Life Matters - March 5, 2025
I had many questions for Dr. Peter about the brain. Biology is not one of my strong points. I prefer to think of people as spiritual beings, which we are, but mine came at the expense of not knowing much about human biology aside from what kind of intakes are healthy, such as herbal remedies, nutrition, and having healthy soil to grow healthy food in, all of which I take an interest in.
The biology question uppermost in my mind was one resulting from my time in a coma, which experience served to deepen my conviction that we have an eternal mind that keeps functioning when the brain, which is organic, is injured, fails in its reasoning powers, or dies.
‘’What is the connection,” I asked Dr. Peter “between our brain which is perishable, and our eternal mind, which is not?” The good doctor answered with the calm precision with which he answered every question. “Emanuel” he said “we know a lot more about the brain than we ever have before, and we are still learning. But,” he continued, “we find that the more we know about the brain, the more we know that we don’t know. People who are brain dead have been known to speak before their spirit leaves their body. We know there is a connection between the brain and the eternal mind, but we have no biological answer. The only logical explanation is that the connection is spiritual.’’
That uppermost question being answered, among many others, I had one more; “Is there anything I can do,” I asked, “to help my brain heal?” Dr. Peter answered in a way I wasn’t expecting. I was expecting something along the line of ways to relax it. “Yes,” said the good doctor. “Exercise it. Our brain is an organ and as such, functions like a muscle, and like a muscle gets flabby without exercise but gets stronger when we exercise it. A quiet stress free environment with an active brain is ideal for healing.”
‘’Exercise!” I said, “How do I exercise it?”
I don’t remember the exact list of exercises he suggested, I suppose I should have had them written down. He gave them as suggestions though and he sure had my brain exercising itself already as it sorted his suggestions into categories of office work, reading, memorizing, recalling names and faces, and a myriad of others that were added in the coming days.
The first exercises after Doctor left my room was to recall academics and Bible verses to see if I had lost any. He had told me they couldn’t tell what all I would have to relearn as no two people store information in their brain in the same sequence. He had explained the two sides of the brain to me but even so, he said, they can’t tell for sure what is stored where, so they can’t tell for sure what all I had lost. He did say though, that considering the location of the main injury to my brain, the loss of motor skills made sense.
Slowly and painstakingly, by agonizing through physical therapy, my motor skills were being restored day by day. The days finally came when I could sit up without my head flopping around on a weak neck, when I could swallow the yogurt Sadie brought in for me to help balance my blood sugar, when there was talk of releasing me soon to go home if I could pass a swallowing test to be done in the MRI room.
When they finally wheeled me in for the swallowing test I was so determined to pass that I rehearsed in my brain the sequence of swallowing things properly, that I had learned in therapy, several times just to make sure.
They fed me canned peach juice with a pink dye in it and with the first swallow I was seized with a dreadful urge to cough…being sure I would flunk if I did, I squelched the coughing urge with herculean effort and then…the test was over. With wonderment I eyed the technician who relented protocol a bit to tell me I didn’t pass the test. ‘’Why is that?’’
‘’I’m sorry,” the good technician informed me, “we watched you swallow with the MRI, that’s what the pink dye is for. Some of the peach juice started down the tube going to your lungs. And,” he said, “you didn’t cough.’’
‘’Oh.” I said, and that was that.
Squelching that cough was likely what cost me family Thanksgiving dinner 2011, which I had been looking forward to eagerly, but with steadily diminishing hope. Now I set my sights on Christmas dinner. Surely I’d be fully recovered by that time.
In the meantime, I was living with a body that needed daily rounds of therapy—physical therapy—coordination therapy—speech therapy—a swallowing therapy (whatever that was called)—and a certain cognitive testing therapy consisting of answering questions from memory, which soon fizzled out, meaning they must have figured out that I was doing ok in that departmen—the therapists certainly weren’t known to give up that easily. They were endowed with a patience reminiscent of that righteous man, Job…
Life Matters!