Left side mobility{oh boy!]

When the left side is more dysfunctional than the right; life does get difficult, even if others do not notice, or at least they do not think they do. People will make comments such as: You only smile to one side, you smirk to the right only, your dimple on that side [right] is deeper than the other one, why doesn't your left eye brow move, ect... Trying to just play off these slight abnormalities is a tad wearing at times. Let's take a jump back to come to a logical reasoning for abnormalities of the left side, at least in my case.

When anyone is hit in the head, the brain, a jello like substance of tissue and neural connections, will not only hit the opposite side of the brain, but will bouncy back and forth a bit, kind of like a ping pong ball trapped in an enclosed space. The inside of the skull is rough and and jagged, resulting in minor almost in-detectable brain damage to every hit occurred. The more traumatic the blow to the noggin, the more sever the minor brain damage will become. Fun fact for the day, cheerleading is the number one leading cause of brain damage. Why? Simple, those girls, sometimes boys, are dropped a lot from high heights. 

Suffering a traumatic hit from a vehicle can at times be damaging beyond repair. Such a vehicle as a fully loaded semi truck can do this for example. The brain will usually swell due to the traumatic jiggling around in the skull, side to side, sometimes front to back as well; point and case, this girl never healed fully. It started with learning of my left eyebrow, the muscle no longer moves.

When I try to move my left eye brow I can feel it attempting to move, it feels as if it has raised, little did I know, it will not move any longer. As resulting I now have what I call a "retarded eyebrow", not to concerning right? Correct. Then four years later, I discovered my left vocal cord does not move as well. Oh my things are starting to get weird, just wait it gets better. 

With my vocal cord retardation in movement, I quickly learned of the fact my voice will change at some point in my life due to the right side trying to over compensate for the lack of the left side. Wow! Not something to look forward to I might say, rather fond of my voice as it is, kind of grew up with it. The vocal cord has been lacking in movement for a while, knowing this only because since the accident, I have gotten raspy fast. On many occasions it is difficult for me to yell, sustain a note, or even a sentence. Also due to lack of movement on my left vocal cord, I loose air faster than a human with two working cords. Huh, interesting. 

Slowly, five years later, I am learning of the different retardation's of my left side occurring. Most resent I learned the left side of my mouth does not work properly either. When a friend pointed out my lack of smirking on the left side, I played around in front of a mirror for a while, only to learn the left side does not have as much range of movement as the right on my mouth. Not to terrible of a shocker for me, not pleasant either. Never giving thought to the fact of I always smirk to the right, now I realize I do this out of force rather than desire. When trying to smirk to the left it takes extra effort, feels tight, and is almost energy taking more than if I smirk to the right. Now in case you all think I do not smile, I do. When smiling there are parenthesis's like crazy on my cute little face, only the left side is no where near as deep as my right sides.

Other minor abnormalities I have noticed: 
-My left eye brow is thinner than the right side, it used to be a full, completely there eye brow.
-There are phantom pains on my left side lower rib cage, after many EKG's and other medical tests, doctors can find nothing wrong. Guess I need to go review my scans and medical records again to see if anything was hurt there.
-At times my left hand will not corporate with simple mental commands anymore, it is a struggle to pick anything up with my left hand sometimes.

It terrifies me every day of my life to wonder all the time whether I am going to continue to loose left side mobility on my body or if it is done and I will be okay. I had once something happen where my doctors did not know what it was; my left side went fully numb. Starting at my mouth, it spread quickly throughout my body. I could not feel anything, almost as if there was no left side. Talk about crying like a child who lost their balloon. My mother told me my whole face sagged, as if having a stroke, my left side responded to nothing. This lasted for a good twenty minutes, when it went away, I had to have a baby sitter at school; somebody to continually keep an eye on me and never leave me alone. At the time I thought this was one of the most annoying things that could ever happen to me, a sixteen year old, needing a baby sitter! Oh the thought. Now I look back I am glad, glad for the blessings I received, the people willing to take time out of their life to be there for me even if I was being a brat and stubborn, thankful to God for allowing me to not be a vegetable. 

Appreciate your body, mind, and the communication between the two. This all has been on my mind a lot lately not only because of my friend pointing out my smirking dimple; but because I have some dear friends struggling with complications in their family. A family member is struggling with their brain communicating correctly. It breaks my heart to see this going on with them. It is one event I know God is there for them, with them, surrounding them. If you cannot appreciate something so small and large as to your brain working as it should with your body; appreciate God, or whatever you believe in, is with you to help you always. (: