My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor
July 13th, 2009Title: My Stroke of Insight
Author: Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D.
Publisher: Plume (2006)
In December of 1995 I started having seizures…at first they were only nocturnal, but soon graduated into the grand mal variety (the shaking kind). After a battery of tests an MRI showed an AVM on the left side of my brain. I forget the exact size, but I think they said it was 3cm by4cm. They put me on medicine to fight the seizures (which luckily were not constant) and scheduled surgery for June 20, 1996. Now, an AVM (arteriovenous malformation), a congenital problem, is when an artery is connected directly to a vein, instead of being buffered by capillaries in the middle. Capillaries are required because arteries are high pressure and veins are low pressure. The capillaries are the neutral zone in between. Eventually the veins cannot handle the high pressure from the arteries and blood starts to spill in the brain (aneurysm). In my case, the seizures allowed the doctors to find the AVM before any real damage was caused. Other less fortunate people don’t discover their AVM’s until they have an aneurysm or other forms of stroke. That is what happened to Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor.
My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is a memoir of her life immediately following a bad stroke. The irony (coincidence?) of this is that Taylor is a neuroanatomist…a brain scientist! This book captures her incredibly clear thoughts as she experiences her stroke and as she recovers. It’s a pretty amazing story to read. Taylor’s AVM was on the left side of her brain, which as we all know at this point, controls most of the logical, linear thinking along with language (and a lot of other stuff). It also is the side of the brain that represents your self-consciousness. And that is what this book is about.
During her recovery Taylor realized that she had been suppressing her right brain for too long, and was not living life the best that she could. One thing she said that I found the most interesting is that we have emotional programs (like anger) that are triggered automatically. We can’t really control that. But brain science says the entire process takes only 90 seconds to go through your system and flush out. After that, it is up to us if we want to continue with that response. That is pretty cool. Now I know that when I get angry, it is up to me after 90 seconds. If I continue to stay angry…it’s my fault…it’s not “just who I am.” Interesting.
This book was an interesting look at strokes and recovery. If you know someone who has had a stroke, I STRONGLY recommend you get this book. It will help, I promise.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
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July 14th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
So your telling me its OK to be angry…but to not let the sun go down on my anger? Who’d have thought it!
July 15th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Just stumbled on your blog. Do you know about http://www.avmsurvivors.org?
Ben