Chris Miller is a retired science teacher, and youth and community worker. In 2013 he had a brain operation to remove a cyst growing on his acoustic nerve. The operation left him with stoke-like symptoms in the form of weakness on one side of his body. Since then, largely through the efforts of the brain injury society Headway East London, Chris has returned to writing and started to make art. He says,
"Over 30 years ago I went to my doctor with tinnitus – ringing in one ear. After several tests, a non-cancerous growth on my acoustic nerve was found, called an acoustic neuroma. I had an operation to remove it, which involved drilling a hole in my skull. The neuroma was removed, but my sense of balance was all over the place for three months and I permanently lost the hearing in one ear. Apart from these, I was fine.
More than 20 years later my balance problems had returned and I went to see my doctor again. Initially she diagnosed an ear infection, but when I told her my history, she said that I needed to have an MRI scan. It found that the acoustic neuroma had come back, there was a cyst growing, and I would need another operation to remove it, otherwise it would grow and affect the rest of my brain.
When I awoke from this second operation, I had stroke-like symptoms. The whole right side of my body – my walking, my writing (I am right-handed), face, eye and speech – was badly affected, and still is.
Before my surgery I could effortlessly leap up the stairs two at a time without thinking. After my ‘stroke’ it took fifteen minutes of intense concentration and effort to just go up the stairs. I also had to slowly relearn how to do a myriad of other physical activities – like writing, walking and tying my shoelaces.
It was as if my whole identity had changed. I was a different person with a different face. Initially I tried to go back, to recover the old me, the body I had before, but soon realised that only very small improvements were possible. To aim at the recovery of my old self was a fruitless and frustrating task. Instead, I had to come to terms with the limitations of my changed body and accept my new self.
As well as having a physical impact, my brain injury had an impact on how I saw myself. Overnight the role I performed in my family changed from that of a father to that of a dependent child. I found it hard to accept this sudden change, and coupled with my communication difficulties, this led to increased frustration and anger.
There were difficulties too about whether I would be accepted in wider society. Someone in the street recoiled from me in horror when they saw my face. I wondered whether I would ever be accepted again in the wider world as a ‘normal’ human being.
Soon after this I just about managed to swim in a pool for the first time since my ‘stroke’. Afterwards a ten-year-old boy I didn't know came up and asked me whether I had been on the water slide yet. As politely as possible, I said no, I didn’t go on water slides, and we struck up a conversation about what I thought of the pool.
For the first time someone who was not a member of my family or a healthcare professional was speaking to me as a ‘normal’ human being. It seems trivial now, but at the time it was life changing. I realised that how others responded to me – with fear or acceptance – was their issue, their problem, not mine. The conversation with the boy showed I could be accepted as a fellow human being."