Brain Recovery Advice

What is the best brain recovery advice I can give?

Understand Brain Plasticity

When I think about what we have learned over the last couple of years in our stroke journey, I think that the most important learning has been around the brain. Brain plasticity (or neuroplasticity) was the greatest source of hope for an effective recovery.

I think that it's so important that the stroke patient and caregiver understands just what brain plasticity is. You don't need to understand all the technical stuff, but you do need to understand that this is reql and that it's giving real hope to stroke patients. To this end, I do strongly recommend that you read the book writen by Norman Doidge (see Amazon link at right). The book is a pretty easy read, and it's become quite a best-seller of late as excitement is being generated around what it has to say.

Get Some Neuropsychological Testing

I also think that most of the focus from the medical perspective is on the more obvious impacts of stroke. These are the physical symptoms and the speech-related symptoms. That's not surprising, as these are right in front of your nose!

However, the more sublte symptoms can potentially have a signficant impact on life after stroke. If the stroke patient becomes moody, then people won't want to be around them. If their internal filters aren't working, then they are possibly going to upset a lot of people!

I'd recommend neuropsychological testing as a way to get a handle on these symptoms. The neuropsychologist can help you to understand behavioural and thinking changes that may have occurred. We found that it was hard to find out about neuropsychological testing. We had some testing done that was very specifically focused on IQ. This wasn't the problem. We were then referred to someone who specialised in communication and this was more helpful. Remember to check universities for options here too, as this can be much cheaper than seeing someone in private practice.

Working Around the Impacts

Our experience is that there are not a lot of options to assist with recovering brain function in the cognitive domains. We provide some links to reference material on our cognitive therapy page. However, from a day-to-day perspective, the following tips for managing around cognitive impacts are:

• Set realistic goals for improvements in physical and mental functioning. A goal is important as something to work towards, but it needs to be realistic and thus achievable. Setting an unrealistic goal is a demotivator instead of a motivator.
• Break goals down into component parts and work towards achievement of each step. Making progress is thus more measurable and gives you encouragement and momentum to achieve the greater goal.
• Prepare checklists of what you need to do to achieve each goal and step along the way. This way you are clear on what needs to be done and can make sure all bases are covered.
• When you set timeframes for achieving particular steps, give yourself time to check the work that you've done.
• Make use of time organisers - mechanical or computerised - to help you keep track of what you're doing. Stroke patients often lose track of time on both small and large tasks. A reminder can keep your focus.
• Prepare a visual schedule - use a calendar or a diary - that you can refer to regularly so you know what you're doing.
• Whenever you can, get written steps for what needs to be done. This helps give clarity to what you need to do and provides a checklist for you to work against.
• Plan for time between activities. For example, allow time to drive from a physio session back home and to refresh yourself before committing to another activity (e.g. lunch).
• Take frequent breaks in activities so that you don't get too tired.
• Make sure that any working area is clear of clutter that can distract. Include time in your schedule for clearing up the working area.

Do you have Brain Recovery Advice?

If you have advice about brain recovery after a stroke - please share it!