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.

Thursday, December 31, 2015

Driving with the affected left arm

Don't assume you can do this if I can. Two years ago I tried this, getting the left hand on the steering wheel at the 11 o'clock position. But failed because my bicep spasticity was stronger than my finger spasticity for grasping. I have to do this in town on stretches of straight road because I have to uncurl my fingers to get them on the wheel. The freeway doesn't work because accelerating down the on ramp at the same time as trying to get the fingers on the wheel doesn't work. My right arm is always available to immediately knock my left arm off the wheel if necessary. This does require the crossover turn signal extender since I never would be able to reach around my left arm to get at the regular turn signal. There is no ability to look over my left shoulder into my blind spot for cars, I'm limited to constantly checking mirrors.  I'm back to 100+% attention to driving again, same as when I started driving.  The tiny corrections needed to keep the car in the lane are great for maybe finally getting some use out of my arm and hand.  I can see in the distant future the ability to drink coffee, change CDs, radio stations and look at passengers when talking to them.

Posted by at
Labels: , , ,

1 comment:

  1. Geoff.WenkerFebruary 14, 2016 at 1:56 PM

    Your description is very close to my experience when I returned to driving about 7 months post stroke. I regard steering w/ weak arm as OT. At 33 months I steer well enough for straight road and big curves, but must switch to sound arm for turns or any quick movements. I am barely able to control the turn signal on left side, but it is just another learned non-use I am trying to overcome, so I do it as long as I can remember to try!

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)