Having looked through my medical history again, I now have a fuller picture of my cerebral palsy. My neurological consultant confirms that my MRI scan shows: ‘An old stroke in the distribution of the right anterior cerebral artery and there is extensive damage to the right frontal lobe and a part of the right parietal lobe.’

These two lobes are part of the four that make up the cerebral cortex. As these different hemispheres are interlinked, it would be easy for most of those lobes to be affected, either directly or indirectly. Working through my symptoms, I find this certainly is what has happened to me.

The brain is organised in three inter-connecting layers that work together and include the central core, the limbic system and the cerebral cortex. Areas within these oversee all forms of conscious experience, including emotion, perception, thought, movement, balance, arousal, as well as many unconscious, cognitive and emotional processes.

I am aware that because of my unique brain damage I struggle with each of these everyday functions and in my case, these areas of the cerebral cortex aren’t receiving signals from the central core.

Each lobe has a different but related function. The frontal lobe deals with motor control and movement, the parietal lobe deals with the main sensory receptor for the sense of touch and spatial interpretation, and the temporal lobe deals with auditory perception, language comprehension and visual recognition.