RENAISSANCE - Post Brain Haemorrhage

Almost over a year and half after we inserted the PEG tube to feed our father, it was time to remove it this summer.  Hurrah.  He is able to consume food orally, although with some coughing and not at a stellar pace, but the good news is he can eat.   Since inserting the PEG was such an adventure, we expected it would alteast be half as much for its removal.  Once this decision was made,  we wasted maybe another two to three weeks to arrange for finances.   It was destination Apollo, so obviously we deemed it necessary to be stuffed with money when we walked in. We fixed an appointment with the same gastro doctor who had inserted it.   As usual had a bag full of questions for him - How long will it take? Should his stomach be empty?  Expected wait time for the procedure?  The cost? Any tests?  All the Doctor had to say for any question was that it was a simple procedure and to just get him to the hospital. The Doctor wa...

                                                                Source: Planetthrive.com  If one were to take a survey of the number of labs in Chennai, the city of our residence, a mindboggling but unsurprising number would show up.    In our 5 months at Apollo Specialty Hospital (ASH) lab tests made up almost one-fourth of the mammoth bill.  As with many things we realized there is Apollo, and then there is rest of the medical world.   Apparently their equipments and diagnostic procedures are cutting edge, a line of reasoning used to justify almost double the cost of tests done elsewhere.    Once out of Apollo it was surely a tough act to follow for some of the specialized test.  But for the routine ones - after two years, various labs and multiple tests I have a...

As a young family living in Andhra Pradesh in 1980s it would’ve been hard to miss movies of K. Vishwanath that are now regarded as classics.   His movies revolve around some theme of classical dance or music.   With no formal knowledge in this classical tradition, but with the ability to enjoy and appreciate art our parents were huge admirers of his movies.   By huge I mean diehard.  We watched the movie Sagara Sangamam countless time -  as kids we made multiple trips to the theater with barely any comprehension of its mature theme, as young teens at home it seemed entertaining and as adults and equals with parents we spent countless hours appreciating and sometimes explaining certain nuances.   Music from his movies was a constant on our record player. Now with all the post stroke rehabilitation we show, do and talk thing that we know our father enjoys.   We repeatedly played the scenes and songs from the Sag...

Good information from this The New York Times article.  Here it goes -  August 6, 2012, 2:08 pm Really? The Brain Gets Rewired if One of the Senses Is Lost By ANAHAD O'CONNOR THE FACTS Certain regions of the human brain are dedicated to the various senses. The visual cortex handles vision, for example, while the auditory cortex processes sound. But what happens if one of the senses is lost? Do the neurons in the auditory cortex of a deaf person atrophy and go to waste, for instance, or are they put to work processing vision and other senses? In studies, scientists have shown that when one sense is lost, the corresponding brain region can be recruited for other tasks. Researchers learned this primarily by studying the blind. Brain imaging studies have found that blind subjects can locate sounds using both the auditory cortex and the occipital lobe , the brain's visual processing center. But recently a similar phenomenon was discovered in the deaf. I...

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...

For the longest of times I have been obsessed with forming a support group for families with stroke patients.    In my conversations with Doctors, Nurses, Physiotherapists, and Social workers one of my predominant questions would be if they know of any families with stroke patients.    If they answer in affirmative, then they would be subjected to a barrage of questions.   What happened? When? Present condition? Who takes care of them? Which Neurologist is consulted?  Which hospital?  And the questions go on.  It usually ends with “May I have their contact number and talk to them myself?” If I do get the number, the families would be asked these and more questions.   In almost all the cases there has been a ready willingness to talk and share.   So now I have around 10 families or so that I talk to on regular basis.  Getting a call from them is a rarity, its usually me hounding them every now and then...

Our father’s lower teeth dentures were missing since the time of his hemorrhage.   They were removable; he was supposed to get them out every night before hitting the bed. We were on the lookout for them.  Well, to be precise my sister was.   She asked everyone -  at the first hospital he was taken to, to the neighbors who took him there,  to any and every staff who came in contact with our father at the specialty hospital where he was later admitted.  No luck.  Dentures weren't to be found.  We got home, months passed, urinary infections visited us a ton of times, my sister still didn’t forget the dentures.  I couldn’t understand what the fuss was all about.  Yes, our father could eat orally, but it was more of swallowing than chewing, so I didn’t see the urgency for tracking down the missing dentures. Bowing to the pressure from his wife and being a dentist himself my brother-in-law took our father t...