Deans' stroke musings: Miscellaneous stroke rehab

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 24, 2011

Miscellaneous stroke rehab

I do quite a few small exercises, none of which are from my former therapists and thus have no scientific backing for doing them. So stop reading NOW.
Riding the bus to and from work, if I'm in one of the front seats that face each other I will set my cane in front of me and unwrap and wrap my fingers around the handle, straighten out my arm and just let it sway with the bus movement. At first I couldn't do this because my bicep was spastic and wouldn't let my arm stay straight. As you get better at this you control the arm so the cane doesn't bounce off your legs. You have to be willing to look silly, ignore the stares. This is trying to get my proprioception working better
I was on plane rides the last week. I spent almost all of that time flexxing my fingers open and closed. Sometimes switching to single fingers.
Watching TV I cross my legs with the good leg on top of the 'bad' leg, then I sway the bad leg back and forth. I'm not sure what use this is but any additional muscle activation on my 'bad leg will eventually be helpful.

You yourself know better than anyone what small movements you can work on during the day. These small pieces can prove to your brain that neuroplasticity is working. and once you start believing that, anything is possible.