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.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

finger intrinsics and stroke rehab

First some definitions.  Intrinsic muscles are those completely contained within the hand/wrist unit.  The extrinsic muscles are contained in the forearm and connected to the hand by tendons and provide
most of the power and range of motion of the joints of the hand.
Intrinsics stabilize the hand in fine motor tasks.
I have been working a lot on passively flexing and unflexing my fingers which are the extrinsic  muscles, flexors and extensors but have not been working on the intrinsics mainly because I think I need to get the extrinsics working first.
On my 21 day canoe trip on the day I ripped the skin off my left palm we were paddling downstream with an upstream wind of 20-30 mph and I was paddling as best as I could  on the right side with my left hand gripping the t-grip. My extension of my left arm was pretty poor, only able to get it out maybe 10-12 inches from my chest. We beat against the wind for maybe an hour until we were all forced ashore. After some consultations it was decided to set up camp, sleep and start paddling again in the evening when the wind usually dies down. So we slept from 5-10 pm and started again at midnight paddling until 3 am(24 hour daylight is wonderful at this latitude) I didn't sleep too well because the left hand was aching a lot. I think what occurred is that I totally overworked my finger flexors and the intrinsic muscles in the hand started firing to try to help hold the paddle. This was a wonderful occurence to find out about since it may lead me to a way to get the intrinsics firing again.
My other possibility is Theraband progressive hand trainer sheets. This is not clinically researched or tested so don't bother listening to my ramblings. Ask your therapist how to get intrinsics back and watch them blanch.
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1 comment:

  1. Glynis JollyMarch 7, 2011 at 3:24 PM

    That is great, Dean! I have a feeling that it's been too long for me but keep on doing whatever you're doing.

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