me any problems. The retentiveness and especially the ability to read texts quickly, however, still cause me problems.

For someone who in his old life had to constantly collect information, evaluate it and derive decisions due to his job, this is not nice. The numerical comprehension is unfortunately not working great anymore either.

When I came across your technology, I was able to read a text quickly and fluently for the first time in years. Through this speedy reading, I was able to grasp the content the first time without having to read the sentence again. Most of the time this is necessary.

I have to reread sentences because by the end I have already forgotten what was at the beginning. With Bionic Reading this went much better, because I am more focused on the content due to the faster reading.

That was just nice to see … ahm … read.

There are these concentration exercises in which the letters of words are mixed up, but the brain can decode them in a flash. I find your technique similar–only a little easier. Especially today, the acquisition and processing of information is more important than ever. The flood of information is constantly increasing and filtering is almost no longer possible. Even for “non-impaired” people.

If it were up to me, I would like to have Bionic Reading everywhere in the system. It would also be practical to “translate” individual passages by marking them in Bionic Reading when receiving a PDFile. Most important to me would be the browser and iBooks/Kindle.

I have only been using an iPad Pro since last year and have given up my Mac. For me, iOS is much faster and easier than OS X. That I feel that as a hardcore Mac user once so, I would not have thought. I am therefore unfortunately always dependent on the fact that apps make it into the store. Unfortunately, I can not do anything with your plug-in.

I wish you all the best and good luck. You have a great technique at hand, which can certainly not only make my life a little easier. I told my husband about it and showed him Bionic Reading and he was also very enthusiastic. I have an appointment with my neurologist in two weeks and I will show him this as well. My occupational therapist–who comes once a week–is also interested in learning about it.

Thanks again for your effort to develop this nice tool. If you have any further questions, please feel free to send me an email.