Why Cracked Cranium?

Someday I will have a book of my journey in adulthood that is a series of poems and prose. One of the poems I wrote decades ago in 2001 during my year of chemo started by posing the question: Did the saw whir, or did it hum when you cracked my cranium?

From that moment forward different manifestations of referring to myself as a Cracked Cranium have occurred in various forms. I have had two different emails that included crackedcranium@, including one now long defunct after cox decided to opt out of the email portion of our account. My very first manifestation of my business in 2003 was Cracked Cranium Consulting, including my first DBA business checking account.

I wrote liturgy referring to Cracked Craniums, yes actual liturgy that then extended my cracked cranium to a recognition of the fact we are all cracked pots able to spill out love on the world from the cracks and broken places in our lives. Mind you this liturgy was one used at a national conference of Christian Educators, in groups within my state conference at conference wide events, and even during worship at the church where I served as a minister.

I don't know what my identity would be  had I not been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, a Grade 3 Oligodendraglioma to be precise, in the summer of 2000. For two years, my tumor was a golf ball size blot on my MRI that my doctors in Oklahoma who knew they couldn't perform the surgery on me had taken a "wait and see" approach to. 

That all changed in June 2000 when my stagnant well watched spot (I had close to 40 MRIs between the beginning of 1999 and that month) finally grew some more. By August of 2000 we left my doctors in Oklahoma behind who said, Nothing can be done! and found our way to Dr. Mitch Berger, at the Brain Tumor center at UCSF, one of the top neurosurgeons in the world who looked at me in the first five minutes in his office and said, I want to take it out:)

Side note but actually major point to remember, if a doctor ever tells you there is nothing that can be done, all they are saying is there is nothing I can do. Until you get to the place where the doctors are seeing 5-10 patients like you every week and what you have is the majority of what they do, you have NO IDEA what can or can't be done. (Listening to that advice is why I am still alive 23 years later.)

Anyway, back to the Cracked Cranium, once I heard that Dr. Berger had been performing about 8 surgeries a week every week for 15 years as complicated as mine, I booked my surgery for the next month and went home to absorb as much information as I could about brain tumors and brain tumor treatment. I even read the Neuro Oncology textbook that Dr. Berger had edited with a medical dictionary to help me through it. I don't necessarily recommend this for everyone, but I am a person that the more information I have ahead of time, the better I cope. 

On September 22, (now and forever celebrated as Brain Day in our family), I was wheeled into the operating room and Dr. Berger and serval other amazingly talented people sawed open my skull, cracking my cranium. After that moment, my skull ceased to be whole. They would rejoin it with titanium clips, but I will permanently be cracked. And by the time they were done, I had a beautiful golf ball size hole in my right semi parietal lobe where my tumor blot had once been. In those eight hours that I was out, my life was transformed, never to be the same again. 

I love sharing my story of how I became a Cracked Cranium with people because I am proud of what it took to walk through that, not only for me, but for my husband, my 3 year old daughter, my parents, my siblings and my nieces and nephews. I am immensely proud of the talent and skills of my medical team at UCSF and my oncology team in Oklahoma who worked in tandem with them so I could do my treatments here. But the reason I am most proud to share it is because it helps others, just like hearing the stories of other survivors helped me. 

My biggest fear going into my surgery was not dying, it was that I was going to wake up different. I was paying people a lot of money to take out a big part of my brain after all. And I had no idea what all would be affected by that. Naively, at first, I saw the ways I had changed as temporary things. In truth, I wasn't really able to even begin to physically recover until around 2003. All of 2001 was spent doing some pretty intense chemotherapy and it takes about twice as long as the length of your chemo to even feel human again.

But as soon as I felt even slightly human, I was different. I wasn't as afraid. My personality was more intense which as someone who ranked as a Tigger according to the Tao of Pooh, that's a pretty crazy thing. But my body also has to deal with the effects of my treatments and the physical effects of my brain injury. Turns out having a cracked cranium and extra brain fluid turns you into a human barometer. So, that intensified Tigger was tempered by the physical needs of Pooh for naps and slowness on a regular basis.

This less fearful, more intense personality drove me toward pursuing my passions of writing and empowering people. That first manifestation of Cracked Cranium Consulting was as a writer and consultant for the United Methodist Publishing House, a partnership that continued until around 2010  and resulted in dozens of curricula, writing bible facts notes for a new Bible, and even three books. 

The work I did that I loved the most were the curricula that engaged the whole brain and multiple learning styles, offering every kid with every type of brain multiple opportunities to experience and connect with the stories. They also offered multiple ways for adults to connect with children by having adults who taught the lesson and other adults present to connect relationally with the kids and interact with them experiencing the lesson alongside them. As a mom of a neurodiverse son, this combo helped his brain so much to connect to the reality of how worthy he is of love.

Cracked Cranium Consulting also included consulting I did for small churches on ways to be more creative and multiple intelligence based in their ministries. Post surgery I experienced my brain literally rewiring a lot of things on it's own and then also did a lot of exercises to build new neuron pathways to help me to think and function as a cracked cranium. So, helping people build new ways of thinking about how to help children of all brain types experience the love of God was something that just fed my soul.

Then in 2013, I was first introduced the Foursight Thinking Profile at a Creative Oklahoma conference where I met Sarah Thurber who developed the Foursight assessment along with Dr. Gerard Puccio, Blair Miller and Russ Schon. I immediately was attracted to how much the assessment tool and the theories and research behind it are supported by the way our brains just naturally work through problems. And as you have probably caught onto by now, I love all things brain based. So, as soon as I could, I got trained as a facilitator. 

In those early years of that transition, I had so much fun playing with my newfound skills. I worked with church teams in my church and other churches. I got to train teams at medical offices. I worked with college age students training them on how their brains worked in regards to problem solving. I trained Americorps teams of college interns before they worked in 8 week reading camps for at risk kids including many neurodiverse kids and foster children. I even worked with the small town of Locust Grove, Oklahoma for almost a year as they embarked on an intentional journey of creativity. 

Every step of the way I adored my identity as a Cracked Cranium. When I first set out to embark on my full time Innovation business as I left the ministry and plunged into being a Creative Problem and Foursight Facilitator full time by opening my own business, I initially continued branding as Cracked Cranium Consulting. To my dear friend and all around musical genius, Mark Burrows, as well as to my late father, I will always be Cracked Cranium first.

And that is true. However, in the last three years, my company shifted to Wade Innovation, because I bring so much more into the world than just all the awesomeness I have as a survivor and a human living with a brain injury. My knowledge of how our brains work and the perspective I have as someone who has navigated life both as a neurotypical person and a nuerodiverse person are skills few people on the planet have. 

I have come to learn that the intuitive Creative Problem Solving of my brain and the brains of my family helped me navigate my way onto a path toward survival, seeking the input of others who had experience or expertise beyond my initial doctors at each turn. I cold called a woman one night who was a semi retired neurosurgeon who spent three hours on the phone with me clarifying what I was facing, offering me different thoughts and options, helping me develop a plan of where I might go, and then giving me specific people and numbers to call the next day. Her willingness to work the problem with me saved my life as much as anything.

Then there is very intentional Creative Problem Solving. The intentional desire of doctors at UCSF and other brain tumor centers to dedicate their careers to working the problem every day has led to breakthrough ideas that create new tools for saving patients from something as simple as the Berger Arm (yes, my Dr. Berger) that holds the needle steady during every brain biopsy that has been performed for the last 30 years to potential brain cancer vaccines in testing. 

Creative Problem Solving is something all of us do every single day. Learning to harness that power makes the impossible probable and the path ahead so much easier to navigate. 

My passion and call has always been to empower people to do the things they want to do. That was my favorite part of parenting, my favorite part of ministry, my favorite part of writing, my favorite part of consulting, and in truth my favorite part of every relationship I have ever had. The fact that I get to do that for my job is such a gift.

All of us are broken. All of us have limitations. All of us have stories of survival. And all of us have gifts no one else has. Often times those gifts are made better because of all we have been through.

People might not think that a woman with a brain injury and a Cracked Cranium would be the best person to help you learn and appreciate how your brain works, but those people clearly have not met me. 

Don't underestimate you. Life is about finding out what cracks you have that can spill your gifts out on others in beautiful ways. Perfect has never been the goal. Being fully you is.

Love you like crazy!

Suzann Wade, Cracked Cramium