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.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Interviewing your stroke rehab doctor

When you interview the doctors here is a good set of questions to ask them. Remember they are working for you so you need to find out how good they are. You can modify them slightly for your therapists

1. How many patients has he/she seen fully recovered and what did they do to recover? This is not the ADL recovery.
2. What has been done and still needs to be done to prevent another stroke?
3. What area of the brain was disabled by the stroke? What functions did they cover?
4. What type of stroke, clot or bleed? Show me a 3d map.
5. How big was the penumbra? What areas did it affect?
6. What clinical trials are going on right now that the patient would be a good candidate for?
7. What treatment options have been discovered in the last 5-10 years for stroke rehabilitation? Of these options which ones are available in your clinic? This is to determine if he/she is up-to-date or if you will have to do all this research yourself.
8. Who are the best therapists working in your clinic for stroke rehabilitation and why do you consider them to be the best?
9. Who do I work with if depression takes hold?
10. What books on stroke recovery do you recommend? I recommend Stronger After Stroke by Peter Levine and healing into Possibility by Alison Shapiro
11. What stroke related magazines do you recommend?
12. What internet sites do you recommend about stroke? There are at least 15 stroke forums out there. If Canadas' Strokengine is not mentioned I would ask why.

For therapists -
1. What is the theoretical basis for your therapy recommendations?
2. Have you mapped the damage as seen from my scans to your therapy recommendations? Why not?

As always make sure you ask your doctors for permission to ask these questions of your doctor. Circular reasoning is great unless this is a Mobius strip. Be careful that you don't fall off the strip when it turns upside down.

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