Deans' stroke musings: Drivers side car door closing

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.

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Drivers side car door closing

My hospital had a car in the therapy department so we could practice getting in and out of the passenger side, never the drivers side. So the dumbing down of stroke goals is completely ingrained in therapy departments. There should be an ADL for everything to do with a car, opening the car hood with only one usable hand, using turn signals, adjusting the radio and heating controls. There are many failure points in car door closing.

1. Fingers do not extend due to spasticity to fit into the door handle slot.

2. Arm does not hang down straight due to spasticity.

3. Both of these means there is a failure to even get to the starting position of door closing.

4. The step of the right leg into the car requires the left arm to swing out from next to the body, spasticity means that failure occurs at this point also.

5. As your butt cheek hits the seat the door should be starting to close, your left leg needs to quickly get pulled inside as the gap narrows. Failure again as the left leg no longer moves quickly enough.

All in all a failure from start to finish. I expect for the millions of survivors wanting to drive again after stroke there should be stroke protocols that address each failure point.

Compensation is not good enough, we need to demand recovery. For me that would be stopping my spasticity. Everything else I can take care of by myself.

1 comment:

Barb PolanSeptember 20, 2017 at 2:19 PM
I'd like to get into the passenger side as I used to - step left leg in first, then sit, pulling right leg in as I swing the door closed - instead of opening door wide, reaching in to place my cane out of the way, turning my back to the car, sitting, then swinging in both legs. I hate entering butt-first.
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