Gotcha!

A problematic question central to my dilemma is "how does one detect problems of the brain?" This might seem a trivial task, but it is not. Sure, one could easily detect drastic changes of the sort that grossly distort sensory experience, and it would not be that hard to notice severe malfunctioning of the peripheral nervous system. But if one needs to be in the business of detecting any of these problems before they become lifestyle altering, personality-changing, all-consuming paths to misery, the question becomes frighteningly more difficult to answer. If one needed to detect changes to any other observable body part, this would not be so bad. You could look at your feet, detect pain from them, compile this information and raise an alert when it seems to change markedly. Whether in the normal or deviant state of affairs, the information is detected with the same equipment, the same eyes, the same brain. The problem, which Oliver Sacks identifes correctly in his book "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat", is that, as concerns matters of the brain, both the subject of investigation and the equipment used to observe it are altered.

Recently, on a tear towards recovery, I began a grueling practice schedule. What started as a few things that I committed to practice every day grew into a daily allocation of the hours between 11AM and 6PM to a rigorous ritual, pushing the limits of my fragile brain. I even expanded this methodology into other aspects of my life, dealing more methodically with recovering my skills in math and computer science, committing to daily exercise, putting social encounters on the schedule, and altogether blocking distractions like television from my life. The motivation for this sudden and drastic lifestyle change was entirely born of my desire to return forcefully to the things that I love and used to do well. I wanted to make up for lost time, and I had a new appreciation for the scarce, fragile time we have on this planet. To these ends, the ritual has been a life-changing experience. But it has also had an unanticipated but wondrous side-effect.

In the past, relapses were never easy to detect. At first I would begin to susptect that something was amiss. Then I might have a good day, or merely a better one, and doubt myself. A twitch might seem to reemerge, but then it would subside. Gradually as my abilities shifted, I would make correlated shifts to decrease the afflicted activities in my lifestyle. After a couple weeks of this insidious creep, I would no longer be playing music or reading, and then suddenly a moment of disorientation would hit me so profoundly that I could no longer compensate by living differently. I knew then that something was horribly awry. By then, weeks into a relapse, I faced weeks before I could substantially recover.

This week, however the cycle was broken. The schedule to which I have comitted pushed me to the limits of my current abilities, and as I improve, the schedule becomes more rigorous, more complex. And from day to day, many aspects of the schedule are religiously consistent. Last week I began to notice a twitch remerging. It waxed and waned over the better part of a week. By yesteday, however it had clearly waxed more than waned. I attempted the ritual, but was rebuked, unable to concentrate for more than a couple hours and then only with great labor. I found myself struggling, albeit not as mightily as when I have spotted a relapse in the past, to concentrate, and quickly pounced, responding appropriately.

Probably more accurately then any other test that could be devised, my practice schedule provided a reasonably objective guage of my cognitive state, sparing me the misery that normally accompanies a lengthy plunge into the abyss. My intuition is that any unanticipated effects of living well should be expected to be positive in the same way that one would not be surprised to discover yet another disease strongly correlated with smoking.