Mind of my Stroked Brain

 Recently, I wrote that I am living on the edge everyday between going on v ​/ s giving up. It probably can also be interpreted as the edge of remaining sane v ​/ s going insane... Anyway, I have often wondered, when everything is looking so bleak to the mind's eye, what makes me go through the day and make it to the next day. What is it that is causing this? Is Love what is giving  ​me the  strength? Love is a very fashionable word in my opinion. It is very easy to say we love someone. It is equally applicable to our love towards people, animals and things. In my opinion, Love gets manifested to reality with care and affection. That's how our love is expressed. Sure, I love my wife, children, family and friends. Everyone to different extent ​s  depending on the degree of closeness or separation. But it has been many many years since I have really expressed any love through care towards anyone. In the initial period of the stroke, I was very very desperate to want t...

There are many challenges and limitations that I face everyday, to just get by the day. I am not unique in that aspect. There are 100s of thousands of people who face challenges and limitations everyday.  I think it is the element of "hope" that is different. I am guessing (& I might be wrong ​ here ), but I feel somehow there might be an element of hope for some improvement  ​in the future  that  ​ p ​ropells  most to go on. I am guessing it might also be the situation with very elderly individuals who have an unexpected mishap/ accident and impacts them  ​ severely .  ​e g , consider an elderly person in ​, say -  their 80s, reasonably independent ​ otherwise ,  ​but  having an  ​unexpected  accident ​/ fall breaking their back/hip. It will be very severely limiting. Given their age, they will inherently know (I am guessing ​ again ) that "hope" and probability of recovery is very dim. That's very very demoralising and di...

  I have been tinkering with and using AI for a while now.  I have used it for coding, documentation, spreadsheets, market  ​ /stock analysis, asking all kinds of information about facts, processes, events, generating questions and scenarios, etc . Pretty much in almost everything. I have not come back empty handed yet and it is getting better every day... ​ Sure, some things might be incorrect or made up. It can be spotted after a while.  I have recently got promotional access to a pro version of an AI tool and it is even better than I imagined  ​( duh! ​) There will be none (actually, there are none already) reasons to go to a school or college for getting information about anything.  Sure, information doesn't give us logic, reasoning and understanding how and why that information  ​was  arrived at  ​and why things are  that way. It needs something more. There are tons and tons of free content on YouTube and a zillion other o...

I watched a movie last evening. It had a lot of scenes with prisoner torture , interrogation and techniques.  It is something I could imagine as a young boy growing up as " 3rd degree " treatment. It was regularly used to refer to extreme torture for interrogation in movies. Of course, I don't know if there exists anything by that name in real life but it existed in reel life definitely.  So I was thinking, almost all of it involved some kind of physical torture to affect the mind eventually. The end goal is to make the subject spill the beans on something. But we have to get to the mind for it to happen. And that invariably involved some form of physical torture/ abuse. I think I have a better idea. I have a fair amount of confidence it will work.  Take a normal person (the subject) - Attach a tube to their stomach (peg it). Dont give them anything to eat or drink. All the required nutrition and fluids can be given as a badly coloured, ugly looking fluid every couple of ...

Take a typical well accomplished doctor as a professional (in India as an example)... People have to finish ~ 4-6 years of childhood  ​ p ​rior to  schooling  ~ 13 years of schooling (K-12) ~ 5.5 years of M.B.B.S ~ 3 years of specialisation  ~ 3+ years of super specialisation  And a few years of practice afterwards, they will be considered a well experienced and accomplished doctor. Roughly speaking at least 30-35 years. And they probably have to have had a very good track record all through. A Doctor was just an example and is on the higher side. Take any other profession and  ​to  be a good/ accomplished professional, it will take at least 25-30 years, after being born. Point is, none of us ( humans ) are born professionals. Sure, some may have an edge because of  ​their  genetics of being a little more "intelligent" or having a little more "memory capacity", etc.  However, everyone is born with these capacities with a " clean canvas "...

  Let us assume you had a wonderful vehicle. Can be any vehicle - 2 wheeler, 4 - wheeler, a truck with 18 wheels, anything. A vehicle with a good old fashioned IC engine and not the newer EV models  You have had it many years and have had wonderful experiences with it. You have great memories with it.  Let us assume one day it had a very very bad accident and it is completely broken. The specialist mechanics have had a look and haven't been able to do anything to fix it. It is a write off basically...  However, miraculously, the engine survived the accident and is able to run. But, as the vehicle is so absolutely damaged, it just can't ever run  ​anywhere  again ​ and be useful as a vehicle anymore . You can never ever have those experiences with the vehicle again.  Now, because of the good times you have had and can remember, how long will you put fuel everyday and keep just the engine running? It's not an efficient engine anymore. Needs a lot of fuel...

 Thoughts are not linear to easily understand how we came across some line of thinking. It jumps from one to another seemingly unrelated thoughts. This is one such thing. I have no idea why I started thinking about this... Note: as usual, some of the things I have said might not be relatable ​to everyone  and even offend ​some of  you. Please ignore and read no further in such a case... "Survival of the fittest by natural selection" - that is Darwin's famous and well accepted theory explaining evolution.  According to it ​, simply put, evolution is a random series of mistakes (genetic mutations) which makes specimens of species either fitter or weaker and subsequently, nature has a brutal mechanism of weeding out everything that was less fit as against a fitter specimen and the better one survives. It applies to everything from animals, plants, insects, birds, fish, etc., etc. ​ That is how any species has not just survived but gotten better and better over the year...

 I have had a couple of folks (friends & family) come home in the past few weeks. Visiting after a few months - after about 6+ months at least. They have all remarked that I have improved . Now it could be 2 things:   1. They are just being nice and making conversation 2. They are telling the truth and they actually see some improvement I'll give them the benefit of doubt that they are indeed seeing something that has improved. When most folks come home and see me, I am not lying on my bed in my room but plonked on the wheelchair and in the living room. I have a pillow on my legs to cover the mess that happens underneath and I will typically be pushed to the dining table so waist down, nothing is visible really and they get to see mostly my face and upper body with only my left hand moving. So, it leaves me wondering what improvement are they seeing? When I had my stroke, my face was very very disfigured as most of my facial muscles couldn't move and most of them had spasm...

 Note :- some of the things I have said below might seem a bit sexist and offend a few. I am definitely not intending to do anything like that. Please ignore this if you don't agree with the view I have shared... The world population is shrinking. There is enough data available to show that the women's fertility rate is going below the population replenishment level of 2.1 (i.e., every woman has 2.1 children on an average to sustain the population) But the world population is not going down. There are many other statistics to show that. Thing is, The population in most "developed" countries is steadily declining and it is steadily increasing in "developing/ underdeveloped" countries. Ex., Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Italy, Spain, Austria, Germany, etc. - they are all going down. Niger, Angola, Uganda, Somalia, Mali, etc, etc - they are all exploding! So what is really happening? If we scratch the surface of the data, we will realise that the world...

" Delayed gratification "  That's a concept that is fast depleting in the world today  I don't watch series/ serials on OTT platforms generally. I think it is a waste of time, but I do understand the entertainment value they bring.  I am watching on such series currently. Unfortunately, it is like having watched mission impossible all 7 installments and impossible to watch the 8th one - irrespective of how much we don't want to as a principal. Just not possible.  I have watched the earlier 3 seasons and hence, whilst I still think it is a waste of time, I have succumbed to that psychology as the 4th season has released this month.  I watched it about 2 weeks ago. I binge watched of course.  After watching 3 episodes, to my horror, there were no more episodes! The season has many more episodes, but only 3 episodes were released for consumption on the day.  I thought there might be a technical glitch which will get rectified and rest of the episodes will...

I am not an optimistic person. I am not very pessimistic either. I would consider myself as a pragmatist with a slight bent towards pessimism.. . that trait has helped me very much throughout my life/ career to foresee risks & issues more than most others and be prepared for it... The following is guided by that same basic characteristic of mine ...   I don't know what % of people in the world are aware of the emergence of AI, its abilities, its consequences , etc. My take is it is a very  miniscule %. Apart from awareness, nobody in that miniscule % will know what hit them  when it does  - because, there will be enormous and very sudden impacts to jobs and livelihoods. One of the very predictable things that is peddled by the folks building these AI systems is that there is nothing to worry about as we will always have the need for jobs like nurses, plumbers, electricians,  etc. High touch and needing  human  emotions kind of jobs. That's true, AI...

  ​It has been a while since I have written anything. It is not that I don't have thoughts coming and going which can be shared, I just don't feel like it anymore. As is commonly said, I don't have " enthu " anymore. For close to 6 years after my stroke, I was carrying on with everything and all activities. While it was not overt/ explicit/ or much, I guess there was an underlying "hope". Hope for what? I don't exactly know. but there was some hope which was propelling me I think. Over the past 6m or so, things have gotten worse. Physically, I have become a lot weaker. It is probably not visible to others to perceive, but I am aware how much weaker I have become when I do daily things like sitting, physiotherapy, etc. probably my physiotherapist is the only other person who sees it. Whatever little gains in movements on my right leg and hand have almost completely become zero for months now. Even with my left side, I have become a lot weaker than ear...

Yup, 6-er today. 6 years since I had my stroke. I had the stroke when I was 43. If I make it to the end of this year, I will complete my ½ century on the scoreboard overall. I can certainly say this past year has been the year of regression in my rehabilitation - both physically and mentally.  Physical  fitness (unfitness actually) has probably dragged the mind in a negative/ downward spiral as well. Physically, there have been no real gains. Both my right leg and hand have become worse than they were a year ago. Been additionally having a nagging back ache for many weeks now which is not allowing me to do usual physiotherapy routines. I felt there was some gains inbetween with voicing but that has been lost as well for sometime. So, all in, not a positive year. Mentally, day to day mundane activities I am doing fine. But the deeper mind which deals with more existential thoughts has decayed a lot. I am not able to reconcile the need to exist. I think I have written about this...

 One of my nurses (attenders) went today after a while.  I have 2  ​" attenders ​"  now instead of "nurses" mainly because  (i) There is no point having a nurse.  There is nothing to nurse anymore. Just need someone who can keep the lights on ​... (ii) Nurses are much more expensive than an attender.  ​Nurses usually have a Degree in nursing, maybe experienced, at ease  GNM degree (General Nursing Management)  Attenders  ​on the other hand,  are usually 10th/ 12th pass, untrained and ​ usually  having some compulsion (mostly economic) to agree to do something like this job.  Anyway, getting one is not easy. It is a very quasi-organised industry and very chaotic at that!  There are many many sources (agencies) and it is very easy to get an attender, but getting someone who  ​" clicks ​"  and stays a while is very very difficult and usually takes a miracle. When an attender leaves from here, it is usually a re...

Critical life support systems... We have many needs in life. But not all of them are critical for life itself. Just an extension of "Maslow's hierarchy of needs"...  Ex., we need a number of things in life today - shelter, clothing, sense of security, etc., etc. you can even throw in electricity, internet, wifi, mobile nowadays. Most of us will die without it.  They are all needs, but not critical needs in my opinion. As per my opinion, there are only three things that are critical to life. i.e., life won't survive without these things: 1. Oxygen/ air/ breathing  2. Water/ fluids/ drink  3. Food/ Nutrition/ eating or consuming  1. Air - we breathe. It only takes a couple of minutes for humans without it to die. If we can't breathe, usually we are plugged in to some sort of ventilator machine. It's an external critical life support system. If one cannot breathe at all and has to be on a ventilator forever, how long is reasonable to keep them plugged in (assum...

There is rarely a channel I can watch nowadays for an hour without hearing AI or Humanoid robots. They are being manufactured by several companies to help us at home/ working alongside us , even make us coffee. Usually they are showing of its capabilities and how it moves and does this and that... And I can think about is how incredibly clumsy it is .  I mean, what is our obsession to make it look like a human being and limit it's abilities. For ex. It is struggling to stand, walk and balance on two feet. Any kid from high school will tell you that the most stable platform on and surface is with 3 legs. That's why we have tripods for cameras. So why not build a robot with 3 legs and see how it does. Same with hands/ arms. We (in india) have grown up listening to the great Gods with nothing less than 4 hands. Most have 10. So why limit these robots with just 2. I am sure they can get more done and more efficient with a few more. Looks like the limitations of our mind is being im...

Recently, I wrote about my feeling that my condition had started on a declining slope. ( https://mindofmystrokedbrain. blogspot.com/2024/12/20241201- two-lines-curves-and-their. html ) I got many kind folks telling me afterwards that it was going to be temporary, not lose hope, it'll certainly get better, etc. I think we, human beings - are inherently compassionate/ good. At least 99+% of us. I think so. As an untrained person, If I meet a stage 4 aggressive illness person, who has absolutely no chance and is in a palliative care facility, my first impulse is to offer kind words of "it'll be ok" etc. The feeling is real. very real. but devoid from reality completely. Same with me. I completely and 100% appreciate & understand the sentiment of caring by folks offering it. But as I said, it is completely devoid of practical reality. Even my therapists who work with me everyday don't know what is happening with me everyday. Due to their professional experience ...

In the initial months after my stroke. I could hardly see anything that was moving.  It doesn't have anything to do with my retina, optic nerve etc. in order to focus, our lens have to either bulge or thin out to focus incoming light properly on our retina. This action is controlled by "ciliary" muscles. No points for who controls them - completely by our autonomous nervous system whose seat is in the brain stem.  So, I couldn't see anything that moved. At one thing in one place, it would slowly settle down and focus but couldn't deal with moving things.  This was very exasperated when I was taken somewhere in the car. Couldn't see anything from the side window. Everything was constantly moving and what I saw was just a haze.  Over time, like most things in my body, it started very slowly getting better.  If I describe it as a line , it was an upward moving line with a very small upward gradient. This was a line driven by the work of neuroplasticity. In the pa...