Every once in a while, you run into someone who is remarkable, someone who can change your thinking due to their compelling story.  I found this person in Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain scientist who suffered a left brain stroke and recovered.  She wrote a best seller, My Stroke of Insight and travels the country helping people understand how to help a stroke victim and how she changed her brain and her life for the better.  Simply fascinating! If you want to see her in person before Ron Howard makes a film adaptation of her life, she will be in Reno on April 20. Here is a bit of her story.

When I experienced the stroke, it wiped out the functions of my left brain. All of my ability to process information in a linear fashion, analyze information, judge information as right or wrong, or good or bad, was gone as well as my ability to either speak or understand language or see myself as an individual. I shifted away from being an expert with a brain filled with details, to the big picture of our existence. I shifted into the consciousness that we can obtain when we are no longer focused on the details, where we have no perception of separation or individual identity.

It took eight years for me to completely reestablish the left brain functions that I had lost. During this process of recovery, it was a matter regaining the function of my circuitry. The cells wired for speaking and understanding language had gone off line and a part of language processing was my ability to say to myself "I am. I am an individual," and without that language I had no perception of myself as a separate identity. Without my brain saying to me "My name is Jill Bolte Taylor", then I had no perception of myself as that person.

When I shifted away from my left hemisphere thinking, I became a part of the whole. I shifted from defining myself as a human into realizing that I am energy and everything this body does and is, is all about how it relates to the energy surrounding us. As the skills of my left brain came back online, I became clear on the distinction between how each of our minds think and how they each have very different personalities.

If you are giving care to someone who has experienced a stroke, it's important that you realize that the person that you love is still in there, the essence of that person is still the same, however, the circuitry has been altered and the output or behavior of that person may be different now. When trauma happens to the brain, the body immediately responds by sending the immune system to that area to clear up the debris. The swelling that results from this physical response to trauma may last 6-8 weeks so it's important that during this initial post-stroke time, the family trust that their loved one will continue to get better. If your loved one is ill, imagine how you might want to be treated if you were in the same position. Protect their sleep, encourage people to come in for short visits to bring you their positive energy and do what they can do to help you recover.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor will be in Reno on April 20, from 7 - 9 pm - details: insightlecture.com

Suzie Daggett, constantly curious about the mysteries of life, publishes the Insight Directory and produces Insight Lectures.  530-265-9255, www.insightdirectory.com or www.insightlecture.com