As I heal from this stroke, the most interesting things are happening to this beat up old vessel I wear.  I have been in tune with my body over the past several years due to my diabetes, gaging my sugar-levels by physical clues.  These past 6 weeks have been an education.

As minor muscles come back, they hurt.  Imagine not using a muscle for a month or so and then stressing it.  You can't favor the little sucker though, or else you'll never get back to normal.  My left hand, my face, and my leg are working better, but hurting a bit more.

Pain truly is weakness leaving the body.

Dr. Kim explained to me that the brain is weaving new neural pathways for my fine motor control.  As the Axons form, they are not yet covered by a myelin sheath and are electrically inefficient connectors to the synapses.  I can see this.  My motor control is getting much better but only if I move slowly...the connections are not efficient enough yet for fast and smooth motion.

I am also feeling a strange side-effect of this formation of new pathways...muscles never normally used are getting stimulated.  The outer ear (the pinna) has intrinsic muscles, such as the - helicis major, helicis minor (helix being the rim of pinna) tragicus, antitragicus transverse and obliques auriculae, these small muscles help maintain or alter the shape of the outer ear to some extent.

They are twitching in my left ear.  It is the strangest feeling to have the a muscle on the top rim of your ear start twitching when you never knew it was there.  It doesn't bother me because it tells me something is going on in my brain...something is being rewired.  Eventually it stops, and my motor control is better.

The numbness is nearly gone from my hand, and slowly receding from my jaw.  I can fake a normal walk if I'm not too tired.

I'm looking forward to more twitchy muscles I didn't know I had.