Current Status

What's up with me right now?

Mental
Not depressed, taking anti-depressants, happy enough to be making plans and going to the gym, so all is well. Not currently meditating.

Visual
I have one and a half syndrome, although it has grown less marked.
I see double (diplopia) with a diagonal displacement. This seems to be improving very slowly.
My eyes effectively shake, due to oscillopsia (as well as the nystagmus that comes with one and a half syndrome. This is the most debilitating visual deficit, because it can make reading extremely difficult.

Facial
I have a left-side facial palsy, which means that much of the left side of my face is paralyzed. This has improved from the days immediately after the stroke, when it was as though the whole of the left of my face had been injected with Botox.
As a result of the palsy, my left eye does not close fully, but is showing signs of improvement.
My lips are also affected on the left side: the corner is still paralyzed, although my lip seal has improved.

Vocal
Both sides of my voice box are now working, and my vocal range is increasing.
My articulation is relatively poor, or at least much more effort. I have most difficulty with plosives.
I can't talk at the rate I once did, mostly because articulation is harder. Sometimes I feel like the words in my head are trapped behind my mouth, but it has mostly made me easier to understand paradoxically!

Balance
My balance is poor. I think this is because of the right side weakness, but it may be vestibular (in the inner ear), and harder to correct. The result is that I usually look a bit drunk walking down the street.

Right Side Weakness
From the shoulder down, I am weaker in a lot (but not all) of the muscles on my right side. The majority of my brain damage was in part of the brain that controlled those muscles. Over time, other parts of the brain should take responsibility for those muscles, but in the meantime, they have atrophied and I am both much weaker, and have less stamina.

Cognition
According to the tests, there's been no cognitive damage. This either means there was no cognitive damage or that I was so smart before the stroke, that after the stroke I'm too smart for damage to register. I think there was no damage.

Memory
Same as cognition: there's been no damage. but I have noticed that I have little or no memory of things leading up to the strokes, presumably because that stuff never made it into long-term.

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