Build Back Better: Re-building a nervous system

As I read another account of an AVM stroke, I feel seen. The confusion, pain, and readiness to die were not unique to me. I related to her experience first hand. She felt trapped. She, the author, a neuroanatomist, had her stroke young and during a bustling pivotal time in her life too. She bled BAD and swelled BAD. She bled worse, but I swelled worse. She couldn’t speak or understand language and I could only speak my secondary language: Spanish. I didn’t know I was bilingual until my trauma and I understood English but didn’t know how to speak it. Wild. Scary.