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Living in a French Impressionistic Painting

Living in a French Impressionistic Painting

By Baylis

 The past week has been bumpy. No full-blown seizures, however, a number of unusual things have been occurred. One morning I woke up at 7:00 AM. I got up and turned on my computer and wrote a response to a newspaper article that had appeared in paper a couple of days earlier. When I finished writing the response, it was 8:00 AM. I was a little tired and since my wife was still sleeping, I went back to bed and fell asleep. Sometime later I woke up feeling very well-rested and when I looked at the clock it was 5:25 AM. As I stirred my wife asked why I was getting up so early and I told her about the apparent time differential. She said that I must have been dreaming. I told her if I was dreaming I was sleep writing because I had a decently written essay on my computer responding to a newspaper article. When I checked my computer the essay was there.

At least three times in the past week, I have “awakened” from a nap or a zoning time-out and found myself living in a French impressionistic painting. What do I mean? Most everything further than 20 feet away had no definition to its edges. I could distinguish what it was, but it was not sharp. For example, this past Sunday morning on our drive to church, looking out my van window I felt like I was looking at impressionistic painting. I could tell that barns were barns but I could not be sure where the barns stopped and the outbuildings began. They all ran together.  After we got to church and I looked at the flowers on the platform in church, I could not tell when one flower stopped and another started, but I could tell that they were flowers. However, in our church we use a video projector with the words to the songs that we are singing. It was strange; I could read the words clearly. They seemed to be sharply defined. But the background pictures were fuzzy, just like an impressionistic painting. After church, we went home. I ate lunch and turned on a football game. We don’t have an HD TV, but when the camera was on the players and the game, everything was sharp. When it panned across the crowd, the impressionistic images returned. I feel asleep “watching” the game. When I awoke from my nap, having missed the entire second quarter of the game, the impressionistic images were gone. Everything had returned to normal and all images were distinct and sharp. When we went back to the evening service at church, I could distinguish clearly the barns and outbuildings on the way to the church. I could also see the flowers on the platform distinctly. I could also tell that they were standing in water in clear glass bottles that I had completely missed earlier in the day.

Are these mini-seizures or the side effects of medication? To really determine what’s going on, my neurologist wants to catch me during one of these episodes, so I am now scheduled to spend a week in a local neurological-science center for constant monitoring. After a week of being a lab rat I may have some more stories to tell. Stay tuned in for those stories.

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WHAT I KNOW IS RELEVANT

Living with Aphasia

What I Know is Relevant

By Baylis

This post was inspired by a response to an article that appeared in the August 31, 2010, daily e-edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education, entitled “As Literacy Declines, Faculty Members and the Media Share the Blame.” It can be found on the CHE website at http://chronicle.com/blogPost/As-Literacy-Declines-Faculty/26619. The general tone of the CHE article reminds us that for years it has been fashionable in educational circles to decry students’ lack of communication skills, both verbal and written. However, the comment that really got under my skin was one which stated, “If you can’t communicate what you know, it is irrelevant.” My first reaction was to scream “WHAT I KNOW IS RELEVANT.” My comment, addressed to the individual referenced above, was “I’m sorry that I can’t communicate what I know to your satisfaction. However, right now that is due to something that is beyond my control. I suffer from Aphasia as a result of a traumatic brain episode. Please work with me and perhaps we can both learn something.”  My second reaction to the article and other comments was to remember a song that I used to listen to on the 8-track tape deck that I had in my old pick-up truck. I could still remember some of the words of the chorus of Joe South’s hit: “Hey, before you abuse, criticize, or accuse, walk a mile in my shoes.” I looked up the lyrics of the song and I was pleasantly surprised at the lyrics of the first verse:

“If I could be you and you could be me for just one hour

If we could find a way to get inside each other’s mind

If you could see you through my eyes instead of your ego

I believe you’d be surprised to see that you’d been blind.”

This is the lesson that I would like others to learn. As we interact with others, before we summarily dismiss them when they have difficulties in communiation, we need to learn where they are, and from where they came. They may have legitimate communication challenges such as aphasia, dyslexia, or some other deficiency. We need to get to know them so that we can understand them and walk a mile in their shoes. We may be surprised at what we can learn from each other.

On my education blog, I am posting an essay with essentially the same ideas as the ones in this posting, but directed more specifically to educational settings. In that posting, I will suggest that some of my educational colleagues will accuse me of not understanding how important it is to judge all students against the same standard. Let me assure you that I have walked many miles in those shoes. I used to believe that all students had to be tested under the same conditions. I have since walked several miles in the shoes of a challenged individual. Aphasia is a communication deficiency. It does not affect intellect. It generally only affects the ability to communicate. This experience has completely changed my view of accommodations in educational settings. I now see how important they are. Institutions and individual faculty must not overlook or ignore appropriate accommodations for the students who need them. So sufferers speak up for yourselves and demand your rights. If you can’t speak up for yourself, your caregivers have a responsibility to be your spokesperson. Make sure that get all of the opportunities and accommodations that are due to you. It is not only your right, it is the law. However, I have also come to another conclusion that I will suggest in an upcoming blog, “It is impossible to legislate commitment. The best you can hope to get from legislation is minimal compliance.” Until the minds and hearts of the general public are changed, people with challenges will continue to be treated like second-class citizens, and most of the relevant knowledge they possess will be wasted. It took a traumatic brain episode to bring me to my senses. I hope and pray that others do not have to go through my experience, to realize what they are missing.

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The Recovery of Aphasia and Epilepsy patients can be helped through the application of appropriate challenges with proper scaffolding

Aphasia and epilepsy patients recovering through the application of appropriate challenges with proper scaffolding
By Baylis
This past week I suggested that I would report on my experiences with my computer, cell phone and PDA. Unfortunately I am not much farther along than I was last week. My computer is not completely recovered. My PDA is not syncing and I can only use the cell phone for voice calls, and not any of the cute applications that the wireless companies keep trying to sell by advertising on television. My conquering of the computer, cell phone and PDA will have to wait for another time. Paraphrasing Chicago Cub baseball fans, there is always next week.

This past week I also reported on a comment that my physical therapist made about my progress. I had been seeing a physical therapist for balance issues that increased dramatically immediately after my seizures. Are they are a result of seizures? No one has been able to tell me definitively yes or no. Circumstantial evidence suggests they might be, since the Increase intensity of the issues happened in the same time frame. Whether they are or not, they are a constant reminder of the ugly specter of seizures hanging over my head.

The therapist’s statement to which I am referring was the one she made related to the fact that I needed to be pushing and stretching myself but doing it safely. When I suggested I was getting ready to use a step stool to change a light bulb, she quite forcefully told me that I was not ready to use a ladder. As I pondered her statements about pushing and stretching safely, several additional thoughts came to mind. One was the fact that in higher education a foundational principle of student development theory is that students should be challenged in an environment that provides proper and sufficient scaffolding. Over ten years ago, I designed and directed a critically acclaimed assessment project that involved fifty Christian colleges and universities. The project was a six-year longitudinal study looking at values development in students. One of the key results of the study was that students were more likely to reach the point of owning their values if they were forced to challenge or to examine their values in a safe environment, instead of being isolated in environments with no challenges, or being challenged with no support.

I also remembered that this principle is a foundational principle in athletics, where coaches hover over their athletes in practice to make sure they are exercising but doing the exercises correctly. As I reviewed the literature from the aphasia and epilepsy associations and organizations, they kept repeating this same idea to caregivers and patients. Patients need to push and stretch themselves to try to regain as much of their former capabilities as they can. These organizations also pointed out that one of the main responsibilities of caregivers was to make sure that the patient was pushing and stretching safely.
My physical therapist was suggesting that pushing myself to do more was important, but not enough. She also was suggesting that I should be stretching myself to do something different. If I just repeated what I could do well, I really would not be recovering my former capabilities. In athletics this principle takes the form of “no pain, no gain.”

This reminded me of what my speech therapist did with me. Prior to the removal of the brain tumor, I had been delivering the Sunday evening sermons in our church. My speech therapist kept pushing me to try to do that again. It took me five months to get up the courage and will to prepare a sermon. That first sermon I delivered in the safe environment of an audience of two, my wife and my therapist. After several suggestions for improvement and several weeks of practice, I felt ready to try an evening service. The congregation was quite gracious in their reception and encouragement. I did a second sermon the next week. After those two weeks I was mentally beat and needed a break. I could not keep up the pace of a new sermon each week. Thanksgiving was fast approaching and because my wife and I wanted to visit our family 10 hours away, I had an easy excuse for a two-week break. After that two-week break, it was the Advent season and the evening services were dedicated to Christmas preparation, so I was not scheduled again until after the New Year. However, I didn’t get a chance to deliver another sermon because on December 30, I had four seizures and spent a week in the hospital.

In preparation for the annual congregational meeting, the congregation finally came to realize that they were asking the senior pastor to do too much and he really did need help. Thus, they took the long needed step of adding an assistant pastor to the church staff. One of the primary duties of that assistant is Sunday evening services. Now after several months of healing, I am feeling the itch to start teaching again. I think I will volunteer to do some occasional adult Sunday school classes to get back into the swing. That will be pushing and stretching me but it will be in a safe environment. I know I am not ready to get back on the ladder of academic presentations. I need more practice first.

I want to go on record as thanking my wonderful therapists for pushing me to stretch myself to try to recover as much of the former me as possible. Without their intervention I don’t know where I would be in my recovery.

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Adult Autism in the Academy, Living with Epilepsy and Aphasia

For 40 years as a college instructor and then administrator, I dealt with students that had been diagnosed as autistic as young children. For 40 years, I had sympathy for autistic individuals. Today I believe I have empathy. Except for one student, the autistic students were  all hard-working individuals who did succeed in the normal collegiate definition of success. They all graduated with good to superior grades. The one exception dropped out of college and I lost track of that individual. I remember him because I spent hour after hour with his mother who was arguing for our college to give him a chance even though he almost failed out of high school.

Fifteen months ago I spent four weeks in a hospital due to the removal of a benign brain tumor that was discovered when a blood vessel in it burst creating many stroke like symptoms. While in the hospital, the TV had few daytime options other than soaps or health related features. Many of these features related to autism. As I watched these features daily, I noticed the similarities between the behavioral characteristics of autistic children and a number of the faculty members and administrators with whom I had dealt daily over the years. I began thinking, “Is there an adult form of autism besides the severe forms that are portrayed in movies and books?”

After my release from the hospital I was left with two problems, one much more serious than the other. With the help of physical therapy, I worked very hard to overcome the motor deficits that were a result of the stroke-like symptoms. I got to the point where I could walk unaided. I took the driver’s training for stroke victims and was given permission to drive. Nine months after the surgery, there were almost  no motor deficits left to indicate that I had experienced such a serious condition. However, the more serious problem remaining was that I was left with a mild case of aphasia, a condition that neurologists characterize as a defect or deficiency. Literally it means loss of words. The National Aphasia Association describes it as an acquired communication disorder that impairs a person’s ability to process language, but does not affect intelligence. Aphasia impairs the ability to speak and may impair the ability to understand others. My aphasia manifests itself as an inability on occasion to follow conversations and either written or verbal directions. It also manifests itself in the inability or difficulty in finding the right word to use in a conversation or in my writing. I describe it by saying that “Words act more like cats than dogs. Dogs come to you when you call them; while cats come to you when they want to come.”

As months past, I kept coming back to that question, “Is there an adult form of autism?” In searching for more on autism within the academy, I found Tyler Cowen’s article, Autism as an Academic Paradigm in Chronicle of Higher Education. My first reaction to Cowen’s premise that autism has helped the academy was significant disagreement. Having spent 40 years fighting and cleaning up messes left by faculty and other administrators who demonstrated the behavioral characteristics used to define autism, I didn’t think the consequences were positive.  These behavioral patterns included a lack of communication, marked impairment in the ability to initiate or sustain a conversation with others without relying on stereotyped and repetitive use of language or idiosyncratic language fixation on the minutia, and the inflexible adherence to specific, nonfunctional routines or rituals. How often have I dealt with faculty or administrators who had what seemed to be an unhealthy preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that seemed to be abnormal either in intensity or focus? How often have I seen within the academy an apparently inflexible adherence to specific, nonfunctional routines or rituals?” When the faculty members or administrators are questioned about these routines or policies, the typical answer is “We’ve always done it this way.” However, there were two lines in the article that made me think maybe he does get it. The lines were “It’s not just ‘special needs’ students but also our valedictorian, our faculty members, and yes—sometimes—our administrators. That last sentence is not some kind of cheap laugh line about the many dysfunctional features of higher education.” It may not be a cheap laugh line. But there are many dysfunctional aspects of higher education engendered by the behavioral characteristics that are used to define autism.

So how can I now have empathy for the autistic? Nine months after my brain surgery, I had four grand mal seizures, which put me back in the hospital for a week.  The seizures were most likely the result of scar tissue remaining in my brain as a result of the surgery. The four seizures have left me classified as an epileptic. As much as I would like to get out from under this classification, I will always remain classified as an epileptic and most likely I will have to take anti-seizure medication for the remainder of my life. I am thankful that there are such things as anti-seizure medications. While I am taking these medications faithfully I can live an almost regular life. However, I must carry the stigma of being an epileptic and I must be under constant observation; hence the source of my empathy. Since not enough time has elapsed since my most recent grand mal seizure, I am not allowed to drive or operate heavy or complicated machinery. Should that prohibition related to complicated machinery include computers and blackberries? I have had to give up my blackberry because I couldn’t respond fast enough to the prompts, more likely a result of the aphasia rather than a result of epilepsy.  But if you take away my computer, you have taken away my best avenue of communication. Without the medications, I would be living in constant fear of another seizure. Even with the seizure medication, one EEG’s showed lots of spurious activity in my brain. The neurologist said that this could be a sign of the ongoing occurrence of many mini-seizures, or the prelude to another big seizure.

Because of my epilepsy and aphasia, I have had to retire from the academy. The aphasia has made it almost impossible for me to respond immediately and fully to complicated communications from others. I must study the communications preferably in written form so that I can slowly formulate a proper answer to them. Many times in academic circles you are not afforded the luxury of time to compose a response. In academic meetings and in testing situations in classrooms people and instructors want answers immediately. I have also found that my epilepsy scares many people and they don’t want to be around me, because they don’t understand the disease and they are afraid because they don’t know if they would know what to do if I had another seizure. I still have my intelligence and knowledge based on 40 years in higher education, but I have few avenues within the academy to use them. If we can integrate the individuals with autism into the academy as effectively as Cowen suggest we have, can we integrate individuals with epilepsy or aphasia? I have confidence that American higher education can do so if it will try. I only hope that I will see it.

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Hello world!

Welcome to my site. THe following Grand Rapids Press article tells a little bit about my story. This story told the story to October 2009. On December 30, 2009, another adventure began. I had four grand mal seizures and was hospitalized again for a week. I am now classified as an epileptic with all the challenges of that disease. I hope the blog will help me speak about higher education the thing that I love the most besides God, my wife and the rest of my family. I hope to post an original essay each Monday and a commentary on a selected news item from the top Higher Education Newsletters.  For those who are wondering what’s up with the beta squared, since my initials are BB and I am a mathematician, I have been using beta squared for years as my initials. ?2

Former Cornerstone University provost develops aphasia after blood vessel bursts in brain

By Nardy Baeza Bickel | The Grand Rapids Pr…

November 21, 2009, 4:35AM

GRAND RAPIDS — For 40 years, Bayard “By” Baylis has worked with words to develop curriculum for students and to help faculty teach better, most recently as the provost at Cornerstone University.

But after undergoing brain surgery earlier this year, words have been a bit tricky for Baylis: They behave like cats, not dogs, the educator said.

Bayard BaylisCourtesy Photo of Former Cornerstone University provost Bayard Baylis, shown here with his wife, Elaine Baylis, had a blood vessel burst in a brain tumor and developed aphasia, a disorder that impairs language skills.“Dogs come when you want them, but cats … they come to you when they want to come to you, not when you call them,” said Baylis, trying to explain what it feels to live with mild aphasia, a communication disorder that limits a person’s usage and
understanding of language.

Learning how to pick through his brain to find the right words has not been easy for the 63-year-old, who until recently spent his days revamping Cornerstone’s curriculum and designing new strategies to improve student retention and enrollment at Christian institutions.

“He was a beloved provost because of his humble manner. Faculty and students could sense that he cared about them. He’s such a good listener,” said Alan Blanchard, who worked with Baylis in developing Cornerstone’s journalism program he directs.

“He really seems to genuinely care about people.”

Now, Baylis keeps a small notebook in his shirt pocket to make sure he will capture the ideas as they come to him. He also color-codes the ideas throughout his writings to make sure he does not leave any of them without proper explanation.

“That’s part of the insidiousness of the disease. There are times that I know I sound as if I’m making sense, but it’s not the sense I wanted to make. This week I’ve been (writing) an article about liberal arts and practical education, and I’m trying to understand the ancient Greek system. It’s just been a battle,” he said.

The experience has done nothing but strengthen his relationship with God, Baylis said.

“God is a god of miracles and not a god of convenience,” Baylis said. “The timing of the episode was a small miracle. If it had happened 15 minutes later, I would have been making 70 mph on I-96. And if it had happened a couple of months later, we would have been in Illinois, not knowing many people, not having doctors, not knowing the medical (community).”

“That in itself was a miracle,” agreed his wife, Elaine Baylis.

This spring, Baylis resigned as the second-in-command at Cornerstone to revamp the academic curriculum at Trinity International University in Deerfield, IL, where he was to become dean and vice president of academic affairs.

He was in a meeting with faculty and staff at Cornerstone when he got the worst headache he ever has had.

His speech became slurred, he broke out in a cold sweat, and his face became ash-white.

Baylis has no recollection of what happened later: Of his friends calling 911, fearing he had suffered a stroke; of the ambulance ride to the hospital and of doctors finding, and removing, a non-cancerous tumor in his brain.

His wife, 63, was told to gather the family. If he made it out of the operating room, doctors told her, he never would be the same.

When Baylis woke up after surgery, his speech was altered, but he couldn’t tell the difference.

“It was so frustrating. There was a word that described the condition I wanted to describe and I couldn’t come up with it. I would have trouble following directions, oral or written,” Baylis said.

After months of physical, occupational and speech therapy, Baylis said, he is doing much better. Now retired, he had to pass up the job at Trinity.

He can follow a conversation without much help and already passed a test to regain his driver’s license.

But he still is easily exhausted and, once in a while, words elude him, he said.

Just recently, while attending a funeral service for a Cornerstone employee, Baylis said he had trouble recalling names of former colleagues.

“I knew what they did. I knew what they taught. I knew where their offices were, but I couldn’t come up with their names,” he said.

Still, he pushes forward. Baylis and his wife hope to move soon to Pennsylvania to be close to his family. They still spend most of the mornings, and some afternoons, talking with colleagues about the future of academia and what colleges should do to better to educate students.

E-mail Nardy Bickel: nbickel@grpress.com