What is it like to have a Stroke?

[lazarus]

Last year a relative of mine had a stroke - he is the same age as me. Fortunately he has all but fully recovered.

Recently I say a TED talk about a Brain researcher, Jill Bolte Taylor, who recounts her own stroke.

www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

I found it very moving, perhaps because of my relative, but awe inspiring and even funny as well.

[gmc]

An inspiring woman.
Thank you for posting the link.

[fooglebiz]

Absolutely amazing piece of footage. Genius.

The Brain is also amazing to say the least, it is so amazing that we can never even start to describe how mind-boggling remarkable it really is. We know nothing about it, bar a few hundred facts or summations that do not really scratch its surface.

The two parts of the brain are indeed a unique natural part of our evolution. Their individuality has been described by epilepsy patients who have had both sides totally parted to reduce epileptic fits. When they try to pick out a pair of shoes to wear, and after making that decision, find that the other side of their brain does not want that pair and tries to pick out another pair, ensuing a small battle between the right hand and the left. Scary.

I once wrote that the brain is like a large country estate with many acres containing roads, farms, machines and villages filled with workers, and at its centre is a large mansion full of rooms and people, all capable of a job that we need doing to run us.

As for us, we live in the cupboard under the stairs, straining to see and understand life through cracks in the door, and sometimes many of us do not even have the cupboard light to put on.