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.

Friday, April 29, 2011

Eating Again After Stroke

I was only on the soft food diet for two weeks luckily so I didn't need any therapy for eating. To pass the swallowing test they gave me a Red Delicious apple to eat. I dislike them because they are only red , not delicious, mainly mealy.

http://www.ivanhoe.com/channels/p_channelstory.cfm?storyid=20477

You can see a picture of the device at the link.
WARWICK, R.I. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Food is one of the great pleasures in life, but some are robbed of that enjoyment after suffering a stroke. Swallowing is one of the many basic functions that can be taken away, but now there's a device that could ease the pain and frustration. It's helping people get off feeding tubes and take a seat at the dinner table.

After his stroke sitting down for a meal turned into a chore for 84-year-old Joseph Grant.

"It was just hard for him and he couldn't drink liquids, plain liquids at all," Joseph's wife Marilyn recalled to Ivanhoe.

His throat muscles were weak and the former monk, magician and dentist was miserable.

Joseph turned to therapists who introduced him to a new device that would do the swallowing work for him. It sends electrical currents to the throat muscles. Combined with an exercise routine, it returns them to their former strength.

Lisa Mathers, a speech pathologist at Kent Regency Genesis Healthcare in Warwick, R.I., works with Joseph for about an hour five days a week. After a month, the results are usually much better than traditional therapy.

"It was a real long road of traditional therapies, oral motor exercises," Mathers told Ivanhoe. "It was very time consuming, sometimes discouraging, because it took such a long time and it didn't always rehabilitate the muscle."

Joseph says he's now able to eat and drink just about anything on the menu.

"Oh yeah, it's a lot better -- a tremendous amount better," Joseph said. Now, mealtime is a much more enjoyable experience.

The VitalStim device works best on patients with neurological problems from a stroke, Parkinson's disease, or multiple sclerosis.
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