Once a survivor.   Now a warrior.

Baby steps are measured in months and years. Mademoiselle Violin decided she was going to pick up the violin and, what-the-heck, play it. What’s transcribed in her YouTube video is magical and shows hard work (conquers all!). I have been doing ecstatic dance for some time now.  Recently, a guy from my ecstatic dance came…

I have climbed a mountain. For someone like me who has survived a stroke, this has meant stepping from “stroke victim”, climbing to “stroke survivor”, and, finally, reaching the summit at “stroke warrior”.  My life post-stroke has been an adventurous journey. I have had to shed my victimhood, say goodbye to my doctors, therapists, and…

Montage “is a technique in film editing in which a series of short shots are edited into a sequence to condense space, time, and information” in a movie. It infects us because the hero is triumphant since s/he takes her or his time which is NOT showed by the use of the montage (except from…

Your brain is a command center issuing commands to the army (your body). Some terrorist blew out one room, maybe, three rooms with a grenade. Imagine, “some terrorist” is the blood clot. The “grenade” is the damage done by the blood clot to your host of your neuron cells. No one has the answers to…

Six years ago, I had a car accident. My seat belt ruptured my artery. And a blood clot went up the artery into my brain. A couple of months after that, I had a stroke. The doctors put me in a medical coma. When I came out of the coma I couldn’t remember my name.…

On December 8, 2008, I was unconscious.  I lay there in the ICU in a medical coma.  The brain surgeon was completely exhausted  He wept to my parents, “He had a fist-sized blood clot in his left hemisphere of his brain.  What we’re seeing is a catastrophic massive stroke”.   He was carefully pointing out that…

And, you said, “What? I am NOT an angel.” “But, you are!” “No,” you said, unsure of what I’m saying to you. “Look at the wings!” I said. “What do you mean by ‘wings’?” you said, taking backwards steps. “Those wings that are growing from upper back,” I said gesturing to your feathery wings. “You…

I knew about aphasia after reading Oliver Sacks’ book, The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. But, seriously, having aphasia is like playing a 1980 arcade game. Things became much more fun when I found a website that suggests video games for people with aphasia. Paste the link in your browser and enjoy!…

AlonAcorn comes across as a flint stone which our hands had been carrying 600,000 years ago. The AlonAcorn is a hand sized piece of foam with deep finger indentations. To use, simply secure it with velcro straps, and then crawl on the floor or use it during various yoga postures, such as downward facing dog.…