My heart just doesn't know. My brain is numb like my brother's left arm and left leg. It is hard for me to understand how a doctor with healing hands [he is a chiropractor] now cannot move one side of his body.
How could this happen? Yes, he had tremendous stress. Financial and personal. Yes, the clock ticks fast.Yes, expectations were high. No, he does not have medical insurance for himself. He couldn't afford it. Staff to pay, rent to pay... so many migrant farm workers and people who were injured while at work... he treated them long term regardless if they could pay or not. Though he helped relieve pain, he was never free from financial pain himself.
Now my brother is in intensive care. I shudder to think how his mind is racing about in half a numb body that will not respond...What all this means--Will he recover? What happens to his healing dream? All he initially said when he was bought in "Give me some blood pressure medication and let me go home!"
If he survives intensive care he cannot go home. He lost his home to the bank. A hospital bed won't fit in his furnished studio apartment. Later at the hospital he was garbling something like "No county! No county!" The 'county' nursing home where the uninsured and poor go.
Somehow when the stock market spiraled down 600 points today, a black Monday, August 8, 2011, it seems a marker of the times. Our mother was born on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, when the stock market crashed during the Great Depression. Dreams crash hard. They bleed in your brain...
Other links:
Jill Bolte Taylor, the neuroanatomist pictured above, suffered a massive stroke. Her recovery took 8 years. She describes the sensations she felt during her stroke in the video called "Jill Bolte Taylor's Stroke of Insight" which is at http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html [click on this link to view the video]
Say a prayer...
How could this happen? Yes, he had tremendous stress. Financial and personal. Yes, the clock ticks fast.Yes, expectations were high. No, he does not have medical insurance for himself. He couldn't afford it. Staff to pay, rent to pay... so many migrant farm workers and people who were injured while at work... he treated them long term regardless if they could pay or not. Though he helped relieve pain, he was never free from financial pain himself.
Now my brother is in intensive care. I shudder to think how his mind is racing about in half a numb body that will not respond...What all this means--Will he recover? What happens to his healing dream? All he initially said when he was bought in "Give me some blood pressure medication and let me go home!"
If he survives intensive care he cannot go home. He lost his home to the bank. A hospital bed won't fit in his furnished studio apartment. Later at the hospital he was garbling something like "No county! No county!" The 'county' nursing home where the uninsured and poor go.
Somehow when the stock market spiraled down 600 points today, a black Monday, August 8, 2011, it seems a marker of the times. Our mother was born on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, when the stock market crashed during the Great Depression. Dreams crash hard. They bleed in your brain...
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| My brother's 'significant' stroke is the size of a half-a-dollar coin and is near his hypothalamus--indicated by the red arrow. Image from wikipedia file:hypothalamus.jpg |
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| picture of Jill Bolte Taylor holding a human brain from wikipedia by Steve Jurvetson taken 2-27-08 http://www.flickr.com/photos/44124348109@N01/2330268706/ |
Say a prayer...
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