How I Rescued My Brain (30 page)

I haven't had suicidal thoughts for months. I still get in a flat mood sometimes and it can be an effort to do things, but I've worked out that this is mostly due to physical exhaustion and mental fatigue.

It is now eighteen months post-stroke. After the emotional storms of recent years, there are finally patches of blue sky. Following my talk with Anna last November, I realised that I'd been so caught up with survival — with simply getting through each day, with trying to meet the family's immediate needs, my rehabilitation obligations, and the legal and financial crises — that I had had little mental space for anything else. Lately, my mental space has expanded to include others; I want to know how they're going. These whiffs of expansiveness are like smoke from a fire I can't see, so I'm not altogether sure the fire is there, but it feels close by.

Before I left for the course, I was keen to check in with my daughters. As I was driving to a swimming squad with Ashley a few weeks ago, she'd said, ‘Why do you get angry so easily?'

‘What do you mean, “so easily”?'

‘Compared to everybody else.'

Ashley doesn't often reveal her private thoughts, so I'd seized this opportunity. ‘Well, I got traumatised from hearing about the bad things that happen to people — the people I helped at work. This made me irritable, you know, getting upset. Then I had the stroke and my brain wasn't working properly.'

‘You don't even understand my question,' she said, and dropped into silence.

The door had closed.

Two months before this, we had been driving to her water-polo session in the late afternoon and the sun was in our eyes. ‘That sun is annoying,' she said.

‘How can the sun be annoying?' I said. ‘It gives life, sustains us.'

‘Well, you gave me life and you're annoying … Maybe not all the time.'

I laughed, and caught the flicker of a smile on her face. I like her quick wit. But I was disheartened by her comment. How has my irritability, fatigue, and self-absorption affected the family?

Late last year, I booked, after doing lots of research to find a place on our limited budget, a nine-day stay at a family resort in Fiji for late January. It was cheaper than a similar kind of holiday in Australia. I should be reinvigorated by then, after this break from the family. I want us all to have a restful holiday: relaxing in a natural environment, all meals provided, and no telephones, television, or computers. It will be an ideal way for the family to reconnect, and to assess what the damage has been.

Today, after a swim, I head into the police station. Due to the floods, I'm becoming concerned about getting home. The police officer tells me that the roads will be closed for at least three to four more days, and then they'll be in poor condition. He doesn't know when I'll be able to travel south. Nothing's getting in or out of town, and fresh food supplies are running short in the shops. There are signs of panic buying.

Upon hearing this news, I get that trapped feeling I had in Seaview. How will I make it back in time for the holiday? When will I get home? I also need to see my GP to complete the monthly claim form for the insurer so that I am paid. A delay could mean more financial disaster.

Rex suggests that I book a flight to Brisbane. The earliest flight I can get means that I will arrive a day late in Fiji. The family can go on before me. I speak with my claims manager, and he says that he doesn't expect a claim form this month because of the floods; others are in the same position.

The other out-of-town participants in the course are also ‘trapped'. Choeying says that it's a wonderful opportunity for us all to stay longer; our employers will understand. It means I will be here for almost two weeks.

Choeying's right. With the assurance that I can join the family in Fiji, I feel better. And the almost daily revelations I'm experiencing are too valuable to miss.

Something Choeying said on the first day has stuck in my mind: a bad cup of coffee at a cafe would have once put her in a terrible mood. She's also given us homework: to notice how our feelings change in different situations and in response to different people. This is to encourage mindfulness.

My usual practice when staying in a new place is to ask a local where the best coffee is. If I like it, I keep going back there. I only allow myself one cup of espresso per day, so a bad one is disappointing. So I thought, what if, rather than re-create the safe experience of going to the same cafe with the best coffee, I go to a new cafe each day, and watch my reaction to the quality of the coffee, the service, and the ambience?

This has been my project since my arrival. The first cafe I went to, on the Esplanade, had good coffee. The service was fine, but the place was noisier and more cramped than I'd like. I gave it eight out of ten, and I would've been happy enough to make it my preferred cafe. But, staying true to my resolution, that afternoon I arrive at a new cafe. Immediately, I don't like the ambience. It has uninviting tiled floors, hard metal chairs, and no softness or quirkiness in the décor. But I push myself to go inside.

The older man serving me seems like the proprietor — he doesn't look like a skilled barista — and his lack of passion for making coffee is obvious. I can't stand to watch him, so I go and sit outside.

My first taste of the coffee tells me that he has burnt the milk, and the flavour is thin. Disappointment. I register my impulse to leave. But I breathe, lean back, and sit with the feeling. I look across the road and notice the greenery and the children's playground in the park opposite. I get a whiff of the sea air. People are on holiday, cheerful. The disappointment and the urge to leave fizzle out.

I sit for half an hour, and end up leaving most of the coffee. But I've enjoyed my coffee experience, and I've enjoyed watching my mind and investigating how tricky it is.

When the course participants meet for our mid-week evening catch-up, I say, ‘I've been doing coffee meditations.' The others laugh. I explain my rationale and what I've discovered. ‘I sit with the bad coffee and notice the initial disappointment. If I relax into the experience and I don't push the disappointment, or whatever, away, it fades. I can still enjoy being in the cafe. Although I'd prefer a good coffee.'

Each time I meet them after this, I'll be asked: ‘David, how are your coffee meditations going?' They want to know my latest ratings.

IN MY PRIVATE
morning meditations, I've been slipping into deeper and deeper states of mental stillness; the realisation that I experienced intense mindfulness during the first hours of my stroke has super-charged my meditations. I can sit for up to seventy-five minutes before it becomes physically uncomfortable. Often, I lose sensation of my lower body, or it feels distant.

To begin with, Choeying has given us a ‘love and equanimity' meditation from Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, which focuses on ourselves. I understand this to mean that until I have true compassion for myself, I can't have it for anyone else. After we've focused on ourselves, Choeying says, we can focus on others. It goes like this:

May I be peaceful, happy, and light in body and spirit.

May I be safe and free from injury.

May I be free from anger, fear, and anxiety.

May I learn to look at myself with the eyes of understanding and love.

May I be able to recognise and touch the seeds of joy and happiness in me.

May I learn to identify and see the sources of anger, craving, and delusion in me.

May I know how to nourish the seeds of joy in myself every day.

May I be able to live fresh, solid, and free.

May I be free from attachment and aversion, but not indifferent.

I've been doing this, both for myself and for the family. It has a soothing, softening effect and, somehow, it warms my heart.

One morning after meditation, Choeying and the others decide to go into town to shop and have coffee. When I say I'd rather go out by myself, she suggests that I do a ‘driving meditation' as another way of practising mindfulness. She tells me to cultivate the attitude that I'm not driving the car, the car is driving me, and to notice everything. ‘And careful,' she says, ‘you might get hooked.'

I sit in my car with her instructions in mind. Then I exit the driveway and turn into the road. I'm paying careful attention to the surroundings, in that non-judgemental way I experienced after the stroke.

By the time I'm on the main road into town, I'm in a tunnel, seeing only the road in front of me and the trees on either side. I realise how distracted I usually am when driving.

Soon I become completely lost in the process of driving. I begin to feel as if the car is an extension of me. I think
left
or
right
and it turns by itself. I know that my arms are doing the turning, but it doesn't feel this way. The movement is velvety smooth, as if I'm in a luxury vehicle, not an old Subaru. I am progressing through space on a cushion of air, the car a metal wrapper. My seat supports me lightly.

In this mental state, each rise and dip in the road becomes exhilarating, as if I'm on a rollercoaster, but without the stomach churn. When the car pulls up at the traffic lights by itself, I wait — with no impatience, content to be exactly where I am. Clock time is passing, but my time isn't: time has become irrelevant.

I reach the town centre, park, and pick up my flight ticket.

Then I go for coffee in a nearby cafe. For the first time since I've been in Hervey Bay, I pick up a newspaper; I'm intrigued to know how I will respond to it in this state of mind. Rustling through the pages, I read about the floods. I feel compassion for the flood victims, and try to contemplate what they're going through, but I'm not dragged down by my concern.

Emboldened by this, I turn to the business pages: a section I've read assiduously before for commentary on the housing market and what this will mean for our finances. An article says that interest rates may go up again. This will make paying off our loans even harder. As if from afar, I watch a disturbance gathering in my mind, like wind causing ripples on water. But the disturbance is still far off, and I put down the newspaper. With this and my coffee meditations, I'm impressed with how I can watch my thoughts and feelings come and go.

Finally I think I get it: mindfulness is not like an umbrella, which you only put up when it's raining; it's something that you have on all the time, as I did during my early stroke experience.

When I drive back, it is harder to get into the same mental state as before. Perhaps the caffeine has kicked in, or reading the newspaper has disturbed my composure. I dip in and out of mindfulness, and purposely extend the trip to enjoy it longer. Choeying was right; I could get hooked on this driving meditation.

ON THE SECOND
weekend of the course — the weekend before I leave for Fiji — Choeying has us focus on breath meditation. There is a lot of feedback from the other participants, but I'm content not to say much. During the lunch break I take my plate of food and sit on one of the chairs under the walkway. I look into the garden — the outlines of the leaves and stems are brilliantly clear, the colours rich. It's that same sparkle I experienced in the hospital after the stroke. Again, time seems irrelevant; I'm simply content to
be
.

I'd said earlier to Choeying that the other participants were not people I'd usually spend time with or come across in my social circle, but I felt close to them. My sense of companionship with Shas has shocked me; we have very little in common, yet we've hung out a lot together. A few nights ago, Shas invited my family and me to come stay on her property. ‘We can go chain-sawin',' she says. I think this means we're mates.

I've noticed that the hardness in her face has gone, and her conversation is more considered.

Choeying had said, ‘We hang out with people the same as us; we limit ourselves, and that's why we don't grow. You are realising the benefits of equanimity, darling.'

At the end of the day, my last on the course, there are hugs. I hug the woman with probable multiple sclerosis and the woman with cancer. I feel for them, but I'm not dragged down to a place I don't want to go in knowing what they're facing. And it seems as though I'm giving them something through my presence, though I'm not sure what that could be.

On my last night, I read aloud my written account of the first twenty-four hours of my stroke at the dinner table. It causes some laughter. Choeying is moved, and Shas says she's grateful to have heard it. I talk about Jill Bolte Taylor's account of her stroke, and how she'd had some kind of remarkable experience — but I couldn't remember what it was.

After dinner, I do an online search and come across Taylor's TED talk. It's mind-blowing. She says that the serial-processing style of the left cerebral hemisphere leads to a strong sense of the individual self, distinct from others. The left hemisphere concerns itself with the past and the future, and how the present moment relates to these. The right cerebral hemisphere, on the other hand, with its parallel-processing style, has a strong sensory, in-the-moment way of experiencing the world. On the morning of her stroke, Taylor suffered a left-brain haemorrhage, which led to the silencing of her internal chatter and the (temporary) loss of thirty-seven years of ‘emotional baggage'. She felt extreme peacefulness, enormous expansiveness, and compassion for all beings; and, in between these states, periods of panic as her left hemisphere kicked in and she tried to call for help (she was living on her own). Yet she describes her right-hemisphere experience as like discovering nirvana, and is overcome with emotion in speaking about it. After what I went through, I know that she's not making it up; her experience contains many of the elements of my own.