While there is a whiff of self-congratulatory praise about this deeply personal memoir, Dr. Taylor, an American neurologist, has assembled a most remarkable account of a terrifying event.
On the morning of December 10th, 1996, Dr. Taylor woke up, intending to go to work at Harvard. But no sooner was she out of bed and into her morning routine then she began to notice abnormal sensations in her head and extremities. Not until much later would she realize that blood was already pooling on the left hemisphere of her brain, the gory discharge of an aneurysm she was in the midst of suffering. Dr. Taylor, realizing that something was deeply wrong, attempted to summon help, but in that brief time, she had already lost the capacity to understand phone numbers, just one of the innumerable brain functions impaired and then destroyed as a consequence of her stroke. Despite her best efforts, it was hours until she could finally summon help, hours before she was in the hospital and receiving treatment from doctors she must have known, seen, talked to, been friends with. What follows from that fateful day is a gripping description of Dr. Taylor's eight-year recovery from a morning's worth of damage, a stroke which crippled her capacity to perform basic mathematics, to place her memories in chronological order, to logic out her surroundings. She was left with her right brain, her creative brain, now irrepressibly dominant. And the experiences she relates from this state of pure emotion is both terrifying and enviable.
Dr. Taylor has not simply reconstructed, here, her life's most pivotal event, she walks the reader through the anatomy of her stroke, from the sensations to the deficits, sparing nothing as she endeavors to make us understand even a fraction of not only her ordeal but her long and difficult rehabilitation. It's remarkable to read a neurologist's thoughts about her own stroke, to have what are otherwise fairly dry details personalized in the profoundist way. Yes, there's some self-aggrandizement here, but when one has achieved as much as Dr. Taylor has, when one has worked this hard to return from such crippling deficits, a little self-indulgence is understandable. To my knowledge, a unique tale. (3/5 Stars)
This is an outstanding book that I highly recommend, it gives a new perspective on brain function and the daily things we take for granted as healthy human beings. It also provides great insight for anyone interested in the area of brain dominance. The author states "When I’m more in my right brain, I care less about the details. I’m lighter in my body, and I’m more into the present moment, rather than the left brain, where I’m focused on details, and critical judgment, and relating that to my past and future. I help people get an understanding of those two different ways of being." We all have a dominant brain hemisphere and understanding how this effects our perception of the world is very enlightening. For additional insight into this issue I recommend reading James Olson's research and findings on overcoming brain dominance in the book "The Whole-Brain Path to Peace"(http://www.thewholebrainpath.com/).
ReplyDelete