Chapter 5: Therapy

Before I left the hospital, I was given three choices.

Option one: I could stay at the hospital. Initially, I wanted to stay. Then I got all the lovely details. If I stayed, I would be moved to the “rehab” area of the hospital and have lots of therapy--not too bad. But if I stayed, I would have to stay for at least 10 more days--the most intensive part of the therapy I needed. I wanted to stay until I felt better, but not that long! I passed on option one.

Option two: Go home and have a therapist come to my home. This sounded pretty good! Then again, there was fine print: in order to have a therapist come to your home, you must be homebound. Okay, I’m not going anywhere. My home and my bed, especially my bed were beckoning. But homebound means you can’t go anywhere! (except to the doctors.) I couldn’t have Larry take me on a drive. I couldn’t go outdoors. I couldn’t leave my home, period. I didn’t really think I would go anywhere, but I didn’t like that I couldn’t either. Call me a control freak but I passed on option two.

Option three: Go home and have someone bring me back to the hospital for therapy 2-3 times a week. I chose door number three.

Therapy sounded promising, hopeful and not too difficult, really. Boy, was I ever wrong.

Physical Therapy

This is where I learned to walk again. I started trying by using a walker. It turns out that stroke recovery is completely different than recovering from a physical injury. The main difference I learned was NOT to push through the pain. I would walk around the house with the walker and do a few loops. My foot would start to drag and I would tell myself, you can do one more. I found out this was a big no-no!

I wasn’t teaching my leg to walk. I was re-training my brain. If I taught my brain that dragging my foot was the way to walk, then I would always walk with a limp. I was taught to only walk as far as I could do it correctly. As soon as I perceived that I was struggling to do something correctly I was supposed to stop and rest. That turned out to be only a little therapy and a lot of napping at first.

There are many ways to learn to walk again. For me the one that clicked was walking on a treadmill. It was very scary and too fast at first--at least in my mind. But, the rhythm of it helped me walk steadily without limping. I started out ridiculously slow and I tired out after just two minutes of walking. But, I was walking!

The next physical therapy was learning to climb stairs. My fun lesson here was, “The good go to heaven and the bad go to hell.” So I go up leading with the good leg and I go down leading with the bad leg. It was a great way to remember. I still think of it when I use stairs now. :-)

Occupational Therapy

Where physical therapy was all about large muscle movements like walking and climbing stairs, occupational therapy was about the little stuff. This was to help me use my arm and more importantly my hand again. They have all sorts of tools and exercises to help regain fine motor skills. It was also helpful in stopping the “claw.” My hand wanted to curl up into a claw and then curl up protectively against my chest. (A year later it still wants to do this.) They also tested my grip strength. I could grip 40 lbs. in my right hand and 2 in my left! I had my work cut out for me.

There were all sorts of creative exercises for me. Most involved very interesting props and tools--many of which were made by boy scouts as Eagle Projects which I thought was a wonderful idea. They included: put the pegs in the right holes, drop the washers onto the dowels, pick the beads out of the therapy putty, etc. Sounds fun, huh? It was torture! These little tasks were unbelievably difficult. Lifting a small metal washer off a peg and placing it on another one would take 30 seconds of intense concentration and slow, trembling movements—only to drop the washer and have to start over. Little by little, over many weeks, I got better and faster at these movements. My coordination, strength and endurance started improving.

My favorite exercises were learning how to do everyday skills again. They had all the things you use at home, like a hair dryer and toothbrush and toothpaste, at the rehab center! I re-learned how to blow dry my hair—nearly impossible. I re-learned to brush my teeth, shake out a piece of laundry, fold a towel. Simple, right? Hardly. When your left arm doesn’t want to cooperate, these are an incredible challenge. Imagine trying to get your one year old to fold socks. That’s about how much coordination I had. I was thrilled when I could finally lift my arm up to my head. Then, I had to be able to keep that arm up!

Speech Therapy

For many stroke victims speech therapy is the hardest part of recovery. For me, because of the part of my brain that was damaged, speech wasn’t a huge problem. Thinking was another matter so for me this was more “cognitive therapy.” I struggled to think and have words come to mind. After a battery of tests, my therapist Paul knew where my weaknesses were.

Here I had to read books out loud. This was to help with inflection. Apparently I spoke in a bit of a monotone now. No emotion.

I was also given exercises for swallowing. The left side of my throat wouldn’t always close and I would end up choking.

I was given challenges to try and multi-task. That was hard! I could barely come up with one thing to do, let alone try to do two!

Paul was also a long-time friend. So I admit, I shared a lot of my worries and questions with him. He was great about listening and finding answers for me, if he didn’t know.

Recovery

Larry was super supportive and took me to therapy for weeks, leaving work and cancelling trips to be there for me. Eventually I felt emotionally up to letting someone drive me. And after a few months I felt up to doing the exercises on my own, at home.

I was so blessed. After lots of work I could start to see a light at the far end of a long tunnel. I felt I was eventually going to get my life back—or at least something close to what it was before.