Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor had an amazing experience that most people do not get to tell after the fact. Especially because she is a neuroanatomist who knew what was happening and what parts of the brain were being affected. This book is informational on many different levels and to many different types of people. This book can warn people about the signs of when someone is having a stroke. This information could save many lives if someone were to read this book and realize they were having a stroke soon enough to call for help. It can be helpful for the treatment of stroke victims, average people looking to gain insight on life and how to better themselves, and to many professionals who know all of the science behind a stroke, but do not know what it is like to have one.
In her earlier chapters, she explained her “experience” of having a stroke. She woke up to a normal morning, except for the fact that she had a sharp pain behind her left eye. Then, after she exercised to try and make the pain go away, she describes the feeling she got as “dissociation” or being detached from reality. On her way to get in the shower, her movements were not fluid. The point where Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor realized that she was having some neurological malfunction was when she turned her bathtub faucet on and the sound of the water was over-amplified. She was having issues with her coordination, equilibrium, and auditory system. In the midst of all of this, she described a feeling of euphoria and deep inner peace.
When she tries to get help, it is very hard for her to concentrate and keep her thoughts together because of her lack of language and linear skills when the hemorrhage affected her Broca's and Wernicke's area. She couldn't recognize numbers as anything but scribbles on a piece of paper, and she realized that she could neither understand her coworker nor speak fluently herself.
This information of her experience ties in with information we have learned in class. Especially since she told the story chronologically. When we learned the areas of the brain (i.e., where they are located and their functions), I was able to follow along as the author was explaining her symptoms of her stroke. When she got the feeling of being detached from reality, it was because her hemorrhage had spread to the sensory and orientation association cortex. When the neurons making connections in that area were damaged from the blood, Jill had a very hard time recognized herself as a solid. She described the feeling as being fluid with everything around her. Also, because of the damage to that area, time was disoriented for her as well. Listening to her experience, I also realized when the blood spread to her motor cortex. When the blood started to pool here, her limbs weren't working as fluidly as they had before. She described it as jerky motions. In class we learned about the disorder prosopagnosia, and Jill described some symptoms of this because of her lack of self-awareness and language. She did not have the words to be able to say “I am a person. You are a person.”
When the author explains her full experience, it helped me to understand the specific aspects of neurophysiology such as what are the symptoms when certain parts of the brain are damaged. I also learned what happened when more than one part was damaged. When she experienced the feelings of deep peace and euphoria, that was when the right hemisphere of her cortex started to “take over”. The left side of her brain shut down causing her to be devoid of analytical judgment and attachment to detail. Jill's experience helped solidify and give me real life examples of my knowledge of neurophysiology and what happens when a stroke occurs. I also think that my knowledge of neurophysiology explains why she was feeling certain ways while she was having the stroke. For instance, I know that damage to the Broca's area inhibits the ability to produce speech whereas damage to Wernicke's area inhibits the ability to understand speech. When the author was telling us about her phone call with Dr. Stephen Vincent, I realized that both of language centers in the left side of her brain were damaged because she could not understand what he was saying, but she could barely produce speech herself. Another example of when my knowledge in neurophysiology helped me understand why certain things were happening was when Jill was searching for her doctors card. I know that her ability to read and understand language was damaged, but she was still able to remember and recognize the symbol that was at the top. That was because the right side of her brain was still healthy, and the right hemisphere is responsible to recognizing pictures.
When Jill was finally able to get help, she then had to start on the long recovery process. A few major discomforts that she experienced while getting stronger and ready for surgery were high sensitivity to light and sound. This is because her hemorrhage affected her auditory and occipital lobes as well. During this period, she talks about how she couldn't recognize herself. Because the normal neuronal circuits that had been very organized and ingrained in her brain were no longer there, she did lost connections with her memories, relationships, and all physical boundaries. She compares the way she saw the world to pointillism paintings. Those are where everything, negative space, objects, etc., blends together as one and there are no boundaries and no solids. She described her energy that flowed out of her as too big to fit back into her physical body. I learned just how disorienting it is to have damage to your sensory and orientation association cortex.
Post-stroke, Jill notes that the biggest difference she was experiencing was the silence inside of her head. Without the language areas and linear processing, she could not form thoughts the way the rest of us do every day. When her right hemisphere took over, she had to lip read and watch for the “energy” or body language of her doctors and nurses to figure out the message they were trying to convey. Once her mother came to visit and help care for Jill, Jill used up her energy within minutes of being awake on simple tasks such as sitting. She said that she had to sleep for about 6 hours and then she could be awake for a few minutes, and then back to sleep and so on. She keeps mentioning sleep as an important act the brain needs to heal. Any recovering stroke victim should listen to their brain and sleep when they're tired. Because of what I have learned in class, I realize that the blood clot was in the way of many neuronal circuits and pathways. That meant that the neurons had to work even harder to reach their goal, or they would eventually die off. This could be a reason that the brain required so much sleep after this traumatic event. The brain also spent that time storing all of the information that came in during the period Jill was awake. That helped make new neurological connections or strengthen the ones that had been damaged.
After the doctors had taken out her AVM (arteriovenous malformation), Jill had to relearn many things that she could no longer do, such as speaking and reading. This book has clarified my understanding of how AVMs and hemorrhagic strokes happen. Where the high pressure arteries (carrying oxygenated blood) meet low pressure veins (carrying deoxygenated blood), there are capillary beds that is a neutral place in between to buffer the changes in pressure. With an AVM, the veins are directly connected to the arteries. Since the they cannot handle the pressure change, the connection between the two can break, which causes blood to poor out. Jill was born with an abnormal arterial configuration which is what eventually caused the hemorrhage inside of her brain. Her AVM could have been diagnosed sooner and then surgery would've taken it out before it erupted. Something should be done for people who do show symptoms such as bad migraines. They should be screened for abnormal arterial configuration which can reduce the number of strokes greatly if surgery can take them out before they break.
Jill had strong opinions about her nurses and doctors. She also has tips for future caretakers for stroke victims to make their recovery less painful. She favored the nurses and doctors who treated her like she had an injury, not as though she was deaf. One of the issues she brought up were people talking too fast, because she needed time to process and re-process the information in her brain in order to figure out what they were saying. Another issue was people talking too loud, because she was not deaf and the noise hurt her ears. She also disliked when people did not take the time to come close to her and comfort her with a touch or a calm tone, because her right hemisphere encoded information from the energy and body language that people gave off. During her recovery, Jill also suggests that caretakers stimulate her brain with as much as it can handle before she is tired again. I have learned that the more the brain is stimulated, especially at a young age, the more connections the neurons make. Since Jill had a stroke and many of her connections were broken, she had to relearn many things as a child would learn them for the first time. So her brain needed to be absorbing constant information and making these connections while she was awake.
The last portion of this book deals with the “stroke of insight” that Jill gained through her while experience. This has much to do with the left and right hemispheres, how they connect, and how they compete. She already talked about how her left hemisphere was damaged causing the language, linear skills, mathematics skills, detail oriented and planning skills, etc., to deteriorate. Then the right hemisphere took over bringing Jill into what she experienced as a euphoric state where she was fluid and one with the universe. The right hemisphere of the brain looks at the whole, or the big picture, of the things that you see. The two hemispheres are very opposite of each other in the functions that they do.
Jill's insight into making her life of better quality, is to listen to the right hemisphere more often. She explains the left side as being the “story teller” that will replay dramatic events in our brains over and over again, and stress about events that have not happened yet. When a negative emotion waves through her brain, she focuses on other things like things that make her happy, or how she felt when her right hemisphere took over and she was in euphoria. She says that she decided not to bring back her neuronal connections with certain emotions such as jealousy, embarrassment, and anger. When the connections are severed and you do not entertain them any longer, the neurons will eventually die and not make any more connections. This has made Jill happier, and she says she has been able to shape her personality with this second chance at life.