vivdunstan

Delighted to manage accordion practice despite neuro disease relapsing majorly. At a similar relapse in 2004 I lost strength on my right side, arms, legs and falling to the right. Essentially a stroke. And 22 years on I'm still often weaker down that side when more tired or during flares. So today it was really nice to see my right hand play accordion well even if I was very light headed!

This was also a really good test of how I'm doing before I speak to my GP soon and we decide what to do extra treatment wise, given how extremely high the inflammation in my brain blood vessels currently is. Meanwhile I enjoy playing French accordion music, including here the polka Martelette.

One really lovely thing about my accordion practice this afternoon is my right hand - and specifically my fingers - was cooperating really well. This is the hand that plays the melody on the piano keyboard side of my accordion. When I had a huge cerebral vasculitis relapse in 2004 (effectively a stroke) I was suddenly a lot weaker down my right side, and falling over a lot to that side. I regained a lot of hand/finger control by teaching myself an enormously difficult piano tune over the next 12 months. But many years on I'm still weaker down that side than I'd like. And especially during disease flares/relapses. A year or so ago I was very sad about it, fearing I was losing the ability to play completely. Well things are looking a bit better at the moment! I still have other neurological things to contend with accordion wise, like light headedness, falling asleep mid play (!) and losing my usually automatic bellows control. But honestly it's so much better than it might have been. So I expect I should be able to enjoy playing my accordions for some years to come. Which is just lovely.