Asides

Taking a look inside

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right brain all lit upI’ve had a number of beloved friends who are lately posting ultrasound images of their soon-to-be born babies . . . I love seeing those little ones.  I guess this is what you post when you get older and have epilepsy!  But whether it’s an image of a child we have yet to meet in our world, or the inner workings of our brain, there is something truly miraculous and, to me, sacred, about being able to see the inner workings of ourselves. I’ve never understood how some religious types see science as being opposed to religion and spirituality.  When I see a group of scientists and doctors who work collaboratively to create something like the image you see on the left, it’s like seeing a bit of God’s handiwork, first-hand.

This is one of the beautiful images from a functional MRI scan they did at the Mass General of the right side of my brain working away while I perform a word retrival task.  The fMRI is an interesting process — you are in an MRI tube and they flash words and images on a screen and you “think” the answer.  My biggest challenge during the fMRI was that I wanted to argue with them, or preach, about some of the things they were showing me, and they had to tell me not to move my mouth or throat.  For example, one of the tasks they have you do is to show you a noun, and you have to “think” about whether it is abstract or concrete.  The third noun they showed me was “church.”  You can only imagine everything I had to say about this.  Is “church” a concrete noun — in other words, a place, a building?  Or is it abstract — the people, the energy, the relationships?  Of course, it’s both/and, and I really wanted to preach the sermon, or at least share this with the MRI techs, right then and there.  They kindly asked me, in nice Boston accents, to just “save the sermon for lata’ ” and try and think my way through to one response.

The scans seem to show that, while I have a dominant left temporal lobe, much of my language functioning has shifted into my right frontal lobe, all of which is confusing — they don’t really understand, fully, what this means.  For over 80 percent of the population, language is exclusively in the left temporal lobe, where I have a lesion and seizures begin.  However, it’s also encouraging, because it seems to indicate that my brain already has some plasticity and began this shift awhile ago.  So next time you listen to me “go off” in a sermon or a yoga class, just blame it on my right dominant brain (and tell me, kindly, that you’ve heard enough, for now).

Brain scans galore!

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20130911_171535So, you may wonder, what does it look like when you spend a week getting multiple types of brain scans?  Here’s a couple from my trip to the Martinos Center in Charlestown, Massachusetts, last week.  The Martinos Center, a research facility connected with Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard, and MIT  has an amazing  staff of people who were incredibly kind to Jonthan and myself as I went through several days of non-stop testing.  It’s a lot of time to be very still inside of a variety of tubes (for those of you who like details, I had an FMRI, 2 types of MRIs, a PET scan, an MEG, and a Connectome scan).  One interesting part of the process was being the first “patient” in the United States to be scanned as a part of the Human Connectome Study, which is the cornerstone of the initiative to study the brain developed by the Obama Administration.  I’m glad my abnormal brain can be of value to the advancement of science!  The many tests they did gave them much more detailed information that is helping them decide how to proceed.

So, what’s next?  There is a team of doctors and researchers that are “conferencing”  my situation.  At the moment, I am scheduled to have surgery in Boston in early October.  However, they still have to take a look at some information that came from a test I had done in January in Spokane in order to determine exactly how they want to approach the surgery.  The procedure they are hoping to do is one that Jonathan likes to describe as “minimally invasive brain surgery.”  However, there are still some concerns about if that will, indeed, stop my seizures, and they continue to have some concerns related to the language center in my brain and the point of origin of the seizures that could lead to yet another test (or two) prior to surgery.  So, while the surgery is currently scheduled, the date still might shift again in the next couple of weeks.  It’s surely a lesson in living in the moment and not getting agitated about uncertainty.

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On a different note, I really will try and be a “better” blogger than I have been, and I will also let Jonathan do some blogging, since he is great at it.  Turns out I love to write, but I really don’t enjoy writing about myself a lot!  However, I have had much to reflect upon and I would like to share some of it with you.  Epilepsy and impending brain surgery have proven to be excellent reminders of why the supportive, loving community I have around me of family, friends, church members, and yoga and Nia students are a gift that I am not taking for granted.  I’ve also been reminded of why having an ongoing spiritual practice is so critical to engage during the times when nothing “big” is happening, so that it is there and strong during times like these (especially if you have to lie in a tube, being really still, for multiple hours, multiple days).  Thanks to all of you who have been with me on this journey.  I promise I will write more soon!  ❤

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The cap for the MEG . . . Jonathan calls it “your granny’s swimming cap.”