Get Results--Get Bio Feedback

The residential street on the hill above the city of Kirkland has no traffic in the early afternoon, so I take my foot off the gas and slowly coast as i look over large lawns at the back sides of spacious houses, trying to find Dr. Jean Ann Craig’s home.

“Wow!” The stunned expression escapes my lips as I look over a rock wall and see the house number she gave me on a custom built home across a wide lawn and blooming flower garden. A gently curving cement walk way approaches the house from the side before curving sharply and heading straight toward a double set of glass doors.

Leaving my car on the empty street, I swing open an iron gate and limp toward the house. The doctor wanting to do the bio feedback on me for no charge was the chance of a life time. God I hope this works, I silently pray. If it works God, I’ll be the nicest, kindest person ever. Please let it work, God.

Dr. Jean Ann greets me at the door. “Come on in, Al.” She smiles in her gracious way. She’s from Indiana. My speaking trips have brought me to middle and southern America many times. As the speaker brought in from out of town, I’m treated nice wherever I go, so I could never tell if southern folks are nicer than folks in other parts of the country, but if Indiana is considered a southern state than judging from Dr. Jean Ann’s mannerisms, we northerners could learn hospitality from our southern neighbors.

“Ok, sit in this recliner beside these computers,” Dr. Jean Ann says after we finish visiting in the sitting room. I follow her into a room just off the room we just vacated. I sit in the recliner while she dips electrodes coming from one of the computers into this gel substance and attaches them to my head.

We did the treatment 3 times for the first few weeks, then two times a week for a couple weeks and then once a week. pretty soon, I was only needing to get a treatment about once a month and then 6 weeks or more would pass with me only coming in when I noticed my emotions getting more erratic.

It has been somewhere around 5 years since I received the treatments. The effect of the bio feedback on my disposition and on my ability to handle stressful situations without erupting in a volcano of expletives is profound. I still get confused and frustrated, but my ability to handle the situation without telling everybody in the vicinity how I feel makes life a lot easier to live.

“God doesn’t want you getting mad and yelling and cussing," some people say. Why didn’t you ask him to help you behave more like a Christian?”

To anybody uninformed enough to ask such an ignorant question let me, with the same aggrivated patience that a puppy owner teaches his pet to not poop on the carpet, say that rupturing my hypo thalamus gland meant that physical damage prevented my responding with calm control just like a person with a broken leg is not able to walk as well as someone without a broken leg.

If anyone is still having problems understanding, or maybe they’re wondering why I didn’t just pray the problem away, how about if you break your leg and then ask God to help you walk without limping? Sure God could have helped me always be calm before I got the bio feedback. He can also help people with broken legs walk without limping, but how often does he?

Since I’ve been freed from my box, whether or not I sound believable matters less to me than how much a bowl of mush sells for in the jungles of Africa. But, if a reader suffers from anger issues his or herself or cares at all for a brain damaged friend or relative with anger issues, this post is meant to tell you that bio feedback may be worth checking into.

Good luck. I’m praying for you.