Revenge of a Stolen Brain

Tragedies can occur to us at any time. Somehow, they seem to always happen at the wrong time. We may also feel that they have happened to the wrong persons. "Dear God, what are you doing? This is not supposed to happen to me. This is supposed to happen to poor people of lesser status." Sometimes, however, after a little soul searching, we learn that a traumatic experience has made us re-evaluate our values and that we subsequently gain a new insight that enables us to have a more fulfilling and joyous life. Paul was a 34-year-old, handsome, Caucasian man. He was wealthy, well-educated, and had strong family ties and some good friends. Life was great. After all, he was born into privilege, and along with that advantage came the ability to attain most of the material things he wanted. Furthermore, he was the youngest of four, yet his father, the patriarch of the family, chose him over his older brother and two sisters to run the family's very lucrative luxury auto manufacturing business. He had a beautiful, devoted wife, Sarah, who loved him dearly and would do anything to please him. He has his whole life ahead of him and life couldn't be much better. That is, until, early one fateful morning while riding his bike-as he did every morning-he started experiencing heart palpitations, weakness, fatigue, reduced ability to exercise, lightheadedness, dizziness, confusion, shortness of breath, and finally, chest pain. He was having a stroke. This sudden affliction changed Paul's life permanently. Although he felt very fortunate to be alive, there were times he felt like ending it all and killing himself. It was very difficult to accept that something like this could happen to him. Now, he had to deal with slurred speech, the inability to raise his right arm, and the drooping of the right side of his face. My life is over, "he thought." * Three months passed since the stroke and it was still a nightmare, until one day he got some promising news. There seemed to be a light at the end of this tunnel. Sarah did some research and learned about a new procedure called a brain cell transplant. The question Paul asked was, "Can this new technology return me to normal?" The procedure was still in its infant stages, and although there had been some successes, there were no guarantees and no way to predict how he'd behave after the operation. He became a different person.