https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/i-can-walk-for-50m-without-stopping-i-feel-on-top-of-the-world-now-1.3186601
PJ Wymbs was getting out of bed on the morning of April 1st, 2016, when he fell.
He knew as his legs gave way that it was a stroke. The 66 year old from Kinlough, Co Leitrim,
had been diagnosed with cancer five years earlier and “was just getting
back to myself” when his health suffered this latest blow.
A carpenter who had discovered a
gift for basket weaving and wood turning during his recovery from
cancer, Wymbs is left-handed. “I lost the power on my left side,” he
explained. Overnight, he went from someone who was making intricate
working spinning wheels which were getting attention at craft fairs
around the country, to someone who was unable to lift an empty cup or
use cutlery.
The six months following the stroke was “a bad time in my life”, he says, but physiotherapists at Sligo University Hospital told him about the clinical trials being done by researchers at IT Sligo and he grabbed the opportunity.
Sensation in my fingers
PhD students Daniel Simpson and Monika Ehrensberger
started calling to his home three times a week to do the mirror therapy
and strengthening techniques which they believe have helped up to 40
per cent of patients tested.
“I loved to see them coming,” said
PJ. “I felt an improvement after the third session. I think they did
not believe me but I could feel a sensation in my fingers and I could
move my arm.”
He had been trying to do without a
walking stick, but was “walking around walls”. While he had been back
driving six weeks after the stroke, he had to reach over with his hand
to pull the handbrake.
All that has changed. After four
weeks of therapy he says the progress made changed his life. “I can do
most things now. I could do nothing with the hand, I could not even
raise it but I’m back at the wood turning. It is weaker than it was but
it is a massive improvement.
“I still have a little bit of a
limp and I get tired but I can walk for 50m without stopping and I can
walk faster. I feel on top of the world now.”
HELEN CASSELLS, WATER DIVINER: ‘SOMETIMES I HAVE TO REMIND MYSELF
I HAD A STROKE’
Helen Cassells
laughs when she recalls her introduction to the treadmill and mirror,
which researchers at IT Sligo are using to enhance rehabilitation for
stroke patients. “The first day was hilarious. As far as I was concerned
I had three legs, ” she said.
Before she suffered a stroke in 2011, Cassells from Glencar, Co Sligo, played golf “morning, noon and night”.
She remembers the first day for
another reason because she maintains that almost immediately she felt a
sensation in her “bad leg”.
“I think the nerves were beginning to wake up,” she said.
She was 57 when she had a stroke .
“I woke up at about 7am and I could not turn over on my right side. I
thought at first that I was dreaming.” While she was able to get up, she
discovered at breakfast that she could not lift the spoon to eat her
cereal. She started to tell her husband Laurence what was happening. “As
far as I was concerned I was speaking normally but he couldn’t make out
a word.”
Pronounced limp
As a result of the stroke she was paralysed on the right side. After rehabilitation in St John’s Hospital, Sligo, and the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dún Laoghaire,
her mobility had improved dramatically but she still needed a walking
stick sometimes and had a “very pronounced limp”. She might have settled
for this life-changing limited mobility but she heard about the
clinical trials at IT Sligo and decided to volunteer.
The changes have been so dramatic
that “sometimes I have to remind myself that I had a stroke”. The little
things delight her almost as much as the fact that she can actually run
now and can go hill walking.
“Filling the kettle is one thing. I
used to have to hold the kettle in my left hand but suddenly I realised
I could use my right hand. I can iron now with my right hand.”
And while she hasn’t climbed
Knocknarea yet, “I can walk up a hill and down again”. She is back
working as a water diviner, a job she says which clearly requires the
ability to hold a stick and to detect any movements in it.
“I may not be 100 per cent better but I’m back 95 per cent.”
No comments:
Post a Comment