Neurologically Me

Imagine You Are Becoming Disabled

Some durations of your life you can pass as mostly normal. Other times, you are so deep in psychosis that you don’t even know who or what you are texting, calling, seeing, or hearing. On the upside, you have tenacity. You have learned to let your failing moments painfully hold you until you have absorbed the information from it that you’ll utilize for effective tactics for strategic achievement. Specifically, you have Basal Ganglia Mineralization. It can be seen on the MRI of the Bilateral Globi Pallidi, Cerebral Peduncles, Right Nuclei, and the Dentate Nuclei. 

Your initial symptoms were pain and fatigue, and then came the disorder of your movement. The movement disorder started in by giving you these oh so cute face glitches. At first it was mostly your right eye that would squeeezze shut randomly. Then came the first moment your whole face went into a slow, smooth, hard, rolling movement. Tears pushed through from your stuck shut eyes because of the fear that this caused you. “I can deal with this” you thought. “Just figure it out.” Then, your whole body would start to come under these attacks. Physically and aesthetically, it felt and looked like what people would think a paranormal possession would look like. The embarrassment of these movements was something you learned to deal with, and in your opinion, less embarrassing than the psychosis episodes you would later develop.

At first you were told it was because you were under too much stress. You didn’t understand “good stress is still chemically, just stress.” You got lucky in the patient realm, and only months later, would be closer to correctly diagnosed with Dystonia. The treatment and judgment of that so much different than being told it was just psychological issues. It would be years until a medical professional would read your brain imaging correctly. Medications were started. Pretty quickly all things sensory started to hurl you into Dystonic Episodes. The life you loved and worked hard for crumbled, and you literally even lost your ability to grasp at the tangibles around you. 

You became wheelchair bound in order to leave the house. Various changes in light, noise, temperature, touch, and even taste, would cause involuntary charlie horses throughout your any or all of your voluntary muscles. Your prognosis is that your voluntary muscles will never work voluntarily again. 

You don’t know, yet, but you’ll fall in love with Experience-Dependent Neuroplasticty, and you definitely don’t know yet, that you will regain control over your movement one day. “I need you to figure this out because I can’t have you die!” Someone close to you yelled angrily at you one day. They could not be there for you often because their life was too hard, too, in it’s own way. 

You were often alone, sometimes stuck contorted for an unknown amount of time. You though, had a privilege many people do not. You didn’t have a support network, or money, but you came from social deviants. You took the different kinds of smarts you had and paired it with your access to google scholar. “I don’t want to have to live through this long enough to even try to figure this out” you repeatedly thought. Then you called back your f&$%ing audacity. Through the facial and body contortions, and losing it all, you moved and you thought anyway.

Neurology is really quite simple. It’s ingredients that move through channel ways. Channel broke? Pray for neuroplasticity to be on your side. Low on an ingredient? Go find the ingredients you need, or make the flavors work with something else. The fascinating brain. I hate it, and it leaves me completely in awe. You took your initial diagnosis of Dystonia, and you experienced what can only be called, “Dystonic Beauty.” You learned to have complete mental clarity when your body was chaotic. The learned Art of Dissociation granted you the ability to cognitively understand when physically you just could not. You didn’t have the words, the vocabulary, the assessment of the restrictions in the world of science, but you took the request of your mother, and you learned the meaning of “Implication,” “Dystonia”, “Basal Ganglia,” “Dopamine,” “Neural Connection.”

Years after the initial onset, your neurologist would look at your medical records, look you in the eye, and state, “You can teach us.” You so often fantasize about what it would be like to be normal, but could the typical mind ever be able to really comprehend, but also do what you did if in the exact same situation? You did not have access to the correct and concise words for your neurologist that day. The simple terminology for how you limited your movement disorder issues is Experience-Dependent Plasticity. The heartbreaking implication of that is that you won’t find a cookie cutter answer for the masses among the minority disabled community that craves one. You have to demand all of the risk possibilities, while hoping for your curated version of optimal results. Human nervous systems are a result of the equation that is Bio+Psycho+Social, and oh the stigma that society grants because they simply lack the vocabulary.