From watching my own mind deteriorate circuit by circuit, I learned that every ability I have, from wiggling my finger to creating language, is dependent on a group of cells inside of my brain functioning in a healthy, happy way. I realized in order to get well I had to make the cells that performed those functions well again. It gave me an entirely different way to look at myself as an individual and at all of us as people.
In the course of four hours, I watched my brain completely deteriorate in its ability to process all information. On the morning of the hemorrhage, I could not walk, talk, read, write or recall any of my life. I essentially became an infant in a woman's body.
Most of the different types of cells in our body die and are replaced every few weeks or months. However, neurons, the primary cell of the nervous system, do not multiply (for the most part) after we are born. That means that the majority of the neurons in your brain today are as old as you are. This longevity of the neurons partially accounts for why we feel pretty much the same on the inside at the age of 10 as we do at age 30 or 77.