Brain Atlas

This will probably not come as a shock to most of you, but I think I know what is going on in my system with this MS thing.  It will not be a major breakthrough, and there will be no Nobel price involved in this discovery!

I started thinking about this the other day when I tried to pick up my pencil.  My brain was saying “pick up the pencil” but the hand was not listening.  I also noticed this when I tried to get up out of the chair and walk.  My brain was saying “right leg move” but the leg was not listening.

I guess I have been more or less trying to figure out a way to explain this to someone who does not have MS.  The map of the brain’s nervous system looks something like this:

With all the little twists and turns a signal has to go through to get to where it is supposed to go, I am not surprised that sometimes the signal gets lost.  I was thinking of it kind of like an atlas:

If you are going through Atlanta, Dallas, New York City or any number of large, congested areas and miss your turn, you may have to go miles and miles out of your way to get back to where you wanted to be.  Or, maybe you take a wrong turn.  The road back to where you wanted to turn may have to be gotten to in a very around and about way. I think sometimes our MS brain works like one of those scenarios.  My brain knows that I want to pick the pencil up, but the message may go to my left leg.  The leg does not know what to do with that request so nothing happens. 

Another way to describe the sensation is that the brain sends something out in English but it reaches the leg in Japanese, so it cannot interpret the request and so nothing happens.  Maybe it is kind of like the Tower of Babel where no one knew what the other person was saying.  Each part of our bodies may be listening in a different language so the brain cannot get across what it is trying to tell them.  Does this make sense??

I know that the doctors have explained it as little disconnected or damaged areas that the signals cannot get through.  That is a good explanation, but I sometimes feel like the signal is getting where it is supposed to go, just not in the WAY it is supposed to get there.

Personally, I like a small town where if you get lost, you don’t have far to go to get back to where you were headed. Just an old country road………

winding around the mountains…………

riding along the beach………

heading across the desert………

anyone interested in coming along??!