Neuroplasticity and Stroke Survivors: Reversing My Limbs? It's Starting to Work for Me!

I don't know what to call it. I just simply don't. A kind of neuroplasticity? Let me tell you what I came up with last week that's helping me walk better and longer.

I was having one of those days that I have every once in a while, but I was having it, whatever it was. I had a stroke in 2009 and my right side was affected. My right hand is useless, just there for the sake of it, but I walk with a quad cane that gets me where I want to go, though often relying on the wheelchair. (There are some facts right there that will signal "one of those days").

Anyway, I was daydreaming. Wouldn't it be wonderful, I thought, if my walking were improved by thinking the left leg had the problem instead of the right?

And so it was that last week I pretended my right leg was fine and my left leg had the problem. And I walked down to the laundry room--and back. And I walked up the hill that enters the parking lot. And I walked to the car. And I walked into the blood center where I am tested once a week--and back. And I walked into Giant Eagle for their salad bar and ate their fresh greens right there--and back. That was a new experience for me.

My friend stopped asking me if I was all right because, she told me later, my face was beaming. I was walking with the confidence of a human who has something wrong with her left leg. It wasn't major, just something.

Some other things happened, too. I lost 19 pounds with the help of My Fitness Pal which I downloaded to the phone so wherever I am, I can enter the foods right on my phone. It's a fact: lighter is better. I have a better state of mind, now that everything else worked out. Maybe that helped. But I have to go back to my limb reversal trick, thinking the left foot was bad instead of the right.

So I did some research. Could just thinking it make it so? Maybe. I'll tell you what I found.

Dr. Mark Hallett, Chief of the Human Motor Control Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, in a recent publication, wrote, "Body parts can compete for representation in the brain and use of a body part can enhance its representation. A body part is represented in various areas of the brain, both motor and sensory. The sensory representations are those that are active when sensory stimulation of that body part occurs. The motor representations are those whose activity produces movement of that body part."

Doctors can sometimes be fuzzy, speaking from personal experience. What the good doctor is saying is that body parts which have movement should be maximized to the nth degree and compete to the fullest. Ergo, my limb reversal makes sense.

Forward to today. I'm still doing it, thinking my left leg is worse than my right. But all strokes are different. Don't try this method unless you have a hands-on person the first 2 or 3 days. After that, maybe you'll build up confidence like I did. [Boolya!]

I have it down now. I bike 45 minutes on the stationary bike 4 times a week, sweat a lot, and move more without the wheelchair. If I keep this up.... No. I don't want to make any predictions.

The Motorized Shopping Cart, aka Hell on Wheels

An excerpt from my book, "The Tales of a Stroke Patient"....

The plug which led to recharging the battery was still in its socket. Using the patience I was born with, and not so much since I had the stroke, I waited for help. While I was waiting, I saw the controls: forward, backward, a wheel when you wanted to turn, and a horn. Easy enough.

The help soon arrived in the form of a teenager who was going on break.

"Could you unplug the cart," I asked, knowing he was going to do it.

"Sure," he uttered, with cigarette smoke on his breath. He probably wanted to get in a full smoke before he had to return to duty.

He unplugged the cart and wrapped the excess cord behind the unit to keep it out of my way. I tipped him though I knew it would be going for cigarettes.

By now, 15 minutes had passed and my friend was long gone from the produce aisle. Oh, well, I really was on my own. But he had the shopping list, though I had my cell phone. So I called him.

"Where are you," I inquired.

"In the ketchup aisle."

I wasn't used to sitting down while I went food shopping, so I had to raise my head a bit higher to see where the ketchup was. It was in aisle 9.

"Where were you," he asked, though I knew he really didn't care where I was, just so long as I didn't leave the store.

"You said, 'You're on your own.'" He switched topics when he knew I had him dead to rights.

"I'm going to get crackers. Which kind do you want?"

I followed close, but I lost him in aisle 17 when he said he was going back to retrieve something he'd forgotten. I couldn't make a u-turn fast enough. I went to aisle 21, the dairy section, because that's where he would wind up. String cheese was on the list.

I decided to practice the controls at maximum speed because at this point, I only used the forward button. I stayed on the same path and I counted to three. Forward (1, 2, 3). Reverse (1, 2, 3). Forward (1, 2, 3). Reverse (1, 2). I never got to 3 because a fashionable though ostentatious woman (you know the type where their poop doesn't stink?) was there in the path I had so carefully laid out for myself. Not only did I hit her on her hip, but I ran over what I thought was her recently manicured toe.

She was on the cell phone and I probably woke her up to her surroundings. She said to the person on the other end, with me sitting no more than 3 feet away, "Some crazy-ass bitch in one of those handicapped thing-a-ma-jigs just ran over my toe! She's sitting right here. And I just had a pedicure!"

I knew it. She didn't mention anything about the hip. Evidently, the toe was a priority. It would have been mine, too, before I had the stroke. At least, I understood her priorities.

She continued talking on the cell phone, going right for the string cheese. Her voice was getting shriller and louder. Oh, crap. What if my friend came back at that very moment and she demanded money for the pedicure, knowing we were together? What if the person she was talking to gave her advice, like getting my license or calling the cops?
....

This is what it is. A tease. If you bought the book, you already know the outcome. If you didn't buy the book, you'll always wonder for a time. Amazon is the cheapest. I'm just sayin'.