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, April 3, 2011

Brushing teeth and stroke rehab

As one of your ADLs this should have taught by your OT. I place the tube of toothpaste in my affected left hand. If I'm lucky I don't have to pry my fingers open and somehow force the tube in. I then lightly squeeze enough to unscrew the cap with the right hand, lay the left hand on the toothbrush to prevent it from moving and squeeze toothpaste on it with the right hand. I put the cap back on with the right hand with no assistance from the left hand because I would never be able to get the tube back into the left hand without squeezing toothpaste all over. I know this is only a couple of seconds of therapy but done twice or more times a day it eventually adds up. If you are really good you can use your affected hand to squeeze out the toothpaste.
I would have to overcome spasticity of the pecs, wrist, biceps and fingers to get the toothbrush to my mouth.
Its a future therapy for me.

Remember, everything you do is therapy, take advantage of it. For you advanced users brushing with your affected hand would be worth extra points. I would have to have a very fat handle to even try this.
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3 comments:

  1. Glynis JollyApril 3, 2011 at 9:39 PM

    I have an electric toothbrush that will lay quietly on its own. However, before I had this toothbrush, yes, I held the brush in the afflicted hand to put the toothpaste on with the strong one.

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  2. Rebecca DuttonApril 4, 2011 at 10:18 AM

    I totally agree. In the seven years since my stroke I have put a tube of toothpaste in my hemiplegic hand over 4,000 times.

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  3. San42April 4, 2011 at 1:17 PM

    My OT gave me some padded tubing that can be cut to required length - useful for making fat-handled cutlery,tooth brushes,pens or whatever. I think it can be obtained via disability shops also.(Also can use a strip of material, or whatever comes to hand, taped around the handle to required thickness. Cycle handle bar tape also springs to mind..!?). Just a suggestion for those who feel like experimenting. Then u can swap sides depending on which activity u wish to train - eg 1 day brush teeth/spend part of the time brushing teeth w' affected side, doing as much as can manage; then continue with stronger hand. I do this, testing out my affected side's range of abilities regularly.

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