Cutting Room Floor

My grand debut was not to be, I sort of ended up on the cutting room floor but not quite. I’m still supposed to be on the website and You Tube so my plan was kind of derailed unfortunately. However the presentation went on with Jill Bolte Taylor as the keynote speaker and it turned out to be a wonderful event. Ms. Taylor is a very dramatic speaker and is so very knowledgeable about the human brain. So much of her talk I felt was aimed at me and helped me to understand what exactly happen to me although we had different types of strokes. Her’s was a bleeder caused by a malformation whereas mine was a blockage, a piece of plaque broke lose and caused my damage.

She spent a lot of time on the brain’s anatomy and brain function, she gave a tour of the brain and how each hemisphere works in relation to the other. Too much information to pass on here so I’ll just pass on the things at struck me as important. First the brain is very plastic in it’s ability to heal, to find different pathway around the obstruction. The brain is very social in it’s inner reactions, it loves to communicate. It’s this communication between each individual parts of the brain and with each sphere that makes up the sum total of who we are and the way we think and act. It is the very essence of who we are and what we are as unique individuals in this universe of ours. When we have a stroke or any brain injury one of the hemisphere of our brain ceases to function, our conversation with ourselves fall silent and as a result we are lost in our own brain’s.

None of this I knew before my stroke, only vague ideas that I was able to develop after the event and as I went along in the dark. I knew that I wasn’t happy in my present condition. I had a life that I loved and a lifestyle that was full of promise. I wasn’t willing to just give that up without a fight. I wasn’t content to become handicapped and live out the rest of my life that way. Instinctively I knew that returning to the life I knew was what I needed, to get back into the routine of my every day life. I had built over the years a pattern to my life that was a once familiar and comfortable to me. I had my friend, business acquaintance and a career that I enjoyed and got great pleasure in. I just couldn’t give that life up without trying my best to get it back. You know what they say, you never miss anything till it’s gone.

So that’s what I concentrated on, the patterns of life, my routines of life I had developed over decades. Jill Bolte Taylor invested my idea’s of those routines with value and explained the physiology of what I accomplished. She gave me depth to my experiences with my brain and allowed me to follow the rational explanation of the how’s and why’s of what I did. The brain is a very interesting organ, it’s ability to heal, it’s ability to communicate, it’s very ability to interpret who we are as a human being is as unique as we are. Everyone of us is a unique individual in the universe and should be respected.