The power of Rediscovering Life After a Brain Tumor

[Music]

what are the odds

that suddenly you wake up and you cannot

read

write or add two plus two what are the

odds that after a short two-hour surgery

you don’t even remember what year you

were born

my name is natalie jacob and i am the

author of the book eight

rediscovering life after brain tumor and

this

is the closest thing i found in my house

to a tedx red rock i hope you guys like

it it’s a speaker actually

so i was born in bogota colombia

to a very international family my father

is french and all that side of my family

is french and my mom

is american and all that side of my

family is american

so because i was born in such an

international household i’ve always

actually wanted to build an

international life for myself

so as soon as i see as i hit 16 i left

my house and i went to live to paris

and i did my um my my

high school over there and after that i

come back to colombia where i studied

business

and i realized that the best shot i

would have to have an international

lifestyle

was working for multinationals or

fortune 500 companies

so i dedicated my life to my passion

which i discovered that was

marketing and i worked around several

countries and several cities so i worked

i

worked in i worked in madrid i worked in

puerto rico i worked in miami

um i’m actually now living in westport

in connecticut in the usa

but i dedicated my life to working for

companies like frito-lay nokia l’oreal

johnson and johnson and diego

are some of the ones i did um and

as you can see everything that i talk

about my life in the past

was basically work my passion in life

was to work my family and sailing i’ve

been actually on a sailboat since i’m

four years old and i’ve i’ve won several

national championships but that was what

made me

me and what made me happy in the past

and then one day in the year 2015 i went

skiing with some more colleagues to

canada to in whistler

and it was the first day of skiing it

was full of energy for the ones that ski

you know my muscles weren’t hurting i

was

you know hyped up and i was going down

the slopes

and i fall really really hard um to the

point that i break my goggles and my

finger went completely black

so i it was my first day of vacations

and i didn’t really want to ruin my trip

so i just went down the slope bought a

popsicle a popsicle

and i just taped the popsicle stick to

my fingers

and continued my my week of ski when i

went back to miami which is the place

where at the moment i was living

i did take an appointment with a with a

doctor just to check my finger

actually and i told him about the fall

and he decided to take

uh a cd scan of like my brain as well

just in case

and so he said you have something called

the coincidental finding which is just

by coincidence

nothing happened with the ski fall but

you do need to take an appointment with

a neurosurgeon so i took an appointment

with a surgeon and i went with my

husband at that time

and he actually had a computer screen

with a picture of the mri of my brain

which was exactly what i have up here in

screen right now

and he said you have an intraventricular

meninge the size

of a line but i mean intraventricular

meaning doma i have

what does what does that even mean like

i i really didn’t get worried at all

because i didn’t know what those words

meant whatsoever and he did say you do

have a two percent

chance of losing your peripheral

eyesight but other than that

there’s no other risks and the recovery

week is three weeks

um the recovery period is three weeks

and i honestly thought

oh my gosh i worked so much all my life

i’m gonna get three weeks to watch

netflix awesome so i was really not

worried at all whatsoever

to the point that the night before the

surgery um

with my husband we were even making

jokes so they put you this little things

like on your head to know where they’re

going to go in for the incision for the

brain surgery

um and my husband was looking up his

home like oh my god he reminds me so

much of some

of the night from the 80s and he googles

an image and voila that’s what he

that’s what he showed me so we were

really honestly just having a blast

and and not really understanding the

gravity of the situation

so i go into surgery and it was indeed a

very short surgery of only two hours

and after that i wake up and i cannot

read

and i cannot write and i cannot add two

plus two

and they give me a pencil and a paper

and they asked me to write my name and i

still knew that my name was natalie

jacob

and i dry circle and i find this

hilarious i cannot stop laughing i mean

here i am at that moment i was 35 years

old a 35 year old woman with an mba from

iu business school

and working for you know with a

successful career working for

multinationals

and i don’t even know how to write my

name

and so they make me walk the quarters of

the hospital because you you know the

brain doesn’t only manage you know your

this your smartness but it manages the

whole body

so i so they made me walk the whole the

quarters of the hospital and they asked

me so what number do you see in that

drum like

eight and so they want make me walk to

the next one and they ask me what number

do you think that girl i’m like

eight i saw everything as an eighth and

that’s why the title of the book gets

called

eight rediscovering life after a brain

tumor

so after two weeks in the hospital i

honestly

was having a blast i my family was

shocked

the doctor was shocked but i

i found everything funny and fun because

i knew this wasn’t gonna be like

forever i thought it was gonna be

temporary so i was really not stressed

at all

and something quite spectacular happened

my brain became

so simple that i had the brain of a

tour of three-year-old and

the simplicity of life was just

gorgeous to enjoy like after those two

weeks in the hospital i went back home

and my by coincidence my office was

actually

a block away from my house so all my

work colleagues would come and visit me

and i couldn’t even have a conversation

with them because having a conversation

was too advanced for what my brain was

at the moment they couldn’t just follow

so the only thing i would enjoy was

coloring so i would color

coloring books and i would have all my

adult friends come and visit me

and you know try to talk to me and i

will be like hi

and i would go back to coloring and it

was beautiful and my husband would take

me

on walks outside near the you know

around the neighborhood and

obviously i would have to walk with him

um because i couldn’t i woke up

partially blind

so i couldn’t you know i would like i

wouldn’t know how to walk would fall

down

you know a stair i would hit myself like

in stores i mean it was a mess

um but then i would walk the streets and

i would hear a bird chirp and i was like

birdie birdie i mean a 35 year old

enjoying the beauty of nature

was honestly just purely spectacular

so it was a really happy moment in my

life but life is life isn’t all

roses honestly unfortunately and after

some time

i started to become a little bit less

dumb or a little bit more smart

and i quite and i started to realize

actually

the severity of what i was actually

living and so three months afterwards i

lost my job

and that was basically the first hit i

had i

lost my job due to a brain tumor like

like who who would even think that would

be a possibility in someone’s life

um and it was really hard because on top

of that actually when that i was

when i was working at diago i was

actually my husband’s boss

or dotted line manager and so what that

implied was that we lost 60

of our household income so that was

really difficult for

for for our family but on top of that

the toughest part of this is that i

actually lost

my iq so when i explained to you guys at

the beginning that what made me me

was you know being a nerd and being a

workaholic and being smart

that loss of iq was

losing myself completely and when i mean

that i lost my acute i’m not just

you know saying it for saying it i

actually have the numbers by coincidence

six months before my surgery

i had an iq test because i was in an

interview process for some miller

and they flew me from miami to chicago

to do a whole day iq test and i did it

and i have the results and i was above

average um

and after my surgery medical for medical

reasons they actually give you iq

tests paid by the medical insurance so i

had one six months after my surgery one

one year

two years three years and i actually had

one not long ago again

and my iq stagnated at

below below average like below below

average so i literally passed from being

an above iq person to a below below

average

and that was

so hard for me because i was

i was never it was never about i don’t

know my looks

it was always only about

my smartness or my capability to

maintain myself my capability to have a

successful career

my capability to live around the world

and i lost all that and that wasn’t easy

and on top of that remember the two

percent probability chance of losing my

porridge my my peripheral eyesight i

nailed it i won the lottery and i am

partially blind now and i’ll be

partially bent for the rest of my life

so

just to explain to you guys what it is i

basically if i if you if i would have

you

in front of in front of me i would only

see half of your face

so when i look at a computer screen i

only see half of the computer screen

i don’t see anything from here to here

with my both eyes

um it took me some years to get used to

it um at the beginning if

it was a complete mess i would fall i

couldn’t use a knife because i for the

risk of cutting a finger

but nowadays honestly i learned how to

manage it but the

biggest disability that i have is that i

suffer something called brain fatigue

and it’s very difficult to explain to

you guys what that is but it’s

you know after a whole day’s work or

after you know

a whole day of classes at ie you get

home at six or seven pm and you’re just

tired imagine that tiredness kicking in

at any moment at any day for whatever

reason it could be at 10 a.m it could be

at 11 a.m

and it’s just because my brain because

he was injured after that brain surgery

that i had

it’s basically a brain that doesn’t that

take a lot of effort to just

work at a decent rate so it’s just

all the time overworking and overworking

and do do that i just get really brain

fatigued so

it’s basically for that reason that i am

officially disabled um

here in the usa and i can’t maintain a

full-time job

eight hours per day five days per week

and that was honestly really really

difficult

but after doing a lot of cognitive

therapy because i had to learn how to

read and write again right

um i i started i started to

write what i was going through in life

and i just opened my computer and i just

because the muscle memory actually of

like typing in a keyboard was still

there

i just started to write and by writing i

was forced

to read and by reading i was actually

forced to remember because i also

suffered a short-term memory

so i decided to start to do this and in

the process

i discovered that i was pregnant and i

was gonna be a mom

and then i realized my daughter

is actually never gonna know who i was

before my surgery because i mean i don’t

even know who i’m gonna be in the future

because the the natalie that was there

before is clearly no longer here and

will never be here anymore

so i decided to change those writings

into a book

and i published the book for my daughter

for her to basically know who

mommy was before her brain surgery and

it’s been honestly really spectacular

because i

i definitely decided that i did not want

to make any money from a book

because of brain brain tumors so i

donate a hundred percent of the

of the profits to bring to my

foundations and

even after going through all this um

journey

and being a mom which made me absolutely

you know ecstatic and

and and honestly mother nature’s

spectacular when you become a mother

i can’t even understand why it’s so

strong the maternal feeling you get

but even with that i was very sad

because i felt purposeless

i mean who was i if if i couldn’t do

all the passions and make me happy you

know i couldn’t sail

i couldn’t work i couldn’t travel

anymore i mean i

it you you feel you feel purposeless and

it’s not where do you find a new purpose

you can’t just go out and buy purpose in

a supermarket

and i didn’t even know how to even start

that journey

to find a new purpose so i literally

honestly without knowing i just started

to volunteer

um here in connecticut where i live in

the connecticut brain tumor

association the connecticut green tumor

alliance and in its foundation

to read for children in need and through

doing that i discovered that my passion

was actually helping others

and even nowadays even for the i don’t

know some magic

trick in the world my iq and my brain

would come back to me

i don’t want to go back to that life i

just want to dedicate my life to helping

others

so how do i translate that into my life

nowadays i

knowing that i don’t have that much

energy i decided to create

community um and i created three

facebook groups which between them they

have over a thousand

five like to over two thousand people

actually the first one is called tumor

cellularity which is a group for brain

tumor survivors

in spain and latin america another one

is called what’s for stay at home moms

and it’s this is my actually

my favorite group above all because we

it’s a group where we we’re moms get to

get together we make friends the

husbands make friends among them and the

kids make friends

and we’re now a huge community of over

500 moms that get together

all the time and it’s pretty spectacular

i mean not with cobra 19 no we can’t but

we will back

soon when we can and the last group is a

it’s a group called westport women

and it’s a group that i created for

women that have businesses run from

their homes

for them to be able to um do promotion

for free

um online with their targeted market and

never in my wildest dreams honestly did

i ever expect

that my book would receive so much

attention from media it’s just

it’s been it’s honestly just been

magical i i would have never imagined i

mean i didn’t even know how to read and

write

and now i wrote a book and it’s all over

the news it’s just

it’s it’s magical i never expected it

so i just wanted to um end by sharing

with you guys a quote that is actually

from my book

um and i read a bit slow so bear with me

but i’ll try to read as quick as

my eyes permit me reinvent yourself

having the mental flexibility to

reinvent yourself your goals and what

brings you joy and meaning in life

will be the strength you need to

continue building your life path without

breaking you when things get in the way

don’t just hope for a better moment

create it work for it

and make it happen life doesn’t happen

to you

you make it happen and that’s all

thank you so much