On Nov 30, 10:17 pm, Cactus Wren <
elegantspanishgui...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Andrew,
> I am sure glad to hear you are playing so well!
>
> I can't help but have weird, Oliver Sachsian ideas going through my mind with all this. Why did you get better?? I wonder if there was some, hopefully unimportant and nonfunctional part of your brain that went dark, leaving more juice for the important (music-playing, of course) part.
>
>
CW, I think I described the situation in an earlier thread but the
following may answer your question. If anyone reading this is new
here I'll give a little background.
In July 2009, after major surgery which included a blood transfusion,
I went into anaphylactic shock, a reaction to the transfusion, and was
clinically dead for about 2 minutes, which meant no oxygen to the
brain for those two minutes. Brain damage usually begins at about 3
minutes but things can happen faster than that.
I realized a few days after I got home that there was damage. I lost
the memory of almost all my memorized music, many hours worth. I also
completely lost the ability to memorize music. I tried hard for 18
months to reactivate my memory abilities but no dice so I gave up on
that.
I never followed up with a neurologist, or did formal rehab. I just
figured the damage was permanent, and a lot of other things were going
on in my life then so I didn't pursue remedies. I could read, and I
could play, that was good enough. Figured I wouldn't do concerts ever
again.
I didn't know it at the time but I could play and read because my
brain had done what's called a workaround in the first few weeks after
the surgery. My head hurt that first month, and it was a huge effort
to play at all, but I was determined to get back to work.
In large part because within a few months I was playing 5 days a week
with fairly intense gigs, 3 days/week in the Surgical ICU where I'd
been a patient, and 2 days a week at a restaurant here in NY with a
very musical crowd, I was actually getting the ideal rehab. In
essence, after a little over 2 years the network for the music memory
repaired. A neurologist explained the situation when my memory
abilities returned and I realized my skills were better than before
(which was pretty darn freaky when it kicked in, I was like...WTF is
going on!!). The brain doesn't discard the workaround it created, it
blends it in to the repaired network. Computer analogy: I wound up
with a faster processor and more memory.
And your Oliver Sachsian ideas are not weird, you simply have ESP. I
got in touch with Oliver Sachs about this last year because I'm
writing a book, and he put me in touch with his music/brain consultant
of the past 25 years, Dr. Connie Tomaino. She will be part of the
chapter about this aspect of the story.
And, small world, Connie and I were both students at Stony Brook
University in the 1970's (I'm two years older). She got music therapy
started there by doing independent study projects, while I was getting
classical guitar started there the same way (my private teacher was
Jerry Willard who was eventually hired as the faculty teacher, Jerry
posts here now from time to time). Connie and I barely knew each
other, except one afternoon we talked for an hour in the music
building, with her telling me about this fairly new thing called music
therapy and me telling her about classical guitar. When we spoke
next, last year, we both remembered that conversation.
Andrew