11/9/23

some say i'm lucky and when I read some of the other blogs I guess I am

this is my first blog

I worked as a civil structural engineer for 40+ years

I also played sax, keys gtr and sang in a rock band

after my stroke I lost the feeling in my left arm and had some inattention in my left eye

they told me i may have to to consider early retirement adn i may not be able to drive again

this was all based on the wiggly finger test. a fairly common test . but as an engineer not very precise. they could not tell me what area my peripheral vision of my eyesight was affected.

this annoyed me. I put markers all over the wall of my room. i would sit beside the wall and track the end of a stik across various areas of the map on the wall trying to determine waht area i could and could not see.- I could see everything it was the recognition of movement that was the problem not that i couldnt see it. I needed to teach my left and right eye to talk to each other again

someone told me since i was right handed i should try to do with my lfet hand what a can do wit the right

i had an idea-table tennis

i started playing table tennis with my right hand-BOTH EYES OPEN

after being able to do a hundred paddles of the ball i then change to the left hand

after being able to do a hundred paddles of the ball i then started changing hands between shots

and then i put an eye patch over my right eye -LEFT EYE ONLY-now that was a lot harder-loss of depth and periphiral vison but it worked

did the field of vision test and passed

I now have my drivers license back

what was not discovered until some time after the stroke was my loss of muscle memory and changes to my hearing. all loud noise became nothing more than white noise so there was no differentiation of rhythm or pitch to enabel me to play along with the otehr members of the band

playing along to backing tracks is helping but I'm still not playing with the band