Mind of my Stroked Brain

I recently heard about an acquaintance of mine, having a very bad accident, had an accute head trauma, was in coma for weeks and barely conscious now. The medical fraternity - probably doesn't know what will happen anyway. Now, this is only in the case of accute head injuries. Anything else - people are conscious and can influence their life I guess. Also, the medical field is a bit more certain. I feel, the person in question will go through their struggles and challenges anyway, but most likely they will be in a fantasy land leading fantastic lives. The real trauma and impact of the incident is borne by the loved ones. As far as the doctors go, they will do the best they can and invariably will have to resort to saying "we have to hope for the best". Where does that leave the loved ones? How to deal with the traumatic incident, how to deal with keeping the person going on - most likely in tubes of some sort, how to deal with the life and lifestyle changes it leads to, h...

Yesterday I received my new Australian passport. The earlier one had expired. There was no hurry to get it done really - I won't be going anywhere soon 😂 However, every other form of ID like drivers licence, Medicare, etc had expired as well in the last 3 years and a good friend advised to have a valid form of ID, decided to get it done. Normally, its quite impossible to get a passport without a physical appearance in the consulate. Many emails later., Explaining my situation many times and crossing many hurdles, they realised I cannot speak as well to have a call. I was then shifted to WhatsApp chat with their consular officer in Chennai. Lots of back and forth later, and a video call with him, they agreed to use a loophole in the system that they had opened up for folks who were stranded and couldn't go to the consulate due to covid travel restrictions. However, this route could only be taken for Australian residents and the online application would not take inputs for addre...

Before the stroke, I have always been very prone to colds, running nose, nasal blocks, etc. Irrespective of what you would have found in my bag, you would have found a box of Kleenex wipes. If I went somewhere without my bag, you could count on finding a small packet of soft wipes in one of my pockets. There was a box on my desk, in my living room, next to my bed, etc. you get the picture. For 2 years and 8 months, I have known no cold, no running nose, no blocked nose, etc. It's like the nasal cavity, like rest of the body, has forgotten how it was for decades. Every evening, I do some breathing exercises - respirometer, blowing different whistles and blowing the candle out.  Blowing the candle is the hardest. Some valve in the upper oral cavity/ nasal cavity needs to close automatically to close the nasal cavity and direct the air through the mouth. This doesn't yet work effectively for me. So, any air I try to blow comes through the nose and the mouth/ lips just make the act...

When I moved from the ICU to the HDU ward, everyone who visited me used to tell me the same thing - some variation of "everything will become ok, it'll just take some time". I had pretty much taken it for granted that everything will become ok and I will walk out of the hospital. The one and only thing eating me up was "how long?". No matter what, nobody would say that to me and I had no way to ask... I still assumed something in "months" scale. The first time I heard anything about a timeline was after I had come back home and one of my speech therapist saying that it would take another 6-8 months to remove the trachiostomy tube (it was not said to me - I just happened to overhear it). I was heartbroken. This was already 6 months after the stroke. It was unthinkable to be like that for another 6 months. Turns out - she was being very optimistic with her prediction. It was 21 months before it came off. After I have extensively consulted with Dr. Googl...

For the past week almost, my TV has conked. It is likely to take a few more days to get it set right. I am currently feeling like a fish out of water. I have resorted to listen to songs. I am actually liking it. Many of the old albums, english, hindi, instrumental, etc. These were my favourite albums/ songs and I have listened to them countless times in the past. Although it has been many years, I just need to hear the first 1 or 2 seconds of the starting tune/ beats and I am able to know the song. In many albums - playing in order, I am able to remember which song will play next. It's crazy after all this time! It has got me thinking, what if I play a song, keep the phone close to the right ear, close my left ear fully and play the song along in my head? My right ear, which is completely not working, still the sounds hit the ear, still gets converted to neural signals, but they don't reach the brain. Except I don't need the signals. The brain already knows and is singing a...

 Most scriptures say it in very esoteric terms. I have never understood it. It's not that I have not understood it intellectually, but I have not been able to comprehend it really. Who am I really? Am I what is conferred as a role Am I what I think is my status... Am l what I own... Am I my experiences... Am I my body... Am I my mind...  Definitely not the first 4 of those... It's definitely not my body. It doesn't listen to me anymore. Sometimes, without realising, I catch myself referring to it in 3rd person... Some things, I don't want to think about or in a certain way, but I find myself thinking the same. My mind is not listening to me many times. I honestly don't know what the "I" is. Is it feelings/ emotions? If that is true, I am only interacting with everyone through the same medium... Irrespective of what they are, who they are, etc. Everytime I interact with someone, what feelings and emotions do I invoke... End of the day, how everyone responds...

This has no medical basis. I feel/ think, based on the progress of my rehab, that my stroke did 2 kinds of damages to me. Physically speaking, the consequences have been several... The stroke happened in my brain stem. The brain stem is the main connector between the brain and the rest of the body (through the spine mainly). Like a conduit. The brain stem is also considered the most ancient part of the brain, so nothing "human" is managed by it. But it controls very vital automatic functions - like hear beat, blood pressure, breathing, body temperature, swallowing, sleep cycles, coughing, amongst many other things we do automatically and naturally. So actually, the stroke left me with all human abilities, and many of the animal abilities stripped off. 😂 It's anti-evolutionary if you think of it like that... Some things - like heart beat, blood pressure, etc have been ok - although struggled in the ICU initially Many other things -like breath control, swallowing, coughing...

If you have seen the movie "inception" you will be familiar with the concept of a dream within a dream. Well, I am about to have a nightmare within a nightmare. After my stroke, I have been struggling to open my jaw. For sometime, I thought it was affected like everything else and muscular control was gone and therefore not moving. After a little more than a year, I realised that it was not just weaknesses but a sort of condition where the jaw is kind of locked and can't even be forced open from the outside by others. I realised this when they struggled at the hospital to insert a "bite block" during my tests (a "bite block" is inserted into the mouth to prevent accidentally biting the tongue during procedures). During my surgeries needing an endoscope to be inserted it was a big challenge too. Because it was extremely painful, they couldn't do it while I was concious and have done so only after knocking me out. In one of the procedures, they succe...

I have had some very positive experiences recently whilst dealing with the customer care of a very big establishment. All on emails and chat...  It is a big establishment and they should be well trained with a good process undoubtedly. However, I have had the same positive experience in the last year with many places, big and small. Even when I had ordered a piece of furniture at the turn of the year, and I was not very happy with the product and very unhappy with the delivery/installation, I got very patient customer service. Again, all over email and chat. When I could speak earlier, I have not had this same experience. I can only deduce, that my impatience/ irritation / anger at times, was very evident in my voice and folks were only reciprocating my behavior.. Why was I not showing the patience that I was expecting back? Why did it not register that the other end of the line had a person first and the organization next. Why expect good behaviour when I was not doing the same......