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.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Epic failure at bike stroke therapy

Well I tried the bike thing again,Aug.3 failed spectactularily. I waited until now to post about this to make sure I was ok. I didn't follow thru on my plans, which was to have a friend over to help me. I looked at my initial success and didn't analyze it enough to figure out why it worked. I wrapped my left hand on the handlebar, grabbed the arbor with my right hand to get my right leg over the seat. The left pedal was at the bottom of the arc so I could easily get my left foot on the pedal. I pushed off with my right foot and got the right foot on the right pedal, however since it was at the top of the arc I didn't have any leverage to start pedaling. So I fell directly to my left smashing directly on my left hip. On concrete no less, my upper body fell into the flower garden. A woman walking by asked very concerned if I was ok. I assured her I was, I pried my left hand off the handle bar, got up and hobbled my bike back into the garage. What the difference between the two tries was that the earlier one had a slight downward slant from where I started so I started rolling downhill immediately, if I had waited for my friend to be around he could have given me enough of a push to get rolling. I hobbled into the house and as I'm walking in the living room I realize my head is spinning and if I don't sit down immediately I'll fall, I fall onto the couch and roll onto the floor(on my good side at least). While down there our rabbit comes by and sniffs me. I spent the rest of that day crawling on my hands/elbows and knees to get around. The next day I can at least use my single point cane to move around the house. Day 2 I am reduced to using my 4-point cane and very heavily leaning on it. So much that my right hand goes numb from the pressure on the nerves. I manage to drive my car to pick up some groceries and library books. That night I go to X-Men: First Class, good movie but sitting still for two hours stiffens me up and hobbling out of the theater is pretty bad. I thought I was slow before but now I am glacial, half-step every minute. It takes me 20 minutes to walk a block.I will be going to a doctor soon to make sure I didn't break my hip, movement while non weight-bearing is ok.So I now have skinned knees and floor burns on my left toes.

Conclusion: I didn't analyze why my first attempt worked and was too arrogant to think I needed help the second time if the first time worked. I was already imagining long bike rides on the converted rail lines near our house. Baby steps were needed and I went off into full speed running instead. I know there is a medical term for that inability to see our defects. I will have to remember that when I attempt to run.
Elderly patients with hip fracture with positive affect have better functional recovery over 2 years.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16866678
So I better have a positive attitude or I won't recover as well.

The xray showed no break, was offered an MRI to see if I had a hairline crack, but asked if treatment was different based on the outcome, the answer was no, so I didn't get an MRI. Saw an ortho doctor who said I probably got a hematoma in the bursa covering the head of my thigh bone.
But it does give me more therapy, sensation pain, trying to find its way back to the sensory cortex. And since my sensory cortex is intact, it is just the white matter underlying it that needs connecting and boy does pain work well for that. I shouldn't make light of this, it was stupid, as long as others don't try to follow me. Now 3+ weeks later I can finally sometimes walk without the cane again. I will try again, I'm obviously stroke-addled in that regard.

9 comments:

  1. Oh Dean! I'm sorry to hear of this set back. That has been one of my biggest fears re:recovery. No injuries. I suppose it was a good thing I never felt confident enough to get on my bike yet. My therapists all suggested it was too dangerous for me. I disagreed but never followed through....perhaps for the best. I hope your new injury heals quickly and you can return to your aggressive stroke recovery plan without further complication.

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  2. Oh my Goodness Dean! I am so glad you are healing. My son and I keep thinking about getting me a bike and he talks about training wheels!
    One of my stroke friends broke his affected arm a couple of weeks ago by tripping over someone else's bike. Those things are dangerous!

    You be careful, but I am glad you still want to try biking again.

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  3. OMG, Dean - this got me laughing until the middle when I started really worrying for you. Now I've reached the end and know you haven't done serious injury, I'm going to laugh again. I love the part about the rabbit coming by to sniff you. I am going to stay off my bike!

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  4. I'm so sorry to hear about your fall. I know how devastating a set back can be. I had an awful fall when I tripped on a slate sidewalk. Both of us were lucky because our heads landed on grass. When I saw the dirt under my left eye I started shaking. Adding a traumatic head injury to a stroke blew my mind. Promise me you will wear a helmet if you try again.

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  5. I always wear a helmet but in this case didn't even come close to hitting my head. In my 3 major bike accidents only once did my helmet actually hit something. I was actually more worried about tearing one of my neck arteries and eventually sending a clot up to the brain again. So I made sure my aspirin regime stayed on track.

    Do they make adult training wheels? But that wouldn't help me, I tipped over an adult trike.

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  6. Dean-- let me guess: in rehab you were identified as being "impulsive." What a nonsense catch-phrase for doing things the medical personnel don't want you to. The word you looked for re not recognizing your limitations is "agnosia." I had it big-time myself - and probably still do - but I can't tell. Please take better care of yourself - I live in fear of falling and damaging my perfect, beloved half.

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  7. Yes I was impulsive, the nurses heard on a weekend pass I was going to attend a whitewater slalom race, with a rocky trail to the waters edge. They told the attending neurologist and she tried to convince me that with my warfarin use that a bad fall could cause me to bleed forever. I ignored her admonition and had a great time. The start of my advanced course of therapy, do whatever you think you can do.

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  8. As shown in metastudies at "Mind, Brain and Education" by Kurt Fischer, Christina Hinton et al., tolerant environment is the key to extreme neuroplasticity. This solves the rapid evolution paradox of (non)raciality. There is evidence that evolution can go very fast, so the "evolutionary speed limit" that evolutionary psychologists invoke to declare humanity to be homogenous does not exist, and yet supposedly racial mental differences can be ruled out if the environment is taken into account. But since racist discrimination is a form of intolerance, this paradox is solved by the discovery that tolerant environments are the key to extreme neuroplasticity. See the article ´"Brain" on topic page "Psychology" at Pure science Wiki, the link is http://purescience.wikia.com

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    Replies
    1. No clue what this is trying to say, you'll have to decipher it yourself.

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