Struck by Genius: How a Brain Injury Made Me a Mathematical Marvel by Jason Padgett, Maureen Ann Seaberg Read Free Book Online

muscle in the body and are sometimes visible through the skin. I sat one day watching the waves of them ebb and flow through the back of my hand. Though they are often found in otherwise healthy people, they can interfere with the quality of life. Magnesium deficiency is a common cause of involuntary muscle twitches, but my level was apparently normal.
    I felt so strange with my visual impressions and physical tremors that all I wanted to do was retreat to my home. I felt compelled to sit alone just pondering things, stuck in the puzzlement of what I was becoming. It was a strange fate to have mobility of body but not of mind—my mind, while opening up whole new worlds to me, was like an anchor keeping me still and thinking for the first time in my life.
    I continued to obsess over the accident and what might have happened if things had gone differently. What if Angela hadn’t needed a ride that night? What if I’d said no to going out? Why did we choose that particular place at that particular time on that particular night? What if my Alaska crew of guy friends had been with me to bail me out? For the first time in my life, I tried to do the math on the statistical likelihood of a specific event occurring. I don’t even know how I realized it had to do with math or probability, but I did. Other things in life suddenly had math behind them as well—I found myself counting my steps as I crossed the living room or went up the stairs to my house. I started thinking about the infinitesimally small chance that I had even been born, given all the millions of circumstances that had had to be aligned, from the Big Bang to the migrations and marriages of my thousands of ancestors. I now wanted to know how everything worked. I had deep questions about the mysteries of the universe and my place in it, and the feeling was a bit euphoric.
    What was most peculiar to me about some of these thoughts was how fresh they felt. I sensed they weren’t inspired by old memories of teachings I’d forgotten; they resonated from somewhere deeper than that.
    As wondrous as my new abilities seemed to be, the drawbacks that accompanied them were plentiful. Many brain-injury victims change for the worse, not the better, and I was already showing signs of some of the negative effects. I had no idea at the time how common brain injuries were, but I soon discovered that I was just one of an estimated 1.7 million Americans annually who suffered TBIs. I was shocked to learn that about fifty thousand people died each year from brain injuries, and as many as ninety thousand developed some sort of lifelong disability. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), traumatic brain injury is the leading cause of death and permanent disability for Americans under forty-five.
    I continued combing through the frightening statistics and found that survivors can experience a wide range of negative changes—mood swings, emotional imbalances, cognitive impairment, anger issues, poor concentration, and the deterioration of social skills. To their friends and families, they can come across as completely different people. The bad news didn’t stop there. I also found that survivors are at increased risk of developing substance abuse, depression, phobias, psychotic disorders, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The odds of any or all of these happening to me were enormous. I was already starting to notice some of the more common cognitive consequences of TBI: impaired judgment and difficulty with decision-making.
    I noticed that I now didn’t want to be around other people, but at the same time, I wished I had just one trusted person near me who could tell me exactly what to do—from what to eat for breakfast to how to handle the consequences of my injuries. I couldn’t come to a decision about anything—even which shirt to wear when I got dressed in the morning. I worried about people not wanting to be around me if I began to exhibit an