the rOad less Traveled

   "How my dad's dementia changed my idea of death (and life)"  By: Beth Malone      In this Ted Talk, Beth talked about an encounter she had with her dad. Beth started this ted talk saying, "I've been doing some thinking. I'm going to kill my dad. I called my sister." Now this is not a phrase that many people would openly say to an audience of strangers but she was going through something that people would never dream of: her father was struggling with frontotemporal lobe dementia (FTD). Beth's thought process was that her dad was being tortured and his body was the vessel of that torture. She wanted to get him out of that body so that he could be free. FTD is a group of disorders that occurs from a progressive loss of nerve cells in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain. This causes the lobes to shrink and can affect behavior, personality, language, and movement. Beth's dad experienced a major personality change and this caused him to get...

     For my neuro note, I read an article by Tyson Ward called, "I Got Hit By a Boat," where he talked about his journey to recovery after being in a major boating accident his junior year of college. It was very interesting to learn about the many miracles that Tyson and his family experienced in the year following his accident. He went from being hooked up to tubes to keep him alive, to comas, ulcers, memory loss, seizures, extensive therapy and eventually getting back to the life he knew before the accident. I really enjoyed the Tyson explained certain terms to make it more retable to those who may not understand what was going on his brain during his recovery process. For example, he explained his weight loss during his coma by saying that his brain chose to go into a coma when it was not in good enough shape to keep him in an aware state and repair all of his injuries. It (the brain) knows that the body is in no sort of shape to do anything positive in an awake state...