20210110 : Hiccups and Balance..

-

When i was out of surgery, my neurosurgeon told my wife that I'd have a lot of hiccups and balance issues because of where i had the stroke.

The hiccups have been quite a lot. They were so much early on. They also made it to my hallucinations when in icu. When it starts, i know next few hrs is gone and i am unable to do anything else. My personal record is about 4 days non stop. It has gotten better and 3-4 hours every few days now. It has reduced in duration and frequency, except more intensity. Actually i dont know if its stronger or i just struggle more as there is on less hole in the airway to manage it.. but I'm hopeful it'll get better over time with the trend line...

The balance is an issue I've had from day 1 as well. Its hard to describe.. i cant move an inch, but feel like I'm falling all the time. The closest i can think of is feeling of getting a kick as described from the movie inception (https://youtu.be/V9uX_WamuYA) . It is a milder version ,but the feeling is there 24x7. I m guessing it has done some damage to the inner ear, hence i cant also hear in my right ear. This hasn't changed or reduced from day 1 so im not hopeful it'll improve over time.
Another part of the imbalance, maybe because half my body doesnt work, is that i have lost the sense of centre of gravity or i cant make out being straight or slant unless i visually see myself. Ex, i am told by many that my head is tilted left all the time. I feel its straight . Only when i see it (reflection on the tv in front) do i see its crook and have to put additional effort to correct it.
When I'm vertical (sitting or standing) , there is a constant pull on me like the drag you feel in a vehicle with misaligned wheels. This varies all the time, somedays its pulling me left, somedays right side, and the intensity varies all the time. So i have to put additional pull on the opposite side to counter the feeling and stop myself from falling...

Everyday, when they move me to the wheelchair, they ask me if im sitting ok. The reality is i have no way to make out. I just blindly say no, so they can further lift me and it'll hopefully correct any imbalance. The worst is when I'm sitting with hip twisted i.e., most of the weight is on one buttock and not equally balanced.  I can only know about an hr or so later, because the butt starts to pain like hell and depending on how bad, i ask them to correct or move me back. Thats why some days i can sit for ~4 hrs and some days cant last even ~2hr .

In this state standing up, let alone walk is a very distant dream, even if the physio strengthens she limbs...im not sure who im kidding by still not giving away the bike!!!!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

20231208 : Privilege...

-
  Before my stroke, I had enough and more work to do - both on the work front and home front. I had reasonably ok health, reasonably good eating habits, reasonably good physical activities. Money is not enough for anybody, but it was reasonably ok as well. The only thing I had very less of (almost none) was time! Free time specifically. I keep sharing video recommendations to many folks regularly - most of them,  long talk show formats (1½ - 2 hours sometimes). Very interesting and informative pieces in my opinion. In today's world filled with over information and disinformation, it is almost impossible to understand most things if we don't spend the time and either read and research ourselves (which is a very far shot) or spend time going through secondary sources who have done it for us and can present it in an unbiased way.  Without it, it is very easy in today's world to get biased, subscribe to misconceptions, get misled, manipulated, etc.  However, often I get the res
Read more

20240124 : balancing the equations...

-
It is fascinating to read and understand how muscles work. For all my life, (since I had not given it any thought earlier), I simply had assumed a muscle is 1 muscle. Ex, if we say bicep muscle, it was one muscle in my mind (I don't know why I imagined so, but so it was). The truth is very far from it . Each muscle is made up of hundreds of strands (maybe thousands). And the best part (I have practically understood, not backed by any medical stuff) - is that each strand is connected separately to the brain and not as one.  For mechanical enthusiasts, each strand works like a sort of rack and pinion arrangement, operated by a chemical reaction, triggered by the brain. Each strand has two separate connections to the brain - one to work the rack and pinion arrangement each way (to contract the muscle strand and the other to release it or relax the muscle strand). In short, that's how it achieves any movement. By selecting the set of muscle strands to activate (how many most probab
Read more

20240402 : Transducers...

-
Transducers Came across this word recently when I was reading something. Hadn't come across it for a while. Its a word and concept I learnt in my electronics course (either in 12th or my 1st year engineering course I am not very sure now) A transducer, very plainly speaking, is something which helps bridging the analog world with the digital world.  For example, take the very simple digital thermometer in our homes. They can't directly measure temperature in digital form. They have a transducer inside which converts the temperature from a analog/ real world scale to a digital world scale so it can be displayed. Generally speaking, we can say it helps bridge the real world with the digital world. When I had my stroke and I was told I will struggle for balance, I was not able to understand why. My understanding (based on my school learning) was that balance is maintained by the inner ears. Of course we were not told how and I never bothered to ask. I just knew balance was maintai
Read more