detachment

I knew he would simply be a data point in my final report. He would be dissolved into part of the "n" and provide some kind of "average". I would then say something about the likelihood or probability or odd ratio or "not reach statistic significance".
However, for him, stroke happened to him 100%, highly significantly impacting his cognitive, physical, social, and perhaps mental functions. When I was talking with him, he was not simply a data point. He was a brave survivor, enduring various kinds of tests and research experiment procedures. Therefore, I was detached from my "gotta-get-great-effect-size-published" mood, but became nice and smiley and helpful, and remained objective.
Mr. S was quite competitive. Although being a stroke survivor, his attitude and performance were much better than some of my "healthy controls" (i.e., neurologically unimpaired research participants). His wife, on the other hand, was in a not-so-well typical care-giver depression. I wish her well.
Everyone needs to be positive and hopeful in this situation.

When someone you care gets a stroke in his/her right brain, please please please google "spatial neglect". This disorder is most observable in the acute state (within a couple weeks after stroke). And you will understand why you have failed to understand your beloved one. This person's world is no longer like yours, and he/she will not verbally express it because for him/her, nothing went wrong.
How would you know whether the stroke is in the left or right brain? Easy. See if the patient's right or left limbs are weak or paralyzed. The limbs are controlled by the opposite cerebral hemisphere.
Mrs. S had been frustrated for almost 6 months until listening to my presentation on spatial neglect. She suddenly realized why it was so difficult to communicate with her husband in the beginning of his hospitalization. He had said that he felt weird, and usually said so in a visually crowded environment, but he was unable to say what was weird. I did not know if Mr. S had spatial neglect or any kind of impairment in spatial attention, but I knew there was some remaining spatial deficits, for which I enrolled him to my study.
I wished Mrs. S would've been educated more about the difficulty of caring a right-hemisphere stroke patient.

I am not saying that damage in the left hemisphere is free of spatial neglect. It's just less likely... about 50% less.

I talked to Mrs. C this afternoon. Her husband was by the bedside as well. Mr. C said that Mrs. C's memory was still very sharp after stroke. I explained that spatial function was more difficult to detect than memory in daily life. They both listened carefully to me, and they were interested to participate!
I would not know whether their data would be useful in my final report until they pass the screening tests. However, just talking to them I could feel that I helped already.

I was in a seminar of a conference. The presenter showed that patients who learned about brain neuroscience recovered better than patients who did not. That makes sense. Acquiring information makes people feel a sense of control. But more importantly, learning changes brain. To learn is to rewire the brain, which means to make the damaged brain re-organized.

It makes my day when I immediately feel a positive mood from patients after they listen to me.
Whether the final report will make my career or destroy many days of my life, I will not think about it now.