Last post Tue, Sep 02 2008 12:50 PM by whokaree. 59 replies.
i had a stroke on 8 dec, 2008. i am home now and going to out patient therapy. i wondered if anyone can tell me how much they have regained. i lost all my left side but am now able to walk with a hemi-cane. i need a rather large bracethat assists my ankle and stops my knee frpm hyperextendind.as expected noone will tell me how much use i will regain of my leg and arm.anyone have any personal experiences that they might relate.thanks for your help. i love the site.
barry
Hello Barry, I cant tell you how much your leg and arm will come back but i can say that if you keep trying it will slowly start to work. when i first came home my brother in law had to carry ne up the stairs, but now 1 1/2 year later i can walk without my cane for short distances. i have even been able to get on my stair stepper. just a little at a time. . just never give up.... I can even give myself my shower. with the aid of the shower chair. I try to use my left hand to hole things. my doctor told my family that i will never be able to walk without the aid of my cane, but we will see.
Since December 8 2008 hasn't come yet, I suspect that the old left-side thing got you, and you meant 2007. That's perfectly okay. Been there, done that.I had a very very severe, nearly lethal, hemorrhagic stroke on January 1, 2001, at the age of 36.As for what you can expect in the future, all I can tell you with any certainty is "I don't know." Doctors and therapists don't either. That won't stop them from making predictions, but take them with a huge grain of salt, especially those that include the word "never."About the only thing you can be sure of is that it will be slow.You seem to be progressing faster than I did, already. It was months before any therapist would even try me on a hemi cane.I still use a wheelchair most of the time, but I can walk short distances with a quad cane, or even a regular cane.My left arm/hand is still of very little use, but it's no longer painful, and I was able to ditch my arm sling years ago.Be aware that you may occasionally reach progress "plateaus," when you feel like you're not getting a bit better, and feel like your progress has stopped permanently, but if you have those, they will pass.I've even had a few times when I felt like I was actually regressing, but those times passed, too.Every stroke is different, and so is every stroke patient.As for what I've regained:Some movement in my left side, including the leg starting at the hip.My balance has improved.My swallowing, which was severely impaired at first, is about 99.9% back to normal.My vision is better, though I still have to sometimes remind myself to pay attention to my left side.I have more stamina, though not as much as I had pre-stroke. In the first few months following my stroke, I was doing well if I could sit up in a chair for half an hour, but now I'm routinely up for at least 12 hours a day.I think it's darned impressive that you're already up and using a computer.Please keep us posted on your progress.
talking to some of you has been a great help. its hard keeping good attitude but hopefully progress will follow. the hardest part is the shoulder pain and not sleeping.
cap4you: its hard keeping good attitude but hopefully progress will follow. the hardest part is the shoulder pain and not sleeping.
its hard keeping good attitude but hopefully progress will follow. the hardest part is the shoulder pain and not sleeping.
"It's not just about Obama is a young black man, and McCain is an old white guy."Shelley!
Hi, Barry.
My husband had a hemmoragic stroke on June 1, 2007 and is still in therapy and recovering. His affected his right side and although his arm and hand are still compromised, he is making gains with his leg. He also has a brace and a hemi cane for walking. The important thing to remember is not to rush. Take one exercise or movement and practice it until you're 101% sure that you've got it. When Dan came home after 88 days in the hospital and rehabilitation center, he couldn't walk and still needs supervision, but all the medical people have told me he could still be recovering and making gains 2 - 3 years into this. We saw the neurologist yesterday and he's amazed at the recovery Dan's made. Guys like you are in a very select minority of survivors. Dan was only 49 when he had the stroke, but we were able to celebrate his 50th birthday in October with family and friends and had a grand old time. He gets days of depression that seem to be directly related to our awful New England weather, but for the most part, we're dealing as best we can. I know how hard it is for him because he was used to working 12-14 hour days and to have to just sit or lay around gets to him sometimes. Keep the faith. Make note of the improvements you are making every day, no matter how small. We were thrilled to be able to walk into the bathroom and pee standing up! I'll keep you in my thoughts and prayers, along with Dan. Keep up the good work!
hi deb glad your husband is coming along it is a very long slow process but small thingsmean a lotlike peeingi remember showering standing up it was great. good luck and welcome to disaboom.talk to you soonsonia
sczrhnd1: hi deb glad your husband is coming along it is a very long slow process but small thingsmean a lotlike peeingi remember showering standing up it was great. good luck and welcome to disaboom.talk to you soonsonia
Early on, I wish I'd had someone to tell me that progress almost never comes in big dramatic leaps, and just because you're not back to 100% months or even years after your stroke does NOT mean that you're not trying hard enough, or that you're not making small gains that will in time add up to stronger and more independent function.Carla N.
If you've already made the transition to home, congratulations, you're doing great. We who have suffered a hemorrhagic stroke are in the minority as far as types of strokes go. The fact that we are discussing this on-line means we've already passed our first test, not dying. Now, if we can identify the cause and the correct course of treatment we are on our way to regaining as near normal a life as we could possibly hope for.
My event took place on April 4th, 2007. I had total left side paralysis. I credit an extraordinary group of nurses and therapists with my rapid improvement. Doctors? It seemed they made themselves scarce. Let's face it, I wasn't the easiest patient to deal with. I accepted nothing and questioned everything. Turns out I was right to do so.
We find ourselves thrown into a game of life or death with no choice about whether we will play or not, no set of rules to follow, no idea of how we should proceed, no ready answers, and it seems, no one willing to commit to what our outcome will be. We stand to win nothing, really. The game's about how much we will lose if we don't play well. I will tell you what I know, and what I've learned.
The single most important decision I made early on was to adopt a proactive and positive attitude, and to approach obstacles as benchmarks of success when finally overcome. I tried to maintain a sense of humor, although what I consider humor may be a bit sarcastic for most.
One therapist, in her attempt to temper my "humor" told me that all sarcasm was a form of anger. I couldn't disagree with her because I was angry that this had happened to me, but subconsciously the root of my anger was not in having experienced the stroke but in being angry with myself - I'd ignored the succession of red lights I'd run- my younger brother had stroked out, the uncle I was named after (a neurosurgeon!) had stroked out, I'd not been to a doctor for a checkup in twenty years. An eye doctor had told me I had signs of hardening of the arteries. An eye doctor! He'd said it was likely I had hypertension. High blood pressure. I should have listened.
In the past I'd been a runner, so the idea of going into training wasn't foreign to me. Over the course of the next four months I dropped forty pounds, while I watched other stroke patients who were hospitalized with me remain overweight and even gain weight. I attribute most of my rapid transition to a wheelchair and then a cane to the weight loss.
I took to studying the gait pattern, and the seven separate parts of a normal stride. How we shift our weight from side to side and use our ass muscles to walk as much as our leg muscles (sorry for the graphic language but some wouldn't relate to gluteous maximus. They'd wonder what The Gladiator had to do with walking).
I learned about "negative knee" - how in normal people the knee tends to transverse past vertical, where in us it tends to stop short of vertical in our "bad" leg when walking, and as a result we fail to push off on that leg but rather hobble along. I worked with two very educated therapists on my gait pattern and although my leg is still weak and I need a cane to walk, I can look perfectly normal when pushing a shopping cart around the supermarket, just slower. It's also great therapy because the added weight of pushing a cart exaggerates the effect of proper or improper gait patterns.
Setbacks and failures - I've had my share. First big mistake I made was in trying to accelerate my physical conditioning by working out with weights. I had confused orthopedic training with re-establishing neurological pathways and communication between the brain and the muscles in my left shoulder, arm, and hand. I damaged the nerves, ligaments, and tendons in the shoulder and ended up with "frozen shoulder syndrome." My therapists had warned me but I didn't listen, It's quite painful to go thru.
Your brain cells are very adaptive. When you lose one, an adjacent brain cell will try to take over the job it was assigned to do. Of course, that brain cell already had a job, so now it's trying to do both jobs. It can and will, just not as well. This is why it takes time and patience. We are retraining our brain cells. I don't know this for a fact but I surmise the more we work on repetitive training the better the cells will get at doing both jobs.
I have alot more to say about medications, changes in the problems we have to deal with like spasticity and regression, moodiness and depression, doctors and prognoses, etc., but I've given you much to chew on and digest, so I'll end here. Hope this helped.
AndyZ, I thought your post was very intelligently composed and quite informative. My cerebral hemorrhage, which occurred January 1, 2001, was very massive, so I don't have a heck of a lot of brain cells left to do double duty, poor things.I hear you about the sarcastic sense of humor!I've gotten fussed at many times by therapists, friends and family who didn't like my "tone of voice." But, really, sometimes humor can be a good coping mechanism. What's the alternative? Sometimes if you don't laugh, you'll go to pieces, and want to just quit.Nobody ever said a word to me about "negative knee." How does one overcome that?I've been taking the attitude "I've earned this limp!" but if I can improve my gait, I want to do that.
Oops, left out a big piece. Shoulder pain. I learned (for me anyways) that there is a correlation between the level of pain and blood pressure. Get yourself a BP cuff or monitor and stick to a low salt low fat DASH diet
Also, I iced the shoulder down for twenty minutes at a time several times a day and I heated it up and did simple exercises in the shower. I took ibuprophen too. I used a bag of frozen meatballs for the icing treatment. When I'm sitting at the computer I try to keep my shoulder blades together and maintain correct posture.
Eventually the pain will subside. As someone mentioned previously, your shoulder is subluxing. It will improve on its own. Stay away from weight training and stick to calesthenics and range of motion exercises.
AndyZ: Oops, left out a big piece. Shoulder pain. I learned (for me anyways) that there is a correlation between the level of pain and blood pressure. Get yourself a BP cuff or monitor and stick to a low salt low fat DASH diet Also, I iced the shoulder down for twenty minutes at a time several times a day and I heated it up and did simple exercises in the shower. I took ibuprophen too. I used a bag of frozen meatballs for the icing treatment. When I'm sitting at the computer I try to keep my shoulder blades together and maintain correct posture. Eventually the pain will subside. As someone mentioned previously, your shoulder is subluxing. It will improve on its own. Stay away from weight training and stick to calesthenics and range of motion exercises.
Of course, that isn't very helpful when you're in pain *now,* but just be aware that this isn't forever. Range of motion and/or weight-bearing exercises can help.Recovery isn't for wimps, but you can make it!
Carla N.
Carla, you must have a huge brain because if you've lost most of your brain cells it appears your stroke's only brought you down to what the rest of us consider normal.
Negative knee is good. A negative knee refers to the position of the knee - slightly behind you on the vertical plane. You don't want to overcome it, just the opposite. You want to develop a negative knee. Try to maintain your stride to the point where you feel yourself pushing off with the bad leg. The problem for us is we tend to lose control of the knee and hyperextend it backwards instead of keeping the leg bent while we push off. The trick is in learning how to keep the leg slightly bent while using it to push off.
Here's the sequence of events in the stride starting with the bad leg, just after we used it to push off -
Lift the knee and leg, keeping it raised above the ground while you swing it ahead and put it back down in front of you, heel first. If you find you are dragging your foot while swinging it forward you may have done any or all of four things better.
One is shifting your weight laterally and putting most of your weight over the leg on the ground moving back. This is very important. Women do it naturally just in the way they walk with a hip sway. The second thing you want to insure you are doing is bending your foot at the ankle to keep your toes from touching the ground. The third is flexing your gluteous maximus muscle on the backward moving leg, helping to keep the passive leg elevated off the ground. The fourth is timing the heel strike to coincide with the pushoff of the other foot, otherwise you'll find the foot comes back before landing and lands toes first instead of heel first.
Now the leg has struck the ground and begins to pull you forward as it moves backwards, and the other leg is picked up and the cycle repeats. The key to a normal stride is trying to achieve simultaneous heel strike and toe pushoff. If you find you aren't pushing off with your weak leg, slow everything down so you can monitor your stride as you walk. Eventually you will get it, and you will amaze yourself and your therapists as well. Who knew walking could be so complicated? (modified 3/14/2008)
AndyZ: Carla, you must have a huge brain because if you've lost most of your brain cells it appears your stroke's only brought you down to what the rest of us consider normal.
I joke, because that's how I am, but I am truly grateful that I've kept what I have. Half a brain is better than none!
I'm even "webmaster" for my church's site; I tell them that they really had to scrape the bottom of the barrel. I enjoy doing it, though. I even spell quite a few words correctly. ;)
