The image above of the Circle of Willis is from Wikipedia. Thank you, Wiki, for letting me use this.
When I was in the USN's Hospital Corps School at Great Lakes, Illinois, our anatomy and physiology instructor, Mike Warman, used to tell us we should love our livers, that "we should massage our wonderful, beautiful livers every day." Mike considered the liver the most important organ in our body. Never could understand why, if that was so, he abused his every night by getting sloshed at the enlisted men's club.
My favorite body part used to be my eyes, then my breasts when they developed, then my genitals when I discovered what they were there for (ah, yes - massage that, Warman!); finally, my brain, when I fell into writing and found there was more in that squishy lump than I ever imagined.
Now, though, I am grateful for something else: my Circle of Willis. I've named mine Bruce. (Oh, come on! You knew that was coming.) I wish there was an easy way to gently massage my C-of-W, but there isn't.
The Circle of Willis sits at the base of the brain. It provides a communication pathway between the blood vessels which originate on both sides of our necks, to feed the hemispheres of our brains (left internal carotid feeds left hemisphere; right feeds right)- barely used when all is going well. Should something unfortunate happen to one or the other internal carotids, the C-of-W acts as a traffic circle, rerouting blood from the undamaged, or less damaged, part of the circulatory system to the brain hemisphere that needs it. This back-up system, thank you Mother Nature, is called a corollary system, also a redundancy. Isn't the human body a wondrous thing?
In all likelihood I would have gone the rest of my life not caring about Bruce, taking him for granted as I have everything else about my body - at least, those things that are default systems I can't see. If it hadn't been for a CT scan of my cervical spine to check on the degree of arthritis invading it, no one would have known about the occlusions in my internal carotids until I had had a stroke - or croaked. That serendipitous finding may very well be the best thing that's ever happened to me.
I've had a series of test procedures done, one or two more to go, then I see a vascular surgeon about opening up and cleaning out the one that is totally occluded, to give the other one (not quite 50% closed) a break from having to feed both sides all the time. (I've been operating for an unknown time on 1/4 brain capacity - just thought I'd save some of you from pointing that out. Don't be snarky, now.)
What's interesting (to me) about all this is that before the CT scan, I'd been following with great interest fellow-blogger Fresca's posts (they start here) about her new job as activities maven in a facility for patients with Alzheimer's - and other forms of dementia, some only a temporary state. These are a few of the conditions we aging folks give a lot of thought to, the possibility of losing who we are to an insidious disease, accident or physical debilitation.
I find Fresca's posts enlightening and hopeful. She approaches her charges as still vital, interesting, engageable people, not lumps of wasting humanity that need to be entertained or occupied with something to do between meals and sleeping. I told her that I hoped, if I found myself in such a facility, that I'd be lucky enough to have someone like her trying to reach the person I once was. I didn't know how close I might be to needing that kind of help. These things happen to millions of people worldwide every day; I'm only one of them.
I just wish Bruce were more easily massaged. I do rub the base of my skull and tell him how much I love him. I hope that helps.
