RENAISSANCE - Post Brain Haemorrhage

Brain is constantly changing by forming and even growing new neural connections.   This inherent malleability is called neuroplasticity.   Training, experience and environmental factors can help rearrange the brain.  So we necessarily don’t die with the brain we are born with.     ‘Practice makes a man perfect’, and similar other sayings were in fact alluding to Neuroplasticity.  We know this when we practice an instrument, a language or any skill for that matter.   These days since I breathe Neuro plasticity, its conscious application is the obvious next step.  I’ve had the perfect opportunity to practice this when we get poorly trained and poorly trainable nurses.    Some of these nurses amaze me with their limited knowledge of nursing.   From ignorance about a Trach tube or a PEG feed, they are clueless about basic care giving like changing diaper, giving bath and changing sheets for a pers...

Unlike the zig zaw or matching the shapes game, we picked up this rather simple game not to get disappointed even if our father does not get the first two correctly.  He got the sizes correctly alright, just not always on the first try.  When he got the wrong size in, he would realize it and fix it soon.   I guess we have been playing this for a week now.  This video is the final time he played it, apparently he now gets it all correct in the first try – yahooo!

We seemed to have had some progress in the 10 months since the hemorrhage, but nothing significant to change our father’s everyday comfort.  At our wits end on the next steps in rehabilitation, my sister contacted one Dr. Vishalakshi Raman who specializes in Cognitive Rehabilitation.   The Doctor suggested we pick couple of puzzles and games, match it with music and repeat the games everyday – at the same time, with the same music.   The right brain which is receptive to music apparently would get activated and would learn to associate that music with that particular puzzle or game.   This stimulation is likely to help the right brain learn some of the activities of the left brain.  So we picked up some games last evening.  The first one we tried was placing the shapes in its appropriate spaces.  My sister and I watched him with breathless expectation.  All the achievements throughout our father’s life did not match the triumph ...