20230212 : Phantom's alter-ego

You may have heard of Phantom - Phantom of the limbs i.e.

Phantom limb is a syndrome felt by many who have lost a limb. Could be a hand or leg - which has been lost in war, accident or something else and had to be amputated.

Basically they sometimes feel the lost limb - strange feelings in the limb or pain in the limb, etc - even though the limb is not there. Its not an easy problem to solve - how can we cure a hand or leg that is not there.

It happens because the nerve endings of the lost limb, where it is amputated, sometimes send vague messages up to the brain. The person does not see the limb, so their mind agrees but the brain is still seeing the limb sometimes because it is getting signals. It is a very confusing feeling when the mind and brain don't agree .

I don't know Phantom, but I am very familiar with his alter-ego.

I have two limbs and various pieces of real estate on my body which are his home.

Take my right hand as an example.

I can see it . I can touch it with my other hand - so my mind agrees. Its there - in plain sight.

However, my brain does not see it and disagrees. It is an extremely extremely confusing feeling when the brain cant see what our eyes and mind is seeing. I just cannot describe how it feels in words.

When I was working before the stroke, I worked in a small IT firm. My colleague and I often interviewed and recruited folks along with inducting/ orienting them.

In any of these stages, if a prospective candidate said they they will "try" to do something, it was very usual for us to do something - keep a pen on the table and ask them to try to pick it up. Naturally, they would pick it up. For that we would say - don't pick it up, "try" to pick it up. The idea was to let them know that they can either pick it up or not - there was nothing inbetween. The message (especially in the professional world, which I still think is true for a professional world) was - we can either get something done or we can't - there was no "I tried" inbetween.

It would take a few attempts and awkward moments - but the message would get across eventually.

Have you "tried" to lift your hand? I don't think we have ever thought about it. When we want to lift our hand - we just lift it. We don't think about it, the hand just goes up. We don't do anything to lift it. It's not the conscious mind, but the brain doing the work subconsciously. It just happens seamlessly.

That is - when the mind and the brain agree.

I on the other hand, have a mind and brain that don't agree.

The mind sees a hand but the brain doesn't. They haven't been in agreement for 4 years now.

I have read much about how we should concentrate, focus and think about the movement and it may start. But how do you think? I mean, there is no reference in the mind. If we know a little bit of something, we can do more of it, more frequently etc. But how do we do something we have never done, never seen somebody doing it and never even known about it? 

I don't know how "karma" works (I mean - I do know from a information point of view, I don't know through deep understanding and knowledge how it works). However, this probably is the office karma coming to bite me on my backside. I now know very intimately what the "try" means. Not just try, I am very familiar with try's cousins - "pretending to try", "try genuinely", "try half-heartedly", "try hard", "try desperately", etc - many of it's variations.

I do physiotherapy, speech therapy, swallowing therapy. It is at these times Phantom's alter-ego is at his best. How much the mind tries desperately and the brain has not yet found its way.

I have to keep reminding myself that all the therapies are not to the limbs or the throat etc. I have a reasonably good body . It is the brain that has to heal. All the therapies are only stimulants to the brain and it has to repair itself - and it takes time. It's own sweet time on its own terms. 

The brain is still lost in the dark because of Phantom's alter-ego!