Small victories
I’ve had a series of small wins with my hand this week yes week!
This is the first time I’ve been able to hold the spoon properly with the index and second finger supporting
it they don’t quite have enough flexibility yet to steer it, that is still coming from the elbow and shoulder rather than the wrist and fingers . I’m going to have to add conscious thought to not move my shoulder and elbow just my wrist and fingers and that’s going to slow breakfast down for a while
Yesterday when I was half awake, first thing before I go up I was able to stretch the fingers out and for the first time I could feel my brain was connected to my second finger rather than it moving unbidden or unresponsive with the rest of them.
With two noticeable achievements in the same week I thought I ought to share. They’re not out of the blue they are noticeable on a slog that’s been going on for a couple of years
but they are things to record notice of as evidence of progress and thus motivators for the future effort that will be required for more progress
The effort makes it easy to give up the noting progress makes it possible to keep going
Sounds good Simon,
When we think we have made progress, we have made progress!
I tend to be harsh on myself, and I really need to accomplish something before I count victory. One detail you mention… when you were half awake. I find the period before falling asleep, or waking, when the brain starts to disconnect from the body most advantageous and worth exploring and playing about with…I will often discover something new, and promise myself to investigate further… only I forget to since I usually fall asleep
@SimonInEdinburgh brilliant stuff
i remember when i first had physio sessions and my fingers started moving, the first finger to move was my middle finger, which proved helpful when people peeved me off
@chris67 I was talking to Martin @Moonie66 yesterday. He demonstrated his dexterity with his duff hand by showing me he could do the finger I’m nowhere near that yet
Personally I feel anybody with a label physio who has been involved in my recovery has been at best only 1 point above neutral - It might be just my having a natural cynicism but for me extrinsic motivation is pretty worthless It’s intrinsic motivation that I’ve needed for and found and is paying back. I think I’m going to write some more on that because writing helps me understand
@pando
Yes yes yes.
The time between getting into bed and falling asleep and waking it in the morning and opening eyes and then getting up provide absolutely the most malleability.
For me they also come with a challenge in the movement to my affected side, When prone - invokes a yawn type spasm that is irresistible very strong and tens of seconds long. I have to really think consciously as I attempt to move that I don’t trigger one of those. I still have about 10 or 20 of them in the morning
I can move my hand in ways I can’t any other time of day but that is growing capability both when I’m in the Twilight zone and the rest of the day. There is a gulf between one and the other that isn’t yet narrowing but as I do more in the Twilight zone I can do more in the waking zone.
I find that the first time I try and spread my fingers and flex my wrist I can do it almost at a pre stroke level but I can’t do it again for several minutes and I need to put some distracting different muscle activation in before I can try again. I’m imagining there’s a capacitor or something that needs to charge up before I can use its energy for a movement that causes the discharge! I think the cycle time is reducing but that I’m not sure of yet.
What frustrates me Is my layman’s model says brain and muscles are connected, but the control circuitry before the brain / muscle activation is unreliably intermittent, It works for the subconscious but not the conscious.
The subconscious always interested me in the past as a massively parallel compute engine. Things like the central executive network the salience network etc which are never talked about in stroke recovery. I find this very strange because if you talk about injury to the physical lobes of the brain you’re really having a discussion divorce from which networks it is a component of the processing cycles and so discussion of the physical damage must lead to characteristics that controlled by the networks that are on top of them. I think this leads to a lot of the similarities we see in people’s stroke recovery journeys because it’s the same networks that are disrupted even if physically the injury was in different place. The different place will have a different pattern of networks but any one network will still be reveal patterns in disruption.
I think there’s a line for research, others must be researching it but as yet I’ve not seen a stroke paper written in terms of the dominant mental networks in the conscious and subconscious mind. I did see one that talked about communication between the lesional and contrary regional hemispheres and the suppression mechanisms that operate pre-stroke that may be best relaxed post stroke, I wonder whether fatigue for example has a role in challenges like altering of natural processing flows
Time to sit in the sun in the garden with the wife
Not too bad although I’m only on 3 hours per day Mon, Weds and Fri this week and next and of course most on the 2 days so far have been either on admin stuff or people getting in contact to catch up
TBH I’ve had a lot of support throughout, especially from my guys who rallied around early on to make sure that my wife (who can’t drive due to a health issue) could get into see me with one guy “popping down” from North Yorks to Bournemouth to see me only to be turned around as I’d contracted covid by then and was in an isolation ward
I find that conscious and sub conscious interesting as well.
If you put your hand somewhere very hot, the sub conscious takes over and whips it away. So there is something in there that can react at speed. Even, possibly, with a body part not working as it should post stroke ?
The conscious would be there, how bad is it, what are the alternatives, anything else going on that’s more important, yes probably makes sense to move it, yeh let’s move it.
At the same time, that sub conscious hasn’t really caught up with the modern world, fight or flight was great when running away from a mammoth. Not so good when it comes to creating anxiety over non dangerous things.
no matter how much I clear my conscious thought, I cannot fully empty it, meaning on a day when my glute locks even light sleep will not clear it. Deep sleep is the only thing that will. The salient network you mention has only been talked about for a decade… I feel there are still many gaps in our knowledge on stroke recovery. We’re mostly on our own.
Thats great progress since my last post my husband has managed to get himself to toilet and back to chair while iv been at work and also there’s movement in his toes which we get quite excited about i know its silly but its positive
