Ted Talk - How It Feels To Have A Stroke
Jill Taylor decided to study the brain after her brother suffered from a brain disorder, schizophrenia. She became a neuroanatomist and one morning she realized she was having a massive stroke. And like any brain scientist would, she studied what her body was doing and remembered every bit of it and lived to tell her story on a Ted Talk. She said it was a normal morning but instead woke up with a pounding headache behind her left eye. She ignored the headache and got on her cardioglider (workout machine) to start her normal daily routine. While on the machine she began noticing something weird about her body. She said as if her state of consciousness has shifted away from her perception of reality. Instead of looking out away from her body, she was watching herself from an outside perspective. As her headache worsened, she got off the machine and began to walk to her bathroom where she says that she could no longer define the boundaries of her body because the atoms and molecules of her arm, blended with the atoms and molecules of the wall. She describes her left hemisphere of her brain being shut off by a tv remote, it became totally silent. As it turned off she says she entered "lala land" where she just felt one with energy and kept expanded. Then like another switch, the left hemisphere started working again reminding her that there was a problem. Another switch, another entrance to the external world. Another switch, another time, it switched back on and she quickly realized that she needed to seek help. Suddenly her right arm went limp, paralyzed to her side and she knew then she was having a stroke. Throughout the video she describes how cool it felt and was wondering how many times do brain scientists get to study their own brain from the inside out.
Jill goes on to tell how she sought help and brings humor into every bit of it. At one point in the ambulance she describes her spirit leaving her body, almost surrendering to what was happening in her brain. And she thought "this is it". The doctors were either going to save her or she was going to die. When she woke later that afternoon, she was shocked to still be alive. She describes that the noises were so loud that she couldn't depict a voice out in the room, and that the light was so bright that it burned her eyes. She was still enormous and out of her body but realized again that she was alive and that she needed to take advantage of it. The hemorrhage was the size of a golf-ball in the left hemisphere of her brain that was pushing on her language center.
She took her tragic incident and turned it into a "gift". She thought what if people could use this and take a step to the right of their left hemisphere? This motivated her to recover, which took 8 years. She now believes that we have the choice of being the one individual portrayed from our left hemisphere or the "me's inside of me" portrayed from our right hemisphere. And if we all chose the right hemisphere, we would live in a more peaceful world. She ultimately connected her stroke to how our brain defines us and connects us to different worlds. This was honestly one of the most interesting Ted Talks I have watched. It made me put a new prospective on encountering a neurological disorder and the potential research that could be continued because of remembrance. I highly recommend watching it and possibly showing it to future classes when stroke is the center of topic.
Reference:
Psych: Documentary Films. (August 19, 2012). Ted Talks: How It Feels To Have A Stroke. Retrieved from: https://psychdocumentaryfilms.wordpress.com/2012/08/19/ted-talks-how-it-feels-to-have-a-stroke/
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