Learning About My Brain, and Pride, in Appalachia

Last week I spent a couple of days working on an Appalachia Service Project (ASP) trip in Jonesville, Virginia. ASP is all about getting folks together to help out folks in Appalachia who, for all sorts of reasons, have found themselves living in substandard housing and can’t fix it up themselves. ASP facilitates teams who come from all over the country to fix up their houses to make them warmer, drier and safer.

This was my fourth ASP trip, and we worked on a house that truly needed fixing up. The home owner was, physically, stronger than me, but needed help. He knew he needed help, applied for help and now has gotten a series of ASP work teams to help him out. In the not too distance future, he’s going to have a house that’s not only warmer, drier and safer, it’ll also be much nicer to live in.

His parents, whose house needs even more help than his does, have not yet applied for help.  And, as I understand it, their pride is the key roadblock.

I think there’s a lesson here for those of us that need cognitive help. Admitting that you need help, that something’s wrong and it’s beyond your own power to fix it, is hard…especially when it’s your brain that needs fixin’.

In many ways I think that Richard Bach was right when he wrote that “The worst lies we tell are the lies we tell ourselves.” 

The lie I told myself, before I found out that I had a brain tumor, was that I didn’t have a eyesight problem…even though I kept walking into the island in the kitchen at full throttle; scraped the car against the garage; and made my wife shudder when I came too close to other cars while driving.

I needed to swallow my pride and find out what was wrong…doing so was my first step to fixin’ my own personal house.

I now have a different view on all this. There’s nothing wrong with asking for help or admitting that you’re not “normal” anymore. There is something wrong in pretending that there’s nothing wrong.

Giffords Resigns from Office…But Not from Life

I’ve just watched the Gabrielle Giffords video posted on her website - http://www.gabriellegiffords.com/ - and I have two diametrically opposed thoughts about it.

First, she seems to have come to terms with her handicaps in that she acknowledges the severity of them and limitations she has.  That’s a good thing. After a traumatic brain injury or brain tumor, we are changed and usually for the worse. And if you shouldn’t drive or cook or manage the high-stress and important job you used to have, you need to acknowledge that handicap. Her resignation tells me that she has. 

It’s hard.

It’s humiliating.

It’s depressing.

But pretending that you can see as well as you used to, when you can’t, is in some ways a lie.  And, to quote Richard Bach (author of Jonathon Livingston Seagull), “the worse lies are the lies you tell yourself”.

At the same time, she has not resigned herself to being anything less than she can be. Her objective seems clear – she wants to return to work as a congresswoman for the state of Arizona. And to do that, she needs to spend 100% of her time in rehab. Will she be able to recover to the point that she’ll be able to run for office?  Who knows? Having read her book - Gabby: A Story of Courage and Hope - I wouldn’t bet against her.  (Here’s link to her book: http://www.amazon.com/Gabby-Story-Courage-Gabrielle-Giffords/dp/1451661061/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327341870&sr=1-1)

For those of us who’ve had brain tumors or traumatic brain injuries, she’s the role model. She’s the one we can all know and say to ourselves “If she can come back from a bullet to the head, I can come back from my brain tumor.” “Come back” may mean different thanks to different people, but to me it means never giving up and, like the army ad, “being all I can be”.

And just as importantly, it means never letting the tumor consume your life, your personality, or your attitude.

Almost every time I go to the gym I see a guy from church who’s in an endless cycle of rehab. Every time I ask him how’s he’s doing, he gives me a laundry list of his latest illness woes…and then walks away. His illness consumes him and imprisons him. What is so refreshing and motivating and inspiring about Gabby – or at the piece of Gabby that we can see – is that she hasn’t fallen into that trap.

I hope I never do too.