Friday, October 22, 2010

Standard response to stroke rehab questions

Since I post in numerous forums and there are lots of questions on what to do next I came up with this standard response. Of course this does contradict what you will hear from your medical staff; 'All strokes are different, all stroke recoveries are different.'

The whole problem here is that the medical world does not have any clue as how to approach getting stroke survivors back to full recovery. They are hoping that your spontaneous recovery in 6-12 months is enough to satisfy you. What needs to be done is identify the penumbra and those functions, these are helped by standard therapy protocols because you still have a limited ability to do those functions and repetition will help recover them. The second part is to identify the dead brain area and the functions they covered. This requires a totally different approach, mainly you need to neuroplastically move those functions to another part of your brain. Some therapies than might be able to accomplish that are; mental imagery, passive movement, mirror-box therapy, thermal therapy. I would say your crucial answer is to completely understand neuroplasticity and find therapists who understand how to do that. But what the hell do I know, I'm just a stroke-addled survivor,

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