A week at home
September 9th, 2010Holland – you came home last Wednesday September 1st to a homecoming of flowers, balloons and a (living) room fit for a hippy princess. Your neighborhood friends created a ‘Welcome Home” banner that your mom and I have still not had the heart to take down.
To have you home; Joy is a complete understatement. Even in your current state, you may not remember the past week.
You are you. You are trillions of cells sharing a common mind. You are life as an unfathomable concept. Your brain and your brain’s circuitry are intact and healing. You underwent major brain surgery after a life threatening hemorrhage in your left frontal lobe. You were comatose. According to your surgeons, your chances were “marginal” when they first received you.
Your life is only possible b/c of circumstance, happenstance and the skilled hands of an amazing surgeon at Doernbecher’s Children’s Hospital in Portland Oregon. Beyond all the tubes and technology, acknowledge that another human saved your life with his own hands. I keep returning to that fact. He saved you with his own steady digits, his own highly trained hands.
At home, you seem more willing to tackle this new world in the morning, when you’re fresh. You use your words and interlace language on top of your immediate “right-brain” perceptions. However, the left side of your brain needs more healing. According to most of the literature and brain research I’ve immersed myself in over the past weeks, this is common with your injury.
Your right-brain: the brain of alertness, “nowness”, and the immediate sensory brain is fine and receiving the full extent of the electrical/chemical impulses it can sense from the universe. There is no problem here.
Your left-brain comes in and out. It is the side of your brain that overlays the details of your immediate, right-brain movie-like perception of the world from your 5 senses. The right-hemisphere consciousness is more of a global, unified, everything-is-connected experience of the present moment. The left is more linear, more methodical in its thinking, and puts everything on a hierarchy: good and bad, right and wrong. The two hemispheres function very differently in the way they process information.
An example of this is when your mom asked if you wanted an egg for breakfast. You immediately indicated “Yes”, but when asked what kind of egg, (scrambled, messy, fried, etc), you didn’t know and got frustrated. The detail and analytical side needs more healing. Its frustrating to you, but you remain positive.
Your life is a modern healthcare miracle of nurses, prayers from friends both known and unknown, technology and science. Quite simply, you wouldn’t be here if not for the multitude and miracle of 2010 science and technology.
You start Kindergarten tomorrow. I’m so proud of you.