26.

Spreading the News

“Truly well”—even if I did still have some work to do as far as the

hardware side of things went. A few days after moving to outpatient
rehab, I called Eben IV at school. He mentioned that he was working on a
paper in one of his neuroscience courses. I volunteered to help but soon
regretted doing so. It was much harder for me to focus on the subject than
I had expected, and terminology I thought I had fully back suddenly
refused to come to my mind. I realized with a shock just how far I still
had to go.
But bit by bit that part came back, too. I’d wake up one day and find
myself in possession of whole continents of scientific and medical
knowledge that the day before I had been without. It was one of the
strangest aspects of my experience: opening my eyes in the morning with
even more of the nuts and bolts of a whole lifetime of education and
experience at work again.
While my neuroscientist’s knowledge crept back slowly and timidly,
my memories of what had happened during that week out of my body
loomed in my memory with astonishing boldness and clarity. What had
happened outside the earthly realm had everything to do with the wild
happiness I’d awakened with, and the bliss that continued to stick with
me. I was deliriously happy because I was back with the people I loved.
But I was also happy because—to state the matter as plainly as I can—I
understood for the first time who I really was, and what kind of a world
we inhabit.
I was wildly—and naïvely—eager to share these experiences,
especially with my fellow doctors. After all, what I’d undergone altered
my long-held beliefs of what the brain is, what consciousness is, even
what life itself means—and doesn’t mean. Who wouldn’t be anxious to
hear of my discoveries?