Recovering from a stroke can take a LONG time

 

Just when I thought I had it all together 😏

    Since my stroke I had developed an excellent routine in my stroke recovery journey. I began riding my bike that my husband who is a leading bike specialist in our area prepared for me; a good bike and correct positioning. I started small, I rode around the block, literally around the block maybe 2 kilometers. During my group rehabilitation, my balance was one side effect that made me lose my confidence in anything exercise related but improved with allied heath professionals encouragement. A bike for me was perfect and all of my allied health professionals were excited because they knew that it is an brilliant way for stroke survivers to recuperate. 

However, as per usual for someone like me, I took it too far after regaining my confidence and pushed the limits. 15 kilometers and climbing. I downloaded STRAVA and tracked my rides to watch my progress. With all my exuberance I noticed that when I rode past a certain length my foot started to go numb. Paresthesia This was confirmed by my stroke specialist.

This paresthesia progressed to pain in my muscles from them spasming. These spasms are small enough not to see them happen but enough for the pain to be real and eventually head up to my whole right side. EXHAUSTING. This took me weeks to recover from. Did I give up? DANG NO!!! I waited until I recovered, tested distances and found my sweet sweat spot and stopped there, I just ride that distance more often. 15 kms is just too far. 

Who you are/were can change

    Getting emotional support for stroke survivors, family, carers or co-workers is incredibly important. Stroke can have dire changes in behaviour or emotional dysregulation so I started asking everyone around me who I trusted for feedback. emotional-and-personality-changes-after-stroke-fact-sheet 

Thankfully my personality has not been affected, although emotions are difficult and exhausting. Joy is easy, disgust is fine, anger is okay yet sadness is tricky. So what can stroke survivors do? well, I pick and choose my people in my life very carefully. Any manipulators or drama creating specialists must go... 

Understanding emotions is an excellent way in articulating how our emotions are making us feel or how they are affecting those around us. This graphic tool can help in providing the language for emotional vocabulary. At the end of this post is a link to a googledoc. that anyone can download to track emotional responses. I'm definitely no psychologist, but I'm a teacher asking loads of questions and researching everything academic. Not to mention experience is the best teacher. 

Remember: emotions are included in the rehabilitaion of neuroplasticity. emotional changes after stroke

As a rule of thumb; how I behave and feel affects those around me. If you need support go out and source it -  take your life into your own hands and go get it. 

Join groups, find a good church, join a bowling club, tennis club, riding groups, swimming clubs, poker club, bingo, RSL trivia, community art galleries, pottery, you name it it's out there. 

Grab sheet here: 👇

My emotions checklist

Always reach out for help if you need it. click the links for support

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