In 1996, at the age of 37, I was a brain scientist at Harvard when I experienced a major hemorrhage in the left half of my brain. Over the course of four hours, my brain completely deteriorated circuit by circuit, ability by ability. After experiencing this rare form of stroke, I lost my ability to walk, talk, read, write and recall any memories from before the event. Although I was left in a neurologically devastated condition, I did not die that day. After I had brain surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, it took me eight years to use my understanding of the brain to completely rebuild my neural circuits and recover all lost functions.
In 2008, more than a decade after my stroke, I gave the first TED Talk to ever go viral, I was chosen as one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World, and I was interviewed on Oprah Winfrey’s daytime TV show, alongside Dr. Mehmet Oz.
If you have been following Oz’s campaign for a Pennsylvania Senate seat, you know stroke has played a prominent role in the race between him and John Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor, who suffered one in May. Because there is clearly a lot of misunderstanding about stroke, I wrote a Times Opinion essay about the brain and its amazing ability to recover from trauma. Take for instance Fetterman’s recent interview on NBC, during which he used a closed captioning device to read questions. After watching it, I was relieved to note not only how quickly and intelligently he responded, but also how he reached back into his experience as lieutenant governor to defend his record on not being soft on crime.
But perhaps the part that impressed me the most was the patience he displayed with his interviewer. While she chose to raise questions about his abilities and medical records, as opposed to asking him policy questions and observing how well he processed and communicated information, Fetterman remained calm and continued to focus on his platforms.
Strokes are as unique as people are, and each experience with brain trauma is unique. While the brain is a complex organ, it would benefit society to better understand the fundamentals of how our brains work, how they fail and how they can recover — even completely, as mine did.
Lt. Gov. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania campaigning in Greensburg, Pa., in May.Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times