keep working hard at what YOU want

16 months post stroke

one of my greatest enjoyments was making music (keys ,sax, guitar and singing) with my friends

after my stroke i lost my muscle memory for playing the guitar,

i lost the strength in my mouth to hold the embrochure for playing the sax,

my hearing was affected, at highish volumes(85-90db) . i could not distinguish any rhythm(drums bass or guitars) to be able to play along with my musician friends everything just turned into white noise and i was completely lost.

NDIS rejected my claim for assistance for loss of hearing because at low volumes my hearing was near perfect.

if my hearing was near perfect then all i had to do was rebuild the speed of my brain so that it could cope with processing the sound/noise when needed

i kept practicing teh little gtr riffs i'd played in teh band and my chord changes

i started to learn to play the clarinet because some one said learn something new to help rebuild the neuron pathways

i practised blowing the sax to rebuild my lung capacity and embrochure

i joined community band so i could watch the conductor and rebuild my timing by watching the batton going up and down while reading the music and listening to the other instruments

i started to learn the trumpet-its something new as well

i got some confidence back with my guitar playing and started volunteering providing accompanyment at the Bethania Dementia choir to help with my listening and gtr playing

i was eventually allowed to go back to work par time on reduced hours

Well something has worked

last weekend i got up an belted our 4 songs with the backing band at the little variety show ive been running-no issues with my hearing, coming in a bit early in spots for chord changes, sax playing almost back to normal singing pitch probably better than it was before( i can actually sing higher notes than i did prestroke

almost back to working full time

i still get tired

if your not exhausted you're not working hard enough

make sure you get plenty of rest- its when the rewiring gets done