[kozachka]

I can't stand when all these medical "experts" keep talking about so much of her brain being gone. The brain is so poorly understood in its functioning. It's amazing how parts of the brain can be retrained. Nobody really knows how much functioning brain is left in a person.

Here is a scan of a person who had half their brain removed. They seem to do just fine. It's called a hemispherectomy and is performed for epilepsy.

There is a difference between losing half your brain, when it is a hemisphere, as opposed to losing large areas of the cerebral cortex.

Parts of the left brain can compensate for corresponding parts of the right brain, and vice versa.

Similarly, you can lose a kidney or a lung, and the other one will make up for it. But if you lose two lungs, having two good kidneys left won't matter.....

[I still care]

That's true, I know. I was just making the point that so little is truly known about how the brain functions, and how it compensates.

I remember years ago my grandmother was supposedly in a irreversable coma from a brain tumor. She later regained some conciousness, and we found out that she had been hearing much of what the doctors told us she couldn't.

I didn't say anything I wouldn't have wanted her to hear, myself, because I never do trust that doctors know everything. But a few people had spoken in front of her words they wished they could have taken back. So I am always skeptical. The mind is a marvelous thing.