Living with HALF A BRAIN?!

Hello internet. Today I will be talking about the subject of living with half a brain.

This type of surgery is one of the most invasive surgeries there is, it is called hemispherectomy. Although this surgery is considered the most invasive surgery procedure, it is not the most dangerous. This operation is only given to children usually under the age of three for treating seizures in only one of the two hemisphere in the brain. This procedure is a last-minute-resort when all other medications and surgeries result in failure.

You may think that since the "victim" only has half a brain, they may suffer from mental disorders and be a bit "retarded." This is actually a bit true, but only for a little while. Believe it or not, the victim's other intact half will actually take up the job of the missing half. Eventually, after a year or so, the so-called-victim will have fully recovered and will be able to do everything that a person with both halves of the brain can do. They can even live a full lifetime.

However this isn't true for any of the other organs...except the kidneys. Even though our bodies are pretty much symmetrical, there are some that requires two to keep running functionally. The kidneys are the only organ(s) other than the brain that can lose a "half" and still keep running for a full lifetime. If one of the kidneys gets damaged or fails, the other kidney grows by 50% and takes up the other kidney's job just fine.

If you think about it, every organ has another half or is symmetrical. You have two brain hemispheres, two lungs, two kidneys. Your heart has two ventricles and two atriums, your small intestine and your large intestine both are more or less symmetrical. Your skin is almost perfectly symmetrical. The only other ones are (correct me if I'm wrong at spelling, Blogger corrected it for me) unsymmetrical. The unsymmetrical organs are the stomach, the liver, the pancreas, and the gallbladder.

So yeah.

Interesting fact of the day: This one is for parents that have an infant child. If your infant baby is failing to sleep comfortably, sleep with your infant's blanket for a night or two. Your "smell" will catch on to your infant's blanket and will comfort the baby since they will smell their parents.