I was fascinated with the story of Pedro when I read about it in Norman Doidge's book, The Brain That Changes Itself. Pedro was the father of a famous neuroscientist. I saw the same story in another blog. Somebody else found it fascinating.
Pedro
Rewired His Brain After a Massive Stroke
In his book, The Brain That Changes Itself, Norman Doidge,
M.D. relates the brain plasticity miracle of Pedro.
At the age of sixty-five, Pedro Bach-y-Rita had suffered a
massive stroke that paralyzed his face and half of his body.
He was unable to talk or walk, and his sons Paul and George
were told there was no hope for recovery,” and that Pedro
would have to go into an institution.
Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita was a neuroscientist and rehabilitation
physician, and also a pioneer in promoting the understanding
that the human brain has an amazing ability to adapt and
change itself; what we now know as brain plasticity.
At first George, then a medical student in Mexico, arranged
rehabilitation for his father at a local hospital, which
offered a typical four-week therapy.
Pedro showed very little progress, and George decided to
have him come and live with him so he could provide
additional therapy.
He knew nothing about rehabilitation, and his ignorance
turned out to be a blessing. He succeeded by breaking all of
the current rules.
“I decided that instead of teaching my father to walk, I was going to teach him first to crawl” George said. “I told my father, ‘You started off crawling. You are going to have to crawl again for a while.’ The only model I had was how babies learn.”
As soon as Pedro could support himself, George had him crawl
with his weak shoulder and arm supported by a wall.
Pedro loved gardening, and Paul had him practicing outside,
which led to problems with the neighbors who thought it was
unseemly to make the professor crawl like a dog.
It took many hours each day, but gradually Pedro went from
crawling to moving on his knees to standing and finally to
walking.
Pedro struggled with speech on his own, and after three
months it began coming back.
He learned to type normally and at the end of a year he was
able to return to full-time teaching at City College in New
York.
Pedro was active for seven more years until, while climbing
in the Colombia Mountains, he suffered a heart attack.
Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita later discovered that 97% of the nerves
that ran from the brain’s cerebral cortex to the spine had
been destroyed by the stroke.
Pedro's brain had totally reorganized itself as a result of
the intensive “brain remaking.”
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It would make sense that this is what I am doing, "intensive brain remaking". My brain is just restructuring. It's just massive brain remaking. (There was SOME brain, even if it was so little I had "even less brain functioning [than] that would suffice to maintain the live functions of a quite primitive reptile." I like how that was said. Others have said it was so little I was a "vegetable.") Although it looks miraculous now, there's nothing miraculous going on. Everything right now can be explained.
A miracle could have happened long ago when I was unconscious. That's then. This is now.
During my recovery I compared the brain to Silly Putty, http://braininjuryknow.blogspot.com/2011/03/wonders-of-silly-putty.html. I was once told the brain was like clay, but to me the brain is more special than that. Silly Putty is like special clay. Also, like clay, it could be missing some and still do the same things. "But it can still be molded, shaped, played with, and retain most, maybe all, of its properties." My Silly Putty is just changing.
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