Ed Yong (@edyong209) 2/21/10 9:51 BBC - Teaching stroke patients to sing could helping them recover http://bit.ly/bymQnm Favourite music could help too http://bit.ly/wGAyS

Also seen on Twitter via @ralphsierra. All I know is it's a rare time when music isn't playing in my house. Guess that's a good thing.

Seems strange that I was reading the Esquire article about Roger Ebert tonight and found this

Ebert always had music playing in his hospital room, an esoteric digital collection that drew doctors and nurses to his bedside more than they might have been otherwise inclined to visit.

It's clear from the article that music plays a big part in Ebert's life, too.

Via National Stroke Association, a short video and a fact sheet that remind of the warning signs of stroke and what to do if you experience them. It's no fun living through a stroke, so it's worth a few minutes of your time to take a look.

I don't know who said it to me, but somebody told me early on that recovering from a stroke is like rewiring your brain. A stroke is a brain accident. Bleeding or clotting damages part of the brain, and the site of the damage and the extent determine the rest of the damage the stroke does—you can experience a loss of cognitive skills, a loss of motor skills, loss of speech proficiency, trouble dealing with your emotions, and I don't know what else. To get past the stroke, you have to teach new parts of your brain to do what the damaged parts of your brain used to do. That's rewiring, and that's where the title of this blog came from.

I had a stroke on January 6, 2006. Early in my recovery I knew that I would like to have a journal, a record of what I was doing and what was happening to me. This will be my journal for myself, my family, and my friends.