Mind of my Stroked Brain

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...

I loved food. Any kind as long as it was vegetarian. It has been that way ever since I have been a kid. I don't remember me fussing to eat anything. This was only passive consumption. For almost a decade before my stroke, the love for food xhanged from passive consumption to active experience and experimentation with food. I used to love cooking - especially without any recepie and just try various things and see how it turned out. I loved entertaining and feeding others as well. For the past 4½ years, I have been having only fluids through a tube - initially it was a ryles tube through the nose and almost 4y afterwards through the peg tube to my stomach. When I had the stroke, after coming out of the disoriented and confused state, one of the first things for the mind to come to terms with was not being able to swallow and consume anything. Water, food etc. Not even my own saliva. It was very disturbing to see others eat foods, gulp down water, have a hot cuppa, etc. After sometim...

Disclaimer: 1. None of these are my original thoughts. I have watched, listened to and seen a lot of useful and useless content. Based on all these inputs, it is processed junk from my mind. Since I can't remember the source, I cite the internet and Google Maharaj. Crudely speaking, I have been consuming all kinds of junk and out of indigestion, I am vomiting out part of the partly digested junk 🙂. 2. I have used some terms loosely. These are terms based on only my informational knowledge and not experiential knowledge with conviction. Please take it with a pinch of salt and chill if not aligned with you beliefs. __________________ One of the things that baffles me is how limited our ability is to think beyond what we are physically in human form. Ex , in almost all alien movies I have seen, the aliens are  depicted in some crude way looking like humans (and smaller mostly) sometimes geen in colour, sometimes distorted but human like faces , different types of fingers but same two...

 There are 3 theories I am aware of with regard to how we evolved as species: 1. That it was a barren planet and one day couple of millions of years ago (or billions), by accident , a single cell figured out how to convert sunlight into its own energy and also by accident figured out how to divide itself and multiply. Many millions (or billions) of years of mistakes and many species evolved. We are one of them . 2. We were a barren planet and one day a meteorite crashed (it was very common millions of years ago with no atmosphere to burn it up). It carried with it cells with some degree of evolution on intelligence (DNA) and how to multiply and many species evovled from this seeding. It still took millions of years, but it had a leg-up in the process. 3. There are many (or one) superpower somewhere who designed the evolution and species and created all species according to that plan/ design. All 3 are very plausible theories and what we make our own is true for us. The thing I have...

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 m...

I was recently watching something on TV regarding strong man. Involved someone pulling a plane with their hands. There are many others similar I have seen in the past - lifting very heavy stuff, lifting a very heavy stone, lifting and throwing a log , etc. etc. In my younger days, I did regular exercises and played sports to be strong. I think it was not exactly to be strong but not to be and feel weak. I can't recollect any incident where I have been picked on or bullied to feel that way, but somehow it was always on the back of the mind that I shouldn't be or become weak. Over years, the sports came down but was replaced by gym, yoga, etc . After my stroke, there were many many things to deal with but this was a significant one first up - to feel weak. To accept I am weak. Lying in bed not able to move a finger ... I was thinking about this a lot after, what is strength?   I am very sure there are many definitions and everyone will also have their own - this is what I though...

It's a phrase I have come across many times from everyone. "I changed my mind". I have used it many times too... But what do we mean by it? I am sure there are many exceptions to this, but most often it probably means we have chosen to do something a bit more comfortable than the other option. A bit safer than the other option. A bit more familiar than the other option. A bit more confident than the other option. etc., etc. We don't do it very consciously too. I think our minds have that 'safety bias' built in for our protection and safety. But do we need that protection anymore...?  When I had my stroke, I was very unlucky with where it occurred but very lucky with what it did. I mean, yes, it rendered the body very useless but left the mind in very good condition (so I think obviously. I don't know if others will concur 😂) Over the last few years, the left side of the body has been making progress - while it has been painfully slow in absolute terms, it...

I didn't sleep much last night... But for me, ours is a female household. My wife is a few years younger than I am - and very beautiful. We have 2 very beautiful teenage daughters. Occasionally, my mother-in-law stays with us. My mother visits us everyday. Our housekeeper is a middle aged woman and stays with us morning till late evening everyday. Our domestic help is a woman - probably in her early 30s - spends a couple of hours with us everyday. Heck, even our dog is female! Yes - we definitely are a female household. Having an unfamiliar male with us is like letting a cat loose amongst pigeons! An absolute no-no. Luckily, both my nurses/ attenders and women - in their early 20s I am guessing. I am a middle aged male. Usually women nurses/ attenders won't accept middle aged male patients. Either they themselves dont want to - because of the usual apprehensions of the nuisance factor to them or their families will object (if they are young) or their husbands won't allow (i...

Disclaimer : These thoughts and views are mine based on thinking and feeling. They have no medical backing so please take it with a pinch of salt or discard entirely 🙂 *** All of the brain stroke cases, ischemic, hemorrhagic or any other type leads to a damage to a part of the brain. The body is a slave to the brain , entirely - 100%. Various functions of the body are impacted depending on where the stroke occurred and the extent of damage it caused. The brain is difficult to heal. It has the capacity to heal but takes instructions only from the mind. Yes, I think the brain is a slave to the mind, 100%. Yes, the brain can be exercised through external therapy and drugs etc. However I think it can only be healed by the mind.  Where is the mind and is it separate to the brain? I don't know the answer to that with certainty, but I think it is. I also don't know if the mind resides in the head or the whole body or somewhere else, but I do think it is seperate to the brain. The bra...

I woke up last night (around 3:00am am I think). I woke up for something and couldn't put myself back to sleep. I was laying rolling different thoughts in my head - both previous day's events and various abstract junk. There were so many thoughts I wanted to do something, follow up with things and many new things popping up here and there. I have had a lot of time to mull over many thangs in the past but this was a different experience with so many things popping up at once. There may be something to do with the time. I was panicking with the thoughts. Not because the thoughts themselves were difficult ones but there were too many too fast. My issue is if I have any thoughts in the middle of the night, I can't get up, put on the light, take a paper and pen and jot it down so I can remember them later. I have to make that list in my head and try to remember later. I was panicking because there were so many things I wanted to remember and follow up and I knew I would fall bac...

When I started to write, it was very new to me and was via WhatsApp to a handful of very close people. It was more a compulsion - that was the only way I could convey what was going on in my mind. It was a very small group on WhatsApp. After a while, I got some courage and included a few more people. Still on WhatsApp. I had to create a broadcast list for that. This, while it was to share my random thoughts and share what I was going through and thinking, was mainly to generate conversations. I badly needed them. Encouraged by many of the folk, I put it up on a blog. I don't know why I did it, it was a painfully long job for me. I think I did it mainly to prove to myself that I can do it. No bells or whistles - just a very simple one. I knew nobody was seeing it because it gives stats, but for some reason kept it updated. It was just there. Nobody really visited it. Recently, I decided to post it on social media. Simply because I wanted to get a better readership reach on one part...

Sometimes I think there is a creator. I don't know either way but ever thing is beautiful, symmetric and perfect in nature (except the human mind maybe!) It's very hard to accept everything got the way it did through consequences of mistakes over time - irrespective of how long. I think there is a creator who built/ created everything - like in a game where we can build stuff. Kind of a metaverse of the creators (well, it is likely to be multi-player).  After a while, he/she got bored and took their hands off to see what would happen. Unfortunately, nothing happened. So he/ she got another creator (who was equally bored), and started playing a game. They could change everything in the original creation, except they could not do it themselves. They decided to give us a mind and had to do everything through us by controlling the mind.  Like a game of chess, one was playing bright thoughts and the other was playing dark thoughts. both are creators just playing a game. One was su...

I got my PEG tube replaced few days back.  Although the one that I finally got is the simple replacement tube, they didn't know till I agreed that I would agree. So, as a precaution, they got me ready for the other type which requires administration of anesthesia and they kept me on a empty stomach. Funnily all the nurses kept referring to it as NBO (nothing by oral). That's funny for someone who is on the PEG only because they can't have anything orally. Anyway, my last feed (reduced already because I had an upset stomach earlier) was at ~ 10:30pm. I am usually fed every 2 hours. The body is used to the regular flow of fuel to keep going. I generally feel hungry by that time in the morning. Even with very diminished feelings, I can sense the hunger. I was not fed before the procedure. They finally did the procedure by ~ 11:30am I think. After the procedure they can't feed for ~4-6 hrs. Post that it is only water (50ml) and very gradual ramp up to about 150ml and only c...

"Just message we'll skip today" "Cool. What do you intend to do instead?" "I'll watch some TV." "It's too noisy early in the morning. Anyway 'news' - same things will repeat in 1 hr in all channels." "I'll use the mobile - something urgent may be there." "Are you kidding me? Important! Nothing worth your attention has beeped in a while. Everything else can wait." "Besides, it is running out of juice and needs to be charged." "I am a little tired today." "Tired of what? You just got up." "Besides, you lie around all day afterwards."  "I am just not feeling like it." "How many times to have the same conversation. Feelings don't come before thoughts! Just think differently." "Ok...." _______________ That was the actual conversation my mind had with my mind this morning before the physiotherapy session. I am guessing the lazy part of ...

Some days back, I was chatting with my friend - something about the mind being active when not conscious. It raked up some memories after the stroke when I was in the ICU.  I think for about 3 weeks the world was dead to me. But I was living in other fantastical worlds. From land to water to ice, they were all kinds of worlds. Some of these are slightly hazy now - on account of the time, but many are very vivid in my recollection. For about 2 weeks after, when I was waking up to this world, many things were mixed up (quite seamlessly) amongst the worlds that I had no way to tell one from the other. I know I acted up weirdly  here mixing both. Which got me thinking - there are so many things that are taken as given as rules of this world. Not man made rules but absolute behaviours. Eg, gravity, behaviour of light, etc. Basically the unquestionable laws of this world. However in the other worlds I lived and experienced - made up worlds maybe; but very real to me for that period ...

On some occasions, I have referred to body, brain, mind etc., and sometimes in 3rd person. Some of you have remarked what it means. So I am trying to clarify. Hopefully it will make sense. ____________________ Disclaimer : these are my thoughts and only my blah blah blah... That's true but not entirely true. I watch stuff all the time from philosophers, spiritual folks, science stuff, medical stuff, modern thinkers, etc.  I will be lying through my teeth if I claimed independent and uninfluenced thoughts. I just don't know how much is my own and who has influenced what. I can only say, if it resembles somebody else's views - it probably is. So assume it is that person saying it; in my words (hopefully that is not plagiarised too). ________________________ The way I have experienced these, I think we have the following entities: mind, physical body, energy body, brain, feelings/ emotions. Why I look at them as separate things, is because one triggers the other and can almost...

More I look for what someone is not doing,    More I will find. More I look for what someone is doing,   More I will find as well. Same person, same reality. In the former, I trouble the mind (and the body as a consequence I suppose). In the latter, I nourish the mind (and the body). Which line I pursue is upto me, not the mind...

My Physiotherapist does a particular stretch everyday. He holds my right leg on his right shoulder, holds the knee with his left hand ( so that the leg doesn't bend), holds the foot with his right hand and presses the leg down. Releases it and repeats is few times. If I had voice, the neighbours would have surely complained! It stretches the hamstring, calf, achele's tendon and presses the hip down to the bed (it's a bit out of place) It is not a new routine. From my recollection, he has been doing it for last 1.5 years at least. For the initial many months, I could feel nothing. I used to be distracted with some other thoughts while he went about it. I used to be watching the process like a mannequin's leg being worked on. Now, when he gets to that part (yes, there is a complete pattern everyday), I keep telling myself to relax, but the mind goes bonkers. So what is this pain?  It is the same leg, same muscles and same stretch. The reason is straight forward - the neur...

When I had the stroke, after I could realise what was happening, I found the doctors come every morning and pinch me or create some pain/ discomfort at various places and ask me if could feel it. These were days I could move only the eyes vertically . Couldn't even move them sideways. I was instructed to "look up" for 'yes' and "look down" for 'no'. So there was a lots of looking up. Unfortunately, there was no follow up question "does it pain". So I was easy game every morning. Also, the limited vocabulary didn't allow me to give a full response. The actual response would have been - "yes", "but it doesn't feel the same way as earlier. I can feel when you touch me. But I can't feel the pressure. The touch at the skin level doesn't feel like it used to. If we fall asleep on the hand, and wake up, the hand is numb. If someone touches us, we can feel. But it is a wierd feeling. That's how it feels" ...

When I was in the hospital after the stroke - maybe 2-3 months after, I could move my left palm. I used to indicate that they, anyone, had to keep my legs apart (shoulder width maybe). I don't know if anyone knows why. It was probably another one of the ocd behaviors. Well not really. Anyone wearing a diaper will know how uncomfortable it is to keep the legs close together. But really did I feel uncomfortable? I have had no feelings there for a very long time. Initially when my neck was not able to lift the head - I couldn't even see the body when lying down. Even now, I am able to feel very little. So I was not feeling anything. I just knew that it would be uncomfortable and I was feeling uncomfortable the way I thought it must feel uncomfortable.  Now, I can see and also feel a bit. It's still uncomfortable. But it's a different uncomfortable. This is what the body is feeling and not the one the mind is making up. I am fed every 2 hrs. If it gets delayed for some reas...