StrokeSurvivorBlog

On this two-year anniversary of Steve’s stroke, I reflect upon the progress and setbacks he’s had.

Today he can walk with a quad cane about 275 feet before he needs to rest. I remember how excited I was when he could walk only 12 steps with a cane, and that was with two people assisting him.  When he came home, he was still using a wheelchair in the house. Now, he only uses it for longer distances, and it’s kept in the garage. His ankle is still painful and that hinders him from walking longer distances, and his knee tends to buckle so he wears a knee brace I bought at Wal-Mart, and that gives it some support. But he wears a Lidoderm pain patch on his ankle, and that gives him some pain relief.

He has increased movement of his left arm and hand, but they’re not really functional yet. However, they are not paralyzed like they were in the beginning right after his stroke. His dislocated shoulder is painful even though he wears a sling to keep it from hanging and pulling out of the joint more. The only thing that will correct the dislocation is by doing more arm exercises to strengthen the tendons in the shoulder joint, thereby making them shorter and more elastic. This therapy is tiresome and gives him a headache because it takes so much concentration.

Steve still needs help with bathing and dressing, but he can do much more by himself. Wearing the proper clothing makes it easier for him to dress himself and use the bathroom, which increases his independence.

The tone of Steve’s voice was affected, but he speaks well. Sometimes he becomes confused, and learning anything new requires many repetitions and takes a long time. For example, he still has difficulty remembering how to operate the remote control for the satellite TV even though we’ve had it for 8 months. On the upside though, he tells better jokes and is better at solving Wheel of Fortune puzzles since his stroke.

He is easily fatigued and needs a lot of rest. Some of that is due to medications that make him drowsy, and some is due to poor blood flow through his body. Now that he’s had two arteries opened up with an angioplasty, his heart is functioning much better.

Steve’s stroke recovery was complicated by a broken ankle broken three weeks before the stroke. It was on the weak, left leg, so that made it more painful to stand on. It could have been worse. He could have broken the right ankle instead, then he wouldn’t be able to stand at all. But as a result of the broken ankle, he had to wear a heavy air cast which made walking more difficult. That was changed later to a brace to correct foot drop. These things hindered him from recovering at a faster pace.

When Steve left the hospital after 6 weeks of rehab, he was admitted to a nursing home for two months to continue his stroke recovery.  He learned to climb steps, grasp the fingers of his left hand and move his arm, get in and out of bed, and use the bathroom by himself. When he came home, he continued with home health care and outpatient therapy for several months. From there he went to the Cerebral Palsy Aquatic Center for water therapy.

He’s had many setbacks with different things hindering him during his stroke recovery. They included ankle pain, cellulitis in his eyes contracted while he was in the hospital; shoulder subluxation; flu while he was in the nursing home; pneumonia from ingesting a small peel of a nectarine into his lung; three seizures; depression and lack of motivation; congestive heart failure, atrial fibrillation, and most recently, a mild heart attack.

At this writing, two years after the stroke, Steve is progressing, but at a slower rate. He’s been discouraged by the slow progress, and it has affected his motivation and drive to get better, so he needs constant encouragement and hope.

But with the angioplasty he had last week, which most likely saved his life from a massive, fatal heart attack, he has more energy and doesn’t sleep nearly as much as he did before. Stroke is hard enough to recover from, let alone with all the setbacks Steve has had. But now that he has renewed energy, we are more hopeful for the future. He’s still not out of the woods with all the health conditions that have complicated things, but we see light at the end of the tunnel.

“Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal…”  Philippians 3:13-14