By's Musings

Epilepsy

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What’s the difference between surviving and surviving?

from Presenter Media

Reader, patience please. Before you accuse me of completely losing it, I know that I probably should have entitled this post, What’s the difference between surviving and just surviving?  However, I was trying to catch your attention and spark your interest with an obvious oxymoron. DId I reel you in? I believe that there is a big difference between surviving and just surviving. For the remainder of this post, I will label these two positions, real survival and just surviving. The difference is in perspective and attitude.These differences are as easily found and exhibited in organizations as they are in individuals. Individuals and organizations can also find themselves in two other situations. The first or desired position is one in which individuals are very successful and thriving. The last or least desirable position is one in which individuals and organizations are languishing in defeat and failure, the end result of which is death. These are the thriving and defeated positions, respectively.

Just surviving is a form of life without the substance. It is the pretense of life without the fruit. It is deceiving others and trying to deceive yourself.  It is trudging through the battles of daily life with little or no enthusiasm.  It is barely coping when you should be grieving and healing. Just surviving can also be having a good reputation without the positive merit, rigor or results to support that reputation. This qualifies these individuals or organizations as frauds. “All show, and no go!”

Etching from Doré’s English Bible (1865) by Gustave Doré; courtesy of WIkimedia Commons

There are many examples in the scriptures of just surviving. Jonah was miraculously saved from the belly of a fish, which represents real survival. He then went to Nineveh and preached repentance, witnessing one of the greatest revivals the world has experienced. Jonah went up on a hill overlooking the great city to see what God was going to do, waiting for God to destroy Nineveh and its inhabitants. When God spared the great city and all its residents, Jonah responded to God with a  “I thought about telling you so! I knew you wouldn’t destroy this city.” Jonah went from really surviving to just surviving.

But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. And he prayed unto the Lord, and said, I pray thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil. Therefore now, O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.  (Jonah 4:1-3, KJV)

Paul, writing to the church in Corinth, strongly urges the Christians there to mature and get rid of the attitude of just surviving.

For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building. According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire. (I Corinthians 3:9-15, KJV)

The seven candlesticks from St. John’s Revelation, by Albrecht Dürer, circa 1497; courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The apostle John acting as God’s secretary transcribed two dire warnings to churches in Asia Minor to repent of the attitude and mask of just surviving.

And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write; These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars; I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.  Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die: for I have not found thy works perfect before God. Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee. (Revelations 3:1-3, JKV)

And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.  (Revelations 3:14-19, KJV)

How many individuals today are putting on a show? How many have donned a mask, and are just going through the motions? How many modern organizations are neither “hot nor cold”? They have lost their first love. They open their doors each day, but only half-heartedly greet anyone that stumbles through the doors. They have little desire to go out into the streets and invite others to come into the fold.  They have settled for just surviving, when they have before them the prospect of real survival, and even the possibility of thriving. As my aunt used to say, “What a waste! It’s a crying shame!”

Rebekah Basinger and I have had a  conversation since late March in our blogs about organizations just surviving. See Rebekah’s Surviving, thriving, and six degrees of separation, and Beware “Iceberg beliefs” that can sink your organization, and my The Paradigm of Surviving and Thriving.

from Presenter Media

Rebekah opens her “Iceberg beliefs” post with the following vignette concerning a seminary president: “Ours has always been a hand-to-mouth existence,” the seminary president commented with a shrug and a sheepish smile. “I can’t imagine that thriving is in our future.”  This attitude is very common in small values-based, service organizations. The source of this common, under the surface belief is often attributed to Christ’s commissioning of his disciples in the Gospel of Mark:

And he called unto him the twelve, and began to send them forth by two and two; and gave them power over unclean spirits; And commanded them that they should take nothing for their journey, save a staff only; no scrip, no bread, no money in their purse:  But be shod with sandals; and not put on two coats. And he said unto them, In what place soever ye enter into an house, there abide till ye depart from that place. And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city.  (Mark 6:7-11, KJV)

It seems to me that as Christians, we often have a tendency to belabor the “fact” to be Christians we must wallow in the dumpsters and live from hand-to-mouth. We have convinced ourselves that if we as individuals, and corporately as organizations, are to follow Christ, we must give up everything to follow Christ’s example.  We quote:

from Presenter Media

And it came to pass, that, as they went in the way, a certain man said unto him, Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. And he said unto another, Follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.  And another also said, Lord, I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house.  And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.  (luke 9:57-62, KJV)

Jesus is indeed calling us to a life of commitment first. However, He has also promised that if we put Him first, He will take care of us. We are not promised that our lives will be a bed of roses. In fact, He has promised that we will be reviled by men and treated harshly, just like He was. However, if we trust in the Lord, His angels deliver us. We will not “want any good thing.”

The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them. O taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him. O fear the Lord, ye his saints: for there is no want to them that fear him. The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing. (Psalm 34:7-10, KJV)

Real survival is the experience of having come through extraordinary trials, and landing on your feet. Some people have called this resiliency. Resiliency is described as the ability to take a hit and keep standing, or to fall down and get back up. I see real survival as bravely hanging on to the last thread of life by one’s fingernails. In this form, surviving is akin to winning. It may not be thriving, but it is definitely not losing. I believe that two posts, Aphasia is not the end of the world and  Epilepsy is not the end of the world, that I wrote almost six years ago express some of my experiences with “real survival.”

from Presenter Media

I opened the aphasia post with a reminder to myself that the only things that I had lost in my battle with aphasia were “a few words.” I still had everything that mattered, I continued the post with a litany of blessings:

  • a loving and supportive family;
  • a compassionate and praying church family;
  • considerate and helpful friends and neighbors;
  • concerned and respectful colleagues and friends from more than forty years in higher education;
  • a team of knowledgeable and caring medical personnel;
  • a group of individuals on whom I can lean;
  • a real social network, not a virtual one.

I concluded the post with this statement; “In addition to all these people, I still have my mind.” It was my testimony of real survival in the face of a traumatic brain incident and an insidious deficit known as aphasia. However, I missed one very important thing. What I missed in that blog post was to remember that I still had a loving, caring and all-powerful heavenly Father.

View of detail of Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, Photo taken by White House Staffer, as such is in Public Domain: courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

In my epilepsy post, I recounted part of the story of the HMS Resolute. Although this British warship was equipped for Arctic exploration, it found itself trapped in the early winter ice of an upper Canadian bay. The sailors had to abandon ship and walk across miles of frozen bay to safety in a small settlement that was later renamed Resolute Bay. Later in the summer when the ice started breaking up, the abandoned ship was freed and claimed by American naval ships. In a sign of good will, the American government returned the ship to Queen VIctoria in 1856. Twenty years later when the HMS Resolute was finally decommissioned from the royal navy, Queen Victoria had the warship dismantled. The queen also ordered three desks to be made from her timbers. One of the desks was given to President Hayes as a sign of friendship and gratitude. The Resolute desk still sits in the oval office or the president’s private office in the White House today. It is a testament to the good will between two countries, as well as a symbol of real survival and the will to carry on in the face of untenable odds. I ended this post with the declaration of real survival:  On top of all the things that I listed, “I have the will to press on toward that unknown that looks like the end of the world.” As stated here, it sounds as if I am echoing William Ernest Henley in his poem Invictus. Although I do have an “unconquerable soul,” it is not my soul. As Paul wrote to the church in Galatia,  “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20 KJV)

Since I have been so long winded with my keyboard, I must hold off on discussing thriving and defeat until another post. Please stay tuned for the next installment. Thank you very much. I really do appreciate the gift of your time and attention.

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Update on My Health

Friends, it’s been three months since my last post. It’s been a much longer absence than I intended. Three months may actually be the longest dry spell of writing in my entire career, not just my time as a blogger. I can’t ever remember any three month interval in which I did no serious or significant writing. It has been like I am in a boat, stuck in the middle of a lake, and I lost the winds in my sails. However, it is not as if I had run out of ideas on which to write. During those three months, I accumulated a list of more than 200 potential ideas for posts. However, during this period, whenever I sat down at my computer to write, something would happen and I could never finish my thoughts. Sometimes as I started to write, I couldn’t decide on the approach I needed to take to bring out the important aspects of the subject at hand. At other times, I would get into a topic and I found it had a mind of its own. It started going in a direction I didn’t want to go and I had to shut it down.

I finally decided to step up to the plate and follow the advice that, for years, I gave to scores of institutions that were struggling in the beginning stages of assessment programs. I would tell institutions to just pick an area and an approach, and then attack it. I would also suggest that after that first task was finished, the institution should celebrate its victory. The institution should then pick another topic, and go after it.  You make progress one topic at a time.

The first topic on which I have decided to write is an update on my health. I offer this posting, not as an excuse for the recent scarcity of posts, but as a partial explanation of my pain. It is also a request for your prayers and thoughts. The past five years have clearly taught me that God is a God of miracles, and not a God of my convenience. If not for the grace of God, I would not be writing anything. I have had six doctors in six different specialties tell me that there are no scientific or medical reasons to explain why I am still walking and talking, or even breathing.

After a life of excellent health, the past five years have been a long, trying journey. During this period, I have picked up a long list of problems which began with the rescission of a benign meningioma. This list of current conditions includes a mild case of aphasia, epilepsy,  abnormal involuntary movement (tremors), disturbed sensory perception (dysesthesia), organic hallucinosis (sensory hallucinations), fatigue, attention or concentration deficit, and mental status changes. These are complicated by another somewhat smaller list of conditions that I have picked up over the past ten years, independent of the brain tumor. This list includes atrial fibrillation and obstructive sleep apnea. Taken collectively these conditions have complicated my life and forced me to retire from full-time work within the academic world.

This fall as I strove to get my proposed coaching/consulting business, Higher Ed By Baylis LLC, and this blog, By’s Musings, off the ground, I have encountered some additional complications. Since the onset of my epilepsy four years ago, my seizures have been controlled by medication. However, earlier this fall I became concerned as I experienced several incidents of sensory overload, brought about by loud noise, quickly changing lights and my cross sensory perceptions. The confluence of these sensory experiences seemed to take me to the precipice of seizures. I developed intense headaches, became nauseated and momentarily lost track of where I was.

The intensity and frequency of headaches increased throughout the early fall until they reached their peak in mid-October. Thus, for the past eight weeks, I have experienced continuous headaches. The only things that change are intensity and location. I wake up with them in the morning. They wax and wane between “four” and “eight” on the normal ten-point pain scale. The headache moves around my head, fading out in one location, as it fades in at another location. As I wrote this paragraph, I found myself engaged in a metaphysical and grammatical argument: Am I experiencing one headache and I should use singular nouns and verbs; or is it many different headaches and I should use plural forms?

In an attempt to find answers, my neurologist ordered a DAT scan to determine if the tremors were related to the possible onset of Parkinson’s disease, and an MRI to determine if there have been any changes within my head. The DAT scan was negative. The good news from that report is that the tremors are not related to Parkinson’s disease. The bad news is the test doesn’t tell them what is causing the tremors. The results of the MRI were a little less positive. There is still a hole in my head where the tumor had been. There is still scar tissue approximately the size of a dime on my right frontal lobe where the tumor had been attached. Unfortunately, the new MRI showed some swelling in the surrounding area, along with a very small new growth within the hole. My neurosurgeon says that the growth and swelling are not extensive enough to be causing my headaches and other problems. However, any abnormalities in the brain area must be watched. Thus, I will have another MRI in three months. Depending upon the results of that MRI, it could be followed possibly by additional MRI in another three months to monitor the growth and swelling.

I know that God can heal me and I pray that He will do so. However, if God decides to do something else, I pray that I will be able to stand with Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and Job and say, ” My God is able to deliver me from these medical problems. If he does, the glory goes to Him. However, if He doesn’t, I will still serve Him. The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Please pray this prayer with me.

16 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. 17 If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. 18 But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up. (Daniel 3:16-18, KJV)

20 Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, 21 And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. (Job 1:20,21, KJV)

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An Unexpected Joy

One of my favorite bloggers, Tara Fall, in a recent series of posts on her blog “Finding Strength To Stand Again” raised the topic of resiliency. She did it with the seemingly benign question of whether there is something in some people that makes them more resilient than others.

One of the unexpected joys that I have experienced with my aphasia is the excitement of discovering new words or rediscovering lost words. When I read Tara’s post “Question and Answer Week 2-b,”  the word resilient just jumped off the screen at me. My immediate reaction was I know that word from my recent battles with epilepsy, hallucinations, dysenesthesia, and aphasia. However, I also had a feeling that I was missing something. My academic background kicked in and I started researching the concept of resiliency.

Very quickly, I realized what had bothered me with the word “resilient.” A number of different definitions are in common use. I found this somewhat ironic in that the same day I read Tara’s post, I became part of a discussion thread that involved academics and professional people from all over the world. The thread began with the question, “What is a professor?”

Immediately people jumped into the discussion arguing about whether the word represented a title or a job position. In the course of the thread, as happens so often in academic discussions, some one raised the question about the difference between colleges and universities. At this point a contributor suggested that what we needed were certain words with “reserved definitions” so that confusions like this would be avoided. My reaction was, “That would be nice, but it isn’t going to happen.”

Returning to the word resilient, the first use that came to my mind was the ability to take a blow or weather the storm and bounce right back up. The victim comes back stronger than before. We see it in television commercials and news reports all the time. We are reminded of the 9/11 tragedy and the rebuilding of the World Trade Center. Immediately after the Boston Marathon Bombing, news reports, especially sports reports, highlighted the idea of being Boston-strong. Every evening, we are reminded that the New Jersey shore is open again for tourists, because “we’re stronger than the storm.” We’ve seen the same sentiment in New Orleans and Oklahoma.

What were the other definitions and questions that were running around in my head? The first involved the research that I had done about the idea of neuro-plasticity in relation to my situation. In my readings I found a number of scientists who said that my condition “was what it was, and I should learn to live with it.” Other scientists said that it was possible for people to change their brains to relearn skills or learn new skills to replace the ones that were lost. In a sense, this was a type of recovery. However, the scientist took great pains to emphasize that it wasn’t the former individual. In a real sense, it was a new individual. This is a slightly different view of resiliency. It still holds some hope for victims that they can become new individuals with new skills that in some sense may replace the ones that they lost. However, they will not be their “old selves.”  They will be someone different with different strengths and skills.

Many of the neuroscientists  I read concerning brain plasticity, referenced a new growing science of resiliency. As I researched this, I found it has quite a following among environmentalists, entomologists, and medical researchers studying bacteria and viruses. For these scientists, the primary idea is that one species or environmental state changes or evolves in ways that ensure the survival of the species or environmental state. Resiliency refers to the survival of the whole, not the survival or well-being of the individual. I am still trying to figure out what this has to do with neuro-plasticity.

More research on resiliency lead me to a fourth definition. This definition came from the popular psychologists associated with Psychology Today. In a series of posts they suggested that pyschology has identified factors that make some people resilient, while others wilt under pressure. The resilience factors were an optimistic outlook on life. These individuals are almost always positive. They have the power to regulate their emotions. This struck me hard. Prior to my TBI, I was always known as being even keeled, with my emotion under control. After the TBI with damage to my right temporal lobe, I have much more trouble controlling my emotions. I erupt much more easily. The third attribute of resilient people was that they could accept criticism  well, and could see failure as a form of helpful feedback. When Edison was asked if he was discouraged when experiment after experiment failed when he was trying to invent the light bulb, his answer could have been the battle cry of the resilient ones: “Of course not. I now know a thousand things that won’t work. I will soon find the one that works.”

But I wasn’t done with resiliency. Some lines from a hymn kept playing in my head. As usual, I had only part of the words, so I had to do a search to find the hymn. The words that were echoing in my head were, “When sea billows roll.,” I was more than slightly embarrassed when I discovered it was one of the most popular hymns of all of Christianity, “It Is Well with My Soul.”  

The words of the first stanza are

When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to know [say], It is well; it is well with my soul.

The story behind this hymn involves a tragic sea accident. The words were written by Horatio Spafford just after he got a telegram from his wife informing him that only she was safe. She had to tell him that all four of his children were killed when the ship on which they were traveling to Europe sank. Spafford was a modern day Job. Almost everything he loved was taken from him. His response was “Praise be to God.”

I don’t believe that it is inherent to us. It is a gift of a loving father to his children. If we accept God’s grace, we like Job can say,

…, ‘Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ (Job 1:21 KJV)

This final type of resiliency is a resiliency built upon faith in a power outside of ourselves. I have seen it my life. I can truly say, “We serve a God of miracles, not a God dedicated to our convenience.” We should reply with our tears, like the father asking Jesus to heal his sick child. When asked if he believed,  the father replied,

Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. (Mark 9:24b KJV)

“Lord, give me your resiliency. Help me in my unbelief.”

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My Head Was Still Ringing Long After the Bells Stopped

The next two Sundays after the experience that I described in the post “Pop Goes the Weasel! Sensory Overload!” capped off a three week run of sensory anomalies and sensory overloads. I woke up the morning immediately following the Five Piano Guys concert experience with very fuzzy vision. Even at 11:00 AM sitting in the Sunday morning worship service, my eyes felt like they were blinking or twitching very rapidly. However, they were hardly moving at all.

During the service, a ladies trio sang the special music. They began the piece with several very high notes that physically hurt my eyes. My eyes felt as if someone was sticking needles in them. For the remainder of the service, I didn’t hear the piano, which was not unusual. However, I didn’t “see” the piano music either. I felt my eye-balls vibrating in their sockets to the tune the pianist was playing. In addition to my eyes vibrating, I felt the organ music vibrating across my forehead. The two instruments were playing the same tune in different registers. The organ notes were lower than the piano notes. I knew that but I really don’t know how I knew that. Were the vibrations that significantly different? Was I remembering how the music should have sounded? Was I really hearing a difference, but my brain was keeping that information to itself and not sending it out to my sensory receptors?

The following Sunday was Fathers’ Day. The special music for the day was the Handbell Choir playing “How Firm a Foundation.”  I could hear the bells ringing distinctly. I could easily identify the hymn they were playing, even without the title in the bulletin. As they reached the crescendo in the final chorus, the sound of the bells began echoing in my head. I head the bells ringing for several minutes after they had stopped playing. It took a great deal of concentration to shut out the bells to hear the pastor when he started to read scripture and deliver the Fathers’ Day sermon.

For the remainder of the service, I did not “see” the piano music. Instead of seeing waves or lights, I felt my eyes vibrating in their sockets or blinking in tune to the music. I asked my wife if my eyes were moving. She said that neither my pupils nor eye lids were moving in any unusual pattern.

Throughout the remainder of the day, there were times when the bells came back. By concentrating on what was happening around me, I could stop the ringing!

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Pop Goes the Weasel! Sensory Overload!

Even though the song and tune of “Pop Goes the Weasel!” is a late 19th century/early 20th century labor song supposedly originated by the textile workers of London, England, almost every American child has heard it as a nursery rhyme and can sing at least one variation of it. One version of a stanza that I particularly like, because of the vivid visual imagery, is:

All around the Mulberry Bush,The monkey chased the weasel.The monkey stopped to  pull up his socks. Pop! goes the weasel.

This song is more fun when you don’t know that

1) The Mulberry Bush was reportedly a tavern near the textile mills in London;

2) It has been suggested that monkey was a derogatory name given to the poor textile workers;

3) The weasel was a measuring device on the yarn spinning machine that measured out the exact length of yarn needed to fill a spool;

4) Pop, was the sound the weasel made when the yarn reached the correct length; and

5) The textile worker had to be ready to shut down the spinner immediately when the weasel popped or he/she would be in deep trouble with the mill manager for wasting yarn. Pulling up ones’ socks is a totally unnecessary action, and a huge distraction from the important task at hand.

I think it is funnier to visualize a real monkey literally chasing a real weasel around a mulberry bush, and the monkey stops to pull up his socks (What monkey would be wearing socks?)  At this point, the weasel pops up on his hind legs and starts laughing at the monkey.

If you read my post, “Hallelujah, I Heard the Piano Playing!”  you know that on a recent Sunday, I “heard” the piano playing in church for the first time in more than a year. Via my cross-sensory perceptions, I “see” a piano making music via sinusoidal waves on an oscilloscope screen or via the towers of “tree lights” on an amplifier mixing board. If the music is familiar, I can almost always recognize the tune. I can then either sing the words or hum the tune. Since my voice is a human voice making those sounds, I can “hear” those sounds.

The Saturday afternoon following my experience with the church piano, I had another encounter with a piano. I had spent most of the morning on my computer cleaning up my ever increasing accumulation of emails and several blog posts on which I had been working.  I wanted to take a break so I sat down in my lounger and turned on the television fo find some sports programming. The sports programming that afternoon was very sparse. The French Open women’s final had been completed very early in the morning due to Serena Williams’ masterful play, her very quick defeat of Maria Sharapova and the six hour time difference between Paris and the east coast of the United States. That particular Saturday afternoon was a dreadful weather day for much of the eastern half of the United States. All outdoor sports in that half of the country were rained out. In addition, in early summer, there are no indoor sports events. So there was nothing in the way of interesting sports on the television.

My second and third choices of afternoon entertainment would have been cooking shows or DIY shows. Unfortunately, all of the shows on the food and DIY networks were reruns that I had already watched. There were no good movies on the television that day. We didn’t have a Netflix video because I had just put DVD #5 of the Prisoner series in the return mail so that I would get #6 quickly.

To fill in the void of having none of my normal available entertainment choices, I found what looked like a very interesting concert on the local public television station. It was a concert by a group of five musicians based in Colorado called the Five Piano Men. It wasn’t what one might think it would be. It was not five people playing five different pianos. It began with one man playing a piano and one man playing a regular cello. I “saw” the piano music and I “felt” the vibrations of the cello. Unfortunately, I couldn’t identify the particular piece they were playing.

After that opening number they introduced the other three members of their group.  For their first number as a group, the first pianist stayed at the piano keyboard. The original celloist grabbed an electronic cello, and the newly introduced members of the group grabbed regular cellos. They began playing Chopin’s Cello Sonata in G Minor. I “saw” the piano music and I felt at least three different types of vibrations from the cellos.

When the Chopin piece was finished, the group gathered around the grand piano on the stage to “play” the one piano. However, it was not the typical sense of playing a piano. The individual who seemed to be the primary keyboardist sat at the keyboard. An overhead camera showed what every member of the group was doing. Two members were “playing” drums on the sound board of the piano with their hands. The final two members began plucking the piano strings with their fingers or using violin bow strings to “play” individual piano strings or small groups of strings. After making what I assumed was their warm-up noises, they started playing the easily identifiable opening of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. Short-short-short-Long! Short-short-short-Long!

After they finished the first movement, they were joined by the Colorado Youth Orchestra, with strings, wind instruments and percussion, playing the remainder of the symphony. Part way through the third movement, I was subject to sensory overload! Not only was I really actually seeing how the music was being played and really hearing part of the music, I was “seeing” several instrumental sounds and “feeling” vibrations from at least five different instruments. I was hearing, seeing and feeling Beethoven’s 5th, when suddenly “Pop!” went the weasel! I had to turn off the television and go back to the safety of my computer for the remainder of the afternoon.

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Hallelujah, I Heard the Piano Playing!

This past Sunday morning,  I was very excited for a moment. Those of you who have been following my story know that I have been experiencing cross-sensory perceptions for the past three years. I do not “hear” the organ or piano playing in our Sunday church services. My ears are working fine because I hear the choir and congregation singing. I hear the wind instruments in the worship orchestra playing their music. I hear the worship leader or the preacher speaking from the pulpit.

However, in the year that we have attended our current church, I have “heard” organ music only once. All of the other times, I have felt vibrations across my forehead. If the music is a familiar piece, I can recognize it from those vibrations. The only time I literally heard the organ was when the organist switched to a flute register. As the organist played in this register, I could distinctly hear flutes. Obviously, we have an electronic organ in our church. I do not know what would happen if I listened to a real pipe organ where the tones are produced by air forced through tubes like the wind instruments that I hear regularly.

When a pianist plays the piano in our church, I do not hear music. I see one of two things. The first is an oscilloscope screen with a sinusoidal wave running across the screen. The second is an amplifier mixing board with its rows of lights flashing up and down. These images are visual representations of the music that is being played. Again, if the music is familiar, most of the time, I can recognize the music from the visions.

This phenomena occurs not just with physical instruments. When I listen to digitally reproduced music (CD’s, tapes, television, and radio) I have the same results of either feelings or visions. With other stringed instruments, I have similar sensations. With guitars and violins, I see the music. With cellos and basses, I feel vibrations. The only “logical” explanation that I have for the difference is the general pitch of the notes that these instruments play. I was stumped at first with the organ and piano since the two instruments should be playing the same notes.  However, there is still a tonal difference between a “High C” on the organ and one on the piano.

It took me some time to realize that this was translating over to other auditory experiences. I no longer hear robins and the typical song birds. When they are making their music and I recognize the sound, I “see” a bird. However, with ducks and geese, I feel their honking along the temple region on my face. It doesn’t happen with human voices. I hear people singing and speaking. As long as I can recognize the sound, I can live with the cross-sensory perceptions. All my neurologists can tell me is that this is unusual. Two weeks of hospital observations of brain activity have produced no viable explanations.

Now back to the Sunday that I heard the piano! The choir was singing a hymn. The first verse and chorus went as usual. I heard the words that the choir was singing, I felt the vibrations of the organ, and I saw the amplifier lights from the piano. When the choir finished the second verse and proceeded to the chorus, I stopped feeling the vibrations from the organ and I started hearing the piano playing music. I was very excited. The music was back!

However, all it took was a glance toward the piano for me to realize that the instruments had stopped playing and the choir was singing a cappella. When I came to that realization, the piano music stopped. Another hallucination! My brain was inserting the music that it felt should be present. When I knew that there was no instrumental music, the sounds of the music stopped. When the instruments began to play again on the third verse, it was back to my reality. I felt the organ music and I saw the piano music.

At this point, all I can do is thank and praise God that I can still recognize and enjoy good music, whether I hear it, see it or feel it.