20240226: coordination

When you brush your teeth in the morning, do you remember if you keep your eyes opened or closed initially when you take the brush to the teeth? Check tomorrow morning if you are not sure 🙂

before my stroke, I used to have my eyes closed when I started brushing. I don't know why I used to do it, but that is what I did. Maybe it is some sort of a reflex to close the eyes when we open the mouth wide - I don't know.

For about 3½+ years I didn't brush my teeth. It was cleaned by my nurses with some gauze dipped in mouthwash and cleaning what they could with artery scissors.

In the last couple of months I have been using an electric toothbrush as I have the strength to hold it and move it around a bit. I still can't use toothpaste as I can't rinse my mouth with water. I still just dip the toothbrush in mouthwash and swirl it around a bit. 

Every morning I think about this - because I keep my eyes open when I start now. 

Even with my eyes open wide, I am unable to bring it up and make contact with the teeth where I want. Sometimes it is the lip, wrong place on the teeth if I succeed getting past the lips, etc.

Before the stroke, I don't recall getting to the wrong place even with my eyes closed.

Brushing is an example - as it happens pretty much first thing in the morning.

When I am given my glasses - I am not able to raise my hand correctly and hold the frame with my fingers at the right place. I struggle with it. 

My daughter carries a tennis ball with her most of the time - I think it is some sort of a security blanket 😂. Sometimes she comes to me with the ball. I take it, toss it up a little and try to catch it. I can't. I simply can't. Either the hand doesn't get to the right place, the palm doesn't open in time or if it does, the fingers don't close in time to catch it. Its been a miss all the time.

In all the examples above, I know exactly what I have to do. I can almost see it in my mind's eyes. But I am not able to do it physically.

The mind knows what to do, the brain has not yet got the coordination. It just can't process space, movement, speed, etc at the same time and speed needed to make it happen.

The brain is still learning. I have the strength in my left hand for all of this - but the brain has not fine tuned the coordination. It is getting better - but very slowly and only by doing these things repeatedly and giving feedback to the brain as it is learning.

Strokes are not the same. They might be similar but never the same and the consequences of the stroke can be wildly different. This is my stroke and my consequence.

 Other stroke survivors may not experience this exactly. However they may be experiencing something similar. It requires patience and understanding by both the survivors and carers that very simple things are probably not really that simple from the survivor's point of view ....

This is a bit of a stretch of my thinking and generalization. There is no medical basis for saying this but a set of observation and thinking:

Stroke recovery is probably like a small child learning to do things as its brain is developing. The advantage children have is that their brain is extremely extremely fast in the growing and learning part and the complexity they have is that their body is also developing in parallel. Either way, their brains hone this fine coordination also with feedback - feedback when playing, doing things, monkeying around, any sort of physical activity basically.

Over the past 4 years (3½ actually - i have been in the hospital the first half year), over the past 3½ years , I have had 52 nurses. Yes, I know - call me crazy but I have noted down the name, date, which agency they are from, etc. The first 2 years only names from my memory as I couldn't yet hold the phone or type.

They have been of a spectrum of ages. Mostly in 20s. Some of them have been very early 20s some even 19!

The very early ones (19 - 22 maybe) have had the most exposure to devices most likely right from a young age and probably sent a lot of time with it in childhood.

 I am able to see 2 distinct patterns.

1. The younger ones are hooked to their phones more than others. Inseparable throughout the day an also many times in the nights. Device dependence is very evident. 

2. Their hands are less steady, movements less sure and a general sense of struggle with tasks needing both hands and feet coordination etc. There are exceptions, but this is my observation generalized.

So if you have young children or know someone young - another reason to tell them to go a play and monkey around instead of spending time with TVs and other devices at home....