Motor Deficit After a Brain Surgery

Dear Ask The Doctor: I was born left handed and have been a piano player my entire life. When I was 9 (am now 21), I was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor and had surgery shortly after. For some reason, surgery had affected my left hand and I had lost a lot of usage, or motor function I guess you would call it. While I still am able to use my left hand as a normal, it is much slower than my right hand and I had to learn how to make my right hand my dominant one. I now use my right hand to do the finer things (write, draw, eat) while I still use my left for athletic things (throw a ball, swing a bat, etc.) although if I use my right hand to throw a ball, I have better aim. Being a piano player, this is a severe disability as my left hand is now limited to what it can play. I also want to learn more instruments, but but most instruments I want to play require my left hand. After I got home from the hospital, I did attend physical therapy and have used home exercises to try to get my left hand back up to speed but so far not much has come from it. Is there anything I can do to regain the 'motor function' I lost during surgery? I'd appreciate any and all help.

Dear Zach: According to your description you have a motor sequel from the tumor and brain surgery, that may happen depending of the location of the tumor to be removed; most likely the very same tumor causes damage to the brain tissue that produces motor impairment and when it is removed of course is attached to sensitive structures in the brain that have to do with the motor functions in arms and legs, I repeat, depending on the location of the tumor we’ll see different kinds of motor or sensitive deficits. The neurons (brain tissue) are a very specialized tissue and its regenerative capabilities are very limited, so most likely when an injury (severe one) occurs the sequels are permanent. After the first months of physical and occupational therapy we are able to see what the outcome is going to be and what kind of deficits will persist, as in your case. So the aim of physical and occupational therapy since that moment is re educate the patient in the daily living activities so he or she can be as independent as possible and have a good quality of life.