Blog

I've revamped my web and blog with some help from AI and a new technical stack. This is what has happened since last time I wrote here.

2021 has been the year when I started to accept (and even celebrate!) my new status as ABI affected (and survivor). It's not a little thing. ABI is shocking for anyone who suffers from it, but it can be also the beginning of a different, new and better (yes, better!) life. 2022 should be the year when I can consider myself more or less recovered from my ABI and be able to return to more or less normal life.

Code reviews are a fantastic way to keep all the team on the same page and encourage everybody to follow best coding practices. Here you have tips to avoid your code reviews to become painful or useless.

Excluding files for being versioned in Git is easy through the use of the widely known .gitignore file. But maybe you don't really want to use it.

After Juan's surgery, bradypsychia and bradylalia became very noticeable, but music seemed to help speed up his responses.

I explain how I use a notebook and mnemonics to cope with memory difficulties after brain surgery.

ABI is suffered by both the patient and the closest family member. This is Blanca's perspective as Juan's wife and caregiver.

A nervous system is similar to an electrical circuit. If you cut an electrical circuit, an accidental connection between two points of different potential can happen. When electrical circuits in the brain are cut due to a stroke (or a surgery, in my case), abnormal electrical activity can be generated in several parts of the brain. This kind of abnormal electrical activity episodes appear in the form of epilepsy.

When most people hear about memory deficits or memory problems, they tend to just think about forgetting trivial things like what they ate yesterday. But there are symptoms secondary to memory deficits that most people probably doesn't even think about.

Maybe one of the most important pieces of my ongoing recovery is having personal projects I can invest my time and energy in. Of course, my main project now is my rehabilitation, as a whole. But I also think it's good complementing it with other things, which I could also hopefully continue with, once I end with my, let's call it official, rehabilitation process.

A brain injury recovery and rehabilitation (at least partial rehabilitation) is possible thanks to a property of neural networks called neural plasticity or neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is the ability of neural networks, and particularly the brain, to reorganize and maintain its functions when a part of it stops working as before, especially through stimulation and training.

I think one of the most difficult to explain consequence of my brain injury is time confusion. If someone asks you what day we are on, you'll probably be able to answer with security and confidence in just milliseconds, or at least seconds. I know it can be difficult to understand, but I wasn't able to answer with that confidence to the same question the first weeks after my surgery.

The first weeks (or even months) after my brain surgery, I experienced a state of extreme confusion. It was probably related to my memory problems (which I already talked about in my first post), but I seem to remember I felt like being the main character of a surreal movie.

Before being hospitalized, I used to do running workouts three or four times a week, depending on several factors. Also, I liked taking part in running races every two or three weeks. I also ran some marathons and half-marathons (although I preferred shorter races because I liked running faster more than running longer).

Most people relate the brain with thoughts and mental processes, but the brain also plays a main role in our physical feelings and movements. If something touches your finger, a nerve impulse will go from your finger to your brain through the nervous system. That's what makes you realize that something touched your finger.

I seem to remember having rare headaches in December 2019. I asked her because they only were manifested with what is called Valsalva maneuvers, like sneezing, for example. I went to the hospital to undergo a NMR and after it, the doctor told us that I had to have urgent surgery in my head because of that thing they had found.

Hello and welcome! I’m Juan Ramírez, a 37-year-old software developer working at Telefónica (but now on sick leave). I decided to write this blog in March 2021 after suffering a brain surgery a year before, as a way to share my personal experience as ABI affected, and also as a way to test my English skills after that. Please consider this blog in development for the moment (I hope to be able to remove this sentence someday).