Into the Silent land

I spent most of my afternoon yesterday in reading the book I borrowed from the library. My husband asked me if I was reading it in relation to my work and study or for just the pleasure of reading. Up to now he could not comprehend yet why the woman he married finds pleasure in reading fiction books. For him TV documentaries are more pleasing to his senses.

Before going to sleep on our bed, I announced to him that I already finished reading that book titled Into the Silent Land by Paul Broks, a Senior Clinical Lecturer and Honorary Consultant in Neuropsychology. I explained to him that it is not actually a fiction book but real stories of the author’s patients and his experiences as a doctor. “Neuropsychology? What has it got to do with an engineer like me?” he asked. I answered that it has a lot to do with anybody. I went on lengths to explain and I quoted from the book:

neuropsychology: noun(mass noun) the study of the relationship between behaviour, emotion and cognition on the one hand, and brain function on the other.

mind noun 1 the element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought….

brain noun1 an organ of soft nervous tissue contained in the skull of vertebrates, functioning in the coordinating centre of sensation and intellectual and nervous activity….

self noun (pl selves) a person’s essential being that distinguishes them from others, especially considered as the object of introspection….

To convinced him more about my point I told him one story in the book that of Robert who was a loving husband, a good father with satisfactory job but one day in the foothills of middle age, he took a long look at himself and decided that life was running out and he was going nowhere and so there must be a change. Robert left his family in an impulse following several episodes of uncharacteristically eccentric behaviour. He had seizures and was taken to hospital, had head scans and a large mass in the orbitofrontal region of the brain was found. He had tumour in his frontal lobes that recalibrated his personality.
“A meningioma like Robert’s can take years to develop, eventually becoming a stable feature of the intracranial landsape. The brain can up to a point, accommodate a slow growing mass without betraying major clinical signs or symptoms. It depends on the rate of growth and where it’s located. Some people grow old and die never knowing that for half their life or more they were harbouring a benign brain tumour .Perhaps they never know who they might have been.” That is why Robert was so depressed that he transformed from Jekyll to Hyde. After three attempts, he finally succeeded in killing himself.

My husband then answered, “Mommy, I also learnt about depression. I watched the documentary on TV.” He explained that with depression, the good bacteria in our body system would be overpowered by the bad bacteria and resulted in many diseases. So the best thing he said is to be always positive. Very easy, he added.

Wahhh, why could my husband not understand that there are behaviours that are unconsciously manifested and are or caused by damage to the frontal lobes of the brain?
And that depression and eccentric behaviour are a few of the manifestations? My point is we should always understand why people behave in such a way because we really don’t know the reason or even medical reason behind the behaviour manifestation.

But I am glad my husband mentioned about thinking positive. Yes we should think positive. For according to Paul Broks as he ended his book “it’s just the one lifetime. Better make the most of it.”

And as he quoted from Christina Rosetti, “Remember”

Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.

And yeah, I should understand the reason behind people’s behaviour and to add, I must think positive for this is only one lifetime. So the unimportant episode I wrote before this post is really nothing. I understand the inconsistency of it all.