Stroke Survivors

Stroke survivors found that many of them suffered from one or more disabilities listed below :- 1) Difficulty controlling movement of your limbs on the stroke side; 2) May have loss of feeling in some parts of your body; 3) Difficulty walking; 4) Sense of balancing problem 5) Speech problem 6) Sense of confusion The following true story or article is extracted from a periodical published by the National Stroke Association of Malaysia (NSAM) It was early in the morning on November 2, 2000, when a girl, whose name Chareesa dressed in her school uniform as she was getting ready to go to school. At 6:45am that morning, she fell and complained of severe headache. She was rushed to the hospital with semi-conscious/coma condition in Johore Bharu. She was being attended by a General Practitioner from the hospital for the first two hours and subsequently a neurosurgeon took over the responsibility. After the CT scan result, it was found that she had bleeding in the brain and cerebral fluid had to be drained out.. The anxious parent kept vigil all day and all night. The next morning, when Chareesa came out of her semi-coma condition, her parents noticed and found that her whole left side was paralysed. In addition, Chareesa’s vision and sight was somehow affected. Chareesa was later admitted to a Singapore Hospital just across the causeway for an Angiogram and then returned to the private hospital in Johore Bharu. After some two months passed by, Chareesa was able to return to school with some minor impairments like her brain was not functioning well before her stroke attack. This is somewhat common and expected for stroke survivor like Chareesa, but her mother did not give up hopes on her, instead she encouraged her daughter, Chareesa to start on physiotherapy program to put her back to the road of recovery. Her short-term memory as a result of the stroke was also affected – For example, she could not remember things that had only recently happened. She forgot that she had just eaten, she could not recognize even familiar faces or people. At the very beginning, she had difficulty organizing her thoughts but mercifully thank God, her speech was spared. As Chareesa started on her physiotherapy daily, according to her mother she improved on a day to day basis with a well-designed exercise and physiotherapy activities. Doctors who are treating stroke patients will recommend physiotherapy to be part of the rehabilitation process as early as possible. The sooner the stroke patients start physiotherapy the faster the patient’s brain relearns normal movement thus reorganizing the patient’s sensory and motor pathways. After she had celebrated her 9th year’s birthday the month before admission to hospital for the sudden stroke attack, Chareesa is by nature a very active and cheerful person, who likes to participate in many school activities. This is what Chareesa has to say : “I cannot remember things and I cannot remember what the teachers teach me.” She also say that “I can’t go to the library anymore because it is on the higher floors and I can’t manage to climb up by myself.” Most frustrating of all, she could not participate in her favorite story telling because she cannot gesticulate as her left arm has been affected by stroke.