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 8, 2011

Therapist homework

I know this is really arrogant but we need to give some homework to our therapists. We should be able to get a detailed breakdown of muscle movement detailing each muscle that needs to move or relax and then correlate that to our movements. For example - Walking; for each phase of walking there should be a stipulation of what needs to occur; ie. fire this muscle, relax this muscle. Instead right now we get; walk this way. The therapists are assuming that we still have pre-motor control which does the coordination. Then we could use those details to set up exercises and eventually put these separate movements together to get smooth movements again. This should be available already from when therapists were in school.
This comment from a therapist;
'I started seeing him last week and has no movement at all on LEFT arm.I read that no shoulder shrug or finger movements are not good prognosis.'
is rather telling because it makes the assumption that the only stuff that is possible to recover is in the penumbra from a clot or the bleed drainage area from a bleed. In other words only those areas that were partially damaged. With this false assumption you will never get therapy that might bring back functions neuroplastically into new locations.

Ok two assignments;
1. describe in detail each voluntary muscle used in walking for each phase of swing, both which ones are actively used and which ones need to relax. Describe/draw exercises for each muscle, including the ones that need to relax. This should be common for all people. What may be different is the deficits that each person has.
2. Create therapies for the scenario above where no movement exists in the arm, including research proof that they are valid.

Please no excuses that 'All strokes are different, all stroke recoveries are different'.

2 comments:

  1. What kind of therapist do you have? When I ask a question to a therapist, I expect an intelligent answer even if it's, "I don't know. I'll have to find out."

    And it's the doctor who is negative, not the therapist.

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  2. I have no therapists right now but when I did I didn't know enough to ask questions. This is trying to create an informed survivor population that will not meekly accept either doctor or therapist statements without proof. And a warning to the medical world that they have been sliding by for far too many years.

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