Engineered material can reconnect severed nerves

Motor and senory nerves reacted differently.

When motor nerves reconnected, I still couldn't contract the muscles and went through a series of steps to relearn how to use the limb. First I was trying to "move" the leg, but effectively the "IP address" for the leg was changed so my "move" signals were going to where my head thought the leg was instead of to the new connection. Instead, I would estim a specific muscle and "listen" in my head for where "noise" was coming from. That "noise" was the electric buzzing from the estim'd muscle contraction. Eventually, I learned how to concentrate to make a muscle contract, and many steps later (pun intended), I learned to walk again.

Sensory nerves didn't need a push signal, they're like a constant inbound feed when connected. When the sensory nerves reconnected, it is something you definitely notice. Going about your day, and suddenly you feel an jolt, like being shocked, and over the next few hours to days the area that is reconnecting is burning, stinging, feels like it is being crushed by pressure, and cold all at the same time. It was much more intense than when your arm falls asleep. The sensation can be maddening but it eventually passes as your body begins to sort and acclimate the signals.

All of these steps on calibrating the sensory nerves and learning how to contract and coordinate muscles is something we take for granted as people usually sort it out when they're infants.

You can't put into words how weird it is to fall over because your brain thinks your foot is somewhere it isn't. Or how suddenly you become incredibly aware of how the front of your calf feels. Or how overjoyed you are to be able to move your toes again for the first time in a year. It's not like what you see on the movies.

Wallerian degeneration -- yes, degeneration -- is part of the healing process of some grades of nerve injury. Things literally get worse before they get better, as the fragment left of the crushed axon degenerates to its root and then regrows. It's incredibly slow -- around 1mm/day at most -- and a matter of probabilities. What's also worth mentioning is that there are plenty of internal nerves too, where restoring function after a trauma would be life-changing -- like the Vegas nerve, which buggers up lots of things if damaged slightly, or, in my case, some of the nerves in the fundus and neck of the bladder, meaning that my toileting is really very different than it was before.

I'm glad you're doing better, and hope you continue to do so. I've no idea if the device the article is talking about will ever help, but nerve injuries cause so much disability worldwide I'm glad they're continuing to be worked on.