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战胜中风 重回帅位

战胜中风 重回帅位

Patricia Sellers 2011-09-15
马宏升当时正在稳步迈向英特尔首席执行官的宝座。春风得意之际,他却突然中风,身体瘫痪,还丧失了语言能力。凭着永不言弃的精神和过人的毅力,马宏升重新回到了岗位,迎来了新的挑战——整合英特尔中国区业务。

    马宏升正在重新学习说话,训练体能。一切进展顺利。也许,他再也无法完全回复当年激情四射、妙语如珠的风采,但他依然是英特尔新任掌门人的有力争夺者。

    那一天的意义非同寻常。他们在回家的路上中途改道,歇了歇脚。玛格丽特记得她当时正开车前往硅谷,马宏升坐在旁边的副驾驶位,激动地给她指着方向,嘴里还咕噜有声:“呜……呜……呜”。玛格丽特后来才明白丈夫想要前往的地方时,她简直不敢相信。

    一个小时前,医生同意马宏升出院时曾告诉他,“我不确定你还能不能划船。”——潜台词是,也许今后永远都不能再划船了。马宏升和玛格丽特刚把车停到旧金山湾布莱尔岛划船俱乐部(Bair Island rowing club)的停车场,马宏升就迫不及待地打开车门跑了出去。“他的右臂根本用不上力,”玛格丽特回忆说,“他用左手抬起一艘小船,揭开盖在上面的帆布,把艇冲洗干净,然后又把帆布重新盖上。”

    第二天一早,玛格丽特心情舒畅,马宏升回到家中让她很高兴。这时,马宏升突然出现在她面前,穿着划船服,指了指屋外的汽车。玛格丽特立即给英特尔营销主管让-佩雷•范蒂尔打电话,让他尽快到旧金山湾会合。范蒂尔之前经常跟马宏升一起去划船。到达目的地后,马宏升和范蒂尔取出一艘双人轻便划艇。每划5下,范蒂尔就得板正划艇的航向。接下来的几个星期,马宏升开始独自划艇,最开始总是在水里绕圈子(他说:“我当时差点哭了。”),但是随着时间推移,皮艇前进的路线越来越直。

    重新学习说话是马宏升面对的最大挑战。中风使马宏升大脑中负责语言能力的区域受损,因而他只能尝试用右脑学习讲话。语言病理学家丽莎•利维尼•斯波勒开始指导马宏升进行单词练习,大声朗读儿童书籍。这样他回家后还可以读给凯瑟琳和双胞胎姐妹安娜、亚历山德拉朗听。斯波勒称,为了帮助马宏升重新掌握“语言的速度和节奏”,他们共同朗读了拜伦、丁尼生等著名诗人的作品,而且是站立着朗读。因为对马宏升来说,向1,000人讲话是自然不过的表达方式。他很少对自己感到沮丧,但是有一天他却没能做到。当时,斯波勒在索引卡片上写下了一句话“你有很大的潜力”,没想到马宏升将这张卡片钉到了自己办公室的公告板上。

    马宏升的邻居们也不断给予他鼓励。每个月总有那么一两次,门铃响起,马宏升和玛格丽特打开门,发现门外站着史蒂夫•乔布斯。他问马宏升能否出去一起走走,玩一会。“他就像一个友善的大孩子,”玛格丽特回忆说。这位苹果创始人从2004年开始就一直在与胰腺癌作斗争,他偶尔和马宏升在附近社区一起散步、骑车。

    2011年1月3日,也就是中风后10个月,马宏升重返英特尔。双方都需要重新适应。英特尔首席营销官黛博拉•康拉德援引英特尔积极的企业文化,称:“过去,马宏升是定调子的人。”但是现在情况变了。马宏升现在更喜欢一对一的交谈。有些必须出席的大型会议,大家难免七嘴八舌。这时,康拉德这样的高层就会站起来说:“大家安静。马宏升有话要说。”这样就能留出时间让他从容发言。回归三个星期后,马宏升出席了英特尔的国际销售和营销大会,中风后首次在重大的公开场合露面。他对台下3,700名英特尔员工说:“我在训练用右脑来控制语言能力,这通常是左脑的功能。这是我做过的最困难的事情。”

    他说话语速很慢,语调机械,似乎每一个词都要斟酌。事实的确如此。“我必须更清楚地表达自己,”他今年7月在英特尔总部接受采访时说。在90分钟的采访里(采访分两次,连续进行了两天),他向我们证明他的身体已经恢复,但是他不能静坐,需要频繁地站起来走一走。我询问他语言能力的恢复程度,他沿着会议桌跑到墙上的一块巨型白板旁边。“我之前是在这里,”他说着用红色彩笔划出一条水平线,表示他中风时的语言熟练程度。之后又画了一个45度的角,然后指着一个距离顶端还有15%的地方说:“我现在在这里”。他接着解释说:“我需要到这里,”同时把彩笔移到顶点。

    On that momentous day there was a stop on the way. Margaret remembers driving toward Silicon Valley as Sean, in the passenger seat beside her, excitedly pointed and grunted directions: "Uhhh ... Uhhh ... Uhhh!" When she realized where her husband was taking her, she could hardly believe it.

    An hour earlier the doctor who had released Sean told him, "I'm not sure you'll be able to row" -- implying ever. When he and Margaret pulled into the parking lot at the Bair Island rowing club in San Francisco Bay, Sean could hardly wait to get out. "His right arm was practically useless," Margaret recalls. "With his left arm, he lifted the boat. He uncovered it, washed it off, and put the cover back on."

    The next morning Margaret was relaxing, happy to have Sean back home. Suddenly he appeared, dressed in his rowing clothes and pointing toward the car. Margaret called Jean-Pierre van Tiel, an Intel marketing executive who was Sean's rowing buddy. Meet us at the bay as soon as you can, she told J.P. When they got there, Sean and J.P. took out a double scull. Every five strokes J.P. straightened the boat. In the weeks that followed, Maloney took to rowing alone, at first in circles ("I nearly cried," he says) but straighter and straighter each time.

    Learning to speak has been Maloney's toughest challenge. The stroke zapped a walnut-size section of his brain that produces language, so he has had to learn to speak from the right side of his brain. Speech pathologist Lisa Levine Sporer started off having Sean do word drills and read children's books aloud -- so he could get back to reading to Catherine and his twins, Anna and Alexandra. To help him relearn the "flow and melody of speech," Sporer says, they read poetry -- Keats, Byron, and Tennyson, his mother's favorite -- standing up, because talking to 1,000 people is, for Maloney, the natural way of speaking. He rarely got down on himself, but on a day that he did, Sporer wrote on an index card, "You have Great Potential." Maloney pinned the card to a bulletin board in his office.

    Maloney got encouragement from neighbors as well. Once a month or so the doorbell would ring, and he or Margaret would open the door. There on the doorstep would be Steve Jobs asking whether Sean could come out and, well, play. "Like this nice, giant adult kid," Margaret recalls. The Apple (AAPL) founder, whose battle against pancreatic cancer began in 2004, occasionally walked and biked around the neighborhood with Maloney.

    On Jan. 3, 10 months after suffering his stroke, Maloney returned to Intel. It's required some adjustment on both sides. Citing Intel's aggressive culture, chief marketing officer Deborah Conrad says, "Sean would be the guy setting the pace." That's changed. Maloney now prefers one-on-one meetings. And in the obligatory large meetings where everyone talks over each other, it helps when friends like Conrad pipe up and say, "Hold on, Sean has an opinion," giving him air. Three weeks after he returned, he made his first major public appearance at Intel's international sales and marketing conference and told 3,700 colleagues, "I've trained the right side of my brain to take over speech, normally a function of the left side. It's the hardest thing I have ever done."

    His speech is slow and robotic, as if he is searching for every word. In fact, he is. "I just have to make the words better," he says when we meet in July at Intel's Santa Clara headquarters. During a 90-minute interview (we did two, on consecutive days), he demonstrates that his body is back -- he can hardly sit still, pacing frequently. When I ask how far his speech has returned, he dashes around the conference table to a big whiteboard on the wall. "I was here," he says, using a red marker to draw a horizontal line indicating his skill level when he had his stroke. He draws a 45-degree angle and points to a spot about 15% shy of the top. "I'm now here," he says. "And I need to get here," he explains, moving the marker to the pinnacle.

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