Book Reviews My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey
My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey |
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Written by Jill Bolte Taylor, PhD The author’s description of what it felt like to have, and recover from, a stroke helped me understand what my husband and other brain injury survivors feel when their brains don’t respond properly. She also described ways her family and friends helped her recover by being loving, patient and supportive. What’s “My Stroke of Insight” about?Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor woke up with a sharp pain behind her eye on a December morning in 1996. She was having a stroke. In her book, she describes her struggle to understand what was happening to her during her brain hemmorhage and what she learned by surviving it. It was fascinating to read how this brain scientist felt and reacted as she tried to get help during the actual stroke. She managed to dial the phone but without realizing it, was unable to speak. Amazingly, a colleague recognized her voice from the grunts and moans she uttered. I was deeply touched by the passage describing her mother’s arrival at the hospital after Taylor’s stroke. “G.G.,” her mom, took one look at Taylor and crawled into her bed and wrapped her arms around her brain-injured daughter. “Somehow she understood that I was no longer her Harvard doctor daughter, but instead I was now her infant again,” Taylor writes. “Being born to her a second time has been my greatest fortune.” Taylor also weaves in a short course on the brain. She describes the euphoria she felt when her left brain—the logical side—was so damaged that her right brain—the intuitive side—allowed her to think in a whole new way. Her memories of recovery helped me understand why a brain injury victim stares blankly at you as he slowly tries to put together the words you just said, only to find, as he was doing that, you’ve moved several sentences beyond the one he’s just translated. The description made me ache with her frustration. I know I will never speed through a conversation with a brain injury survivor again. “My Stroke of Insight” offers brain injury families insights into how a brain injury survivor sees the recovery process. Although it took her eight years to recover from her stroke, Taylor writes, “I have learned so much from this experience with stroke that I actually feel fortunate to have taken this journey.” Taylor offers a silver lining to brain injury survivors and their families to consider with the wonderful stories in this book of struggle and recovery, and her emphasis on how important it was to her recovery to have love and support from friends and family.
Author web site: Jill Bolte TaylorReviewer byline: Marilyn ColterMarilyn Colter is the author of “Missing Pieces: Mending the Head Injury Family.” Her husband suffered a brain injury in 1982 during surgery to repair a brain aneurysm. She and her family founded the Brain Injury Family Resources web site at www.braininjuryfamily.net Where to buy “My Stroke of Insight” onlineTattered Cover Want to check out “My Stroke of Insight” from your library?Search for the book in a library near you at WorldCat |
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Missing Pieces
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