Is Brain Battle Legit
Brook Mithani
This has been passed to me from several people (the latest a UM dean) who assure me it's legit. MMB member/Michigan student/fan community member Ethan White is battling an aggressive brain cancer--the same thing Chad Carr had--that was diagnosed last March. Since then the community has been raising money for treatments not covered by insurance, travel for evaluations, and other costs. You people stepped up, unasked, to help my son last summer, and it got us through. You can take the link to read more.
I teach at the middle school Ethan went to, and while I didn't have him in my class, I did coach him in a sport. He was a awesome kid then, and seems like a good dude now with an admirable outlook given his situation. I shared the MLive article about Ethan's diagnosis with the staff of the school, and received a bunch of replies from teachers and other staff who remember him fondly. We're pulling for you, Ethan!
M.C. Escher, Circle Limit IV, also known as Angels and Devils. McGilchrist comments that the two sides of the brain see this differently: the left hemisphere tends to concentrate on what stands out from the background and therefore sees either angels or devils, whereas the right hemisphere is better able to see both at once (p. 1166). Image: Wiki Art
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Faade of the Villa Capra (La Rotunda) near Vicenza. Italy, designed by Andrea Palladio in 1570/1592. For McGilchrist, this is the epitome of beauty and harmony in design because it combines elements of symmetry and asymmetry. Image: Mauro_Repossini/ iStock
Secondly, to the company of all the great thinkers whom he cites, McGilchrist himself brings something to the party, namely the understanding of the two hemispheres of the brain. This is new, and by shining the light on our contemporary understanding of their features and distinctions, he illuminates and deepens appreciation of earlier work by others.
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I am enjoying and still reading this review. I do however wonder why we are still fighting this left/right brain battle and in coming to terms with it. Well, yes, I do, it has something to do with materialism. Vague I know!
I went home and immediately started researching TMS and Neurostar so I could better understand the treatment and then talk to my wife about it. The first thing I found was a newly opened TMS clinic on the other side of town. That was one hurdle down. Next, I found quite a bit of information on the procedure itself, all positive, with a lot of documentation and testimonials about how it was possible to achieve a miraculous and long-lasting remission from depression. The success rates I found were as high as 80 percent; others stood at around 60 percent. It seemed to validate what I had learned from my doctor.
Then he introduced me to the staff and technicians. I asked them the same questions about side effects, and they all confirmed independently the same risks that I had read about online and reviewed with the psychiatrist. I also signed paperwork that included disclosures saying that I accepted those risks without mentioning any others. The staff offered to set me up with my first appointment the next day and I agreed. Although I was a bit nervous, I was excited at the potential of curing myself of depression at what seemed to be very little risk. I will admit: It did seem too good to be true. But I rationalized away my doubt, believing that modern medicine was now so advanced that this kind of treatment was possible.
By doing this, they were looking for the best arm placement for the machine against my head so that there would be no motor response from my body. The flinching sensations I felt were disturbing, but not particularly unpleasant, so I did not worry. After about 20 minutes, the technicians were satisfied and said the computer would remember the custom settings for me so that when I came back the next day, I could just sit down and get started. From that point on, each session would last about 25 minutes. We scheduled sessions for five days a week over the next three months. It was a big time commitment, but it was worth the proposed payoff.
The next day I showed up, feeling a bit nervous and unsure of what it would be like to get a full treatment. I also felt a bit of hope that I might go home feeling better that night. The staff was friendly and made me feel very comfortable. We chatted while I got set up in the chair with hearing protection, just like during the mapping session. They fired up the machine and set the articulating arm up to the same spot on my left temple. The tech let me know she was going to start, I agreed, and the machine began clacking away at my head. In all honesty I felt nothing but a bit of an uncomfortable tingling or snapping sensation at the site where the arm was closest to my head. At the end of the session I was pleased that I had felt nothing remarkable.
I thought, What the hell is going on here? They had not told me anything about having to raise the intensity of this thing. Still, I told the tech OK and left, feeling a bit put off. But then I thought: That session was not so bad, so the next one would be fine.
I finally got to the full therapeutic dose and asked the staff when I would start to work my way out of this lightheadedness I was experiencing. They replied that I should begin to get back to normal after about a week at this dose. I trusted what they said and eagerly awaited my return to normalcy. I went through another week of treatments but I felt the same after every session. The lightheadedness persisted at all times and through everything in my life, including my work for a Fortune 10 company, which I had been managing to complete from home.
I continued the treatment with no relief from the side effects for the next few weeks. Then one night while I was sleeping, I heard the fire alarm go off in my home. I shot up in my bed, scared as hell. My wife was still sound asleep. I scanned the room, frantic, looking for smoke or light from a fire, but saw nothing unusual.
The pieces of the puzzle started filling in for me, but by now I was absolutely terrified. I was experiencing intense tinnitus. I managed to calm down and fall back asleep after some time. The next morning, I still had the tinnitus, but it was not as intense. That day at my treatment session I brought up the sound to the clinicians there. They said that it can happen but again assured me that it would be temporary. I felt so thankful. Because my wife had experienced tinnitus before, I figured it was not a big deal. I learned to cope with it and just moved forward.
Soon after these symptoms developed toward the end of my treatment, I had a regularly scheduled teleconference meeting with my boss at work. Skipping the formalities and without warning, he told me he was letting me go. When I asked if I had done something wrong, he told me no; there was no cause. Then he briefly answered a few questions and hung up. It sent me reeling. I realized that in less than five minutes, I had lost a job at which I had worked painstakingly for the best years of my life.
I comforted myself by assuming mine was part of a larger layoff of many people in my department, so I asked a few friends still working there about it. They all confirmed that I was the only one. I later learned I was replaced about a week later. Clearly my management team perceived my disability and moved quickly to remove the problem.
So I waited. Week after week, I waited for my normal brain function to return. I wanted my sharp, witty mindset back so I could begin my life again. It did not return, and I began to notice more peculiar things about myself besides just feeling drunk or hungover all the time. My short-term memory was kaput.
The other change is that I can no longer multitask. If I am doing something and someone talks to me, I forget what I had been doing. If one person is talking to me and another person comes up and begins talking at the same time, I cannot make out what either one of them is saying, even if I focus hard. If there are any distractions in my environment it is now extremely hard, if not impossible, for me to stay on track.
After two months, when I was sure these symptoms were not letting up, I scheduled an appointment with a neurologist. He was very aware of what TMS is and had been to a conference on it. However, he too thought my symptoms would dissipate. To rule out any other factors, though, he ordered an MRI of my head. When that came back clean, he ordered EEGs, bloodwork, and neuropsychological testing. All the results came back normal except for the neuropsychological testing, which showed MCI, or mild cognitive impairment. Almost all of my mental processes were now below average: Storytelling, recall, and cognitive shifts (multitasking) were impaired. At least now I had proof.
After I better understood what had happened to my mind, I went to see an ENT (ear, nose, and throat specialist) and an audiologist. More testing ensued and the doctors diagnosed me with tinnitus and high-frequency hearing loss. Furthermore, they told me that I am one firework display away from major hearing loss. Their solution was that I should wear two forms of hearing protection whenever I am in loud environments.
By this point, almost half a year had passed, and I felt no improvement. After talking to several different doctors, including some of the best in my state, I was left empty-handed. I continue to search for ways to heal myself and recover from a new treatment whose disabling effects modern medicine has no defined way to counter. When you are taking an anti-depressant or other pharmaceuticals, you can stop taking the pill and your body will naturally flush the chemicals out of your system in time. With TMS, there is no way for your system to do that. All you can do is wait for your brain to adapt as it attempts to restore the damage done by the electromagnetic pulses forced through it. Little to nothing is known about how that process might work, much less how to hasten it. I have talked to quite a few medical professionals who deny that what happened to me is even possible.
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