Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Compensation vs. recovery stroke rehab

One of the things I wish my medical staff had mentioned to me was the difference between compensation and recovery. Compensation being doing whatever is necessary to accomplish a goal. Recovery is using the muscles as intended to accomplish the same goal. Insurance wants you to use compensation whenever possible because it is faster and cheaper. The best example I can give is I had a substitute OT and she asked for what my next goal was, I told her I wanted to be able to read a newspaper. She immediately proceded to place a sticky material(Dycem) on the table and put the newspaper on top of that to help with holding it in place as the pages were turned. This was compensating for my inability to open my left hand, keep my left wrist straight and hold my left arm up in the air. I didn't want to compensate, I wanted to figure out how to hold the paper and read it with two hands. She took the easy way out and marked it as accomplished. 4 years later I still can't do this the proper way but I have at least mapped out the necessary steps to finally accomplish this.
Peter Levine has a great blog post on this. What happens to your brain if you compensate.
http://recoverfromstroke.blogspot.com/2010/11/make-them-walk-funny-and-look-lousy-in.html

This is the great divide in what survivors want vs. what the therapists can work on because of insurance/HMO guidelines. Most survivors want complete recovery while therapists need to work on ADLs to be able to get paid. Insurance guidelines require that functional ability be able to be created/maintained within 4-6 weeks. If progress is not made then the dirty word - plateau - is brought up. Plateau is not a medical term, it is just used to deny further therapy. My workaround when I was still getting therapy was to set as a goal something I was already able to do. One goal was to be able to get on/off an escalator. I could already do it because I needed it at work. A goal my OT set for me was to use my left arm/hand to open the refrigerator at home. 4 years later I still can't do this because I can't open my fingers. So I compensate and use my right hand. The main one is the use of AFOs to compensate for the lack of dorsiflexon. By using most compensation strategies you are actually preventing recovery from taking place. So you need to make a decision on which route you want to go.

1 comment:

  1. So who plateaued? You or the therapist.
    You noted 4-6 weeks of rehab. Of course that was in the past, now it's about 2-3 weeks depending on HMO or Medicare coverage.
    Now, only 30% of rehab patients go to Rehab Centers, 65% are referred to SNFs - nursing facilities with therapy. Some of the better programs figured out that patients need more actual therapy time. Unfortunately, they stand out statistically and are being investigated.
    Ah yes, the Plateau! Where's the fiscal cliff?

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