5 Reasons to Join an Online Community for Stroke Patients

Support groups are a great way to overcome some of the challenges that result from a stroke. By sharing your own experience, you help others who are faced with the same difficulties or challenge what you have dealt with. Similarly, the experience and advice from others who have been there can also change your life. This is a very effective way to overcome the loneliness feeling and to help others overcome it.

Online support groups leverage the internet and are even more accessible than face to face meetings. They do not require traveling to a physical location and allow therefore sharing and support amongst a larger group. The larger the group, the more common successes and experiences to be shared. Here are 5 reasons why you should join an online community for stroke patients:

1. You are stronger as a group.

The simple benefit of any support group is that you find out that someone else is walking this road with you. Merely engaging others in conversation about each other’s condition will help you recognize the challenges and identify ways to overcome them. In face to face support groups, you may meet several stroke victims, however the online group gives access to a much larger community where you are more likely to find people facing similar situations as the one you have faced or are currently facing.

2. You can connect from the comforts of home.

Thanks to the internet you don’t have to travel. This allows you to communicate at your leisure and at ease. You can easily type on the computer, and suddenly, the world is opened to you. Sitting at the computer is the furthest you need to go to connect with friends.

3. You can communicate via typing.

Many after a stroke suffer language impairment, and then typing on a computer would be the easiest way for you to communicate. Many find it also comforting to provide more privacy as they choose to use aliases on the internet. Some voice recognition software and other assistive devices can even help those who may have difficulty to use the computer keyboard.

4. You can help others.

On the internet, you will find hundreds of people who are suffering from the effects of a stroke and reach out for help. As a stroke victim, you may want to help others overcome what you have experienced. When you reach out to others on the internet, you feel good about yourself. You can help other people and know that you’ve made a positive impact in the world.Ithelps you to know you can help people, and many people are on the internet looking for a kind word of support.You could bring light into someone else’s day and feel a sense of accomplishment from helping.

5. You develop a network of people who care.

Everyone needs people around them who care.As a stroke victim or a stroke victim caregiver, you may have family and medical professionals who care, but you can never have too many people to care about you.Aside from knowing you are not alone; having a support network to turn to when you’ve had a bad day is a great side effect of an online support group.Many groups have areas where you can discuss other topics than just life and recovery after stroke such as television shows, talk about a family problem, or just get to know the other people on the board.A support network is about having friends that care about you.It is possible to get very attached to people you meet online, and many long term friendships are started over a computer.

Try it now!

Want to try an online support group?  Check out the internet’s largest stroke victim support group at http://www.strokenetwork.org/.  You can also join a stroke emailing list by sending the prompt “SUBSCRIBE STROKE-L your name” to LISTSERV@LSV.UKY.EDU.  You will get further instructions on the group with a return email. Other site you may find interesting is http://www.patientslikeme.com/, although not specific for stroke patients it has become very popular in the recent years and the number of stroke victims joining the community is increasing every year.

Atrial Fibrillation and Stroke Risk

If you have a common heart ailment, it can put you at risk for having an acute stroke later on down the line.  Atrial fibrillation is a disordered beating of the heart.  When the heart is incapable of beating correctly, it can cause a clot to form in the chamber of the heart, and this clot can easily go to the brain and cause an acute cerebral infarct, or stroke.  Sometimes you will be able to tell if you have this irregular heartbeat, but sometimes you are unaware of it.  You need to have a doctor thoroughly examine you to determine if you have atrial fibrillation.

What is Atrial Fibrillation?

Atrial fibrillation is an irregular beating of the heart.  Your heart has four chambers: two upper chambers, or atria, and two lower chambers, or ventricles.  These chambers beat in time – first the upper chambers contract and then the lower chambers contract.  This produces the familiar two-beat heartbeat that is so well known.  When you have atrial fibrillation, the upper chambers quiver weakly and do not beat in time with the rest of the heart.  The ventricles beat just as they always have, but the upper chambers beat at an erratic pace.

Sometimes your atria beat in a rapid way, and your heartbeat goes above 120 beats per minute.  This is a risky scenario because your heart cannot take beating that fast for a prolonged period of time.  You will likely feel this type of atrial fibrillation as “heart racing”.  However, sometimes the atria do not beat so quickly, but they are beating an irregular rhythm, nonetheless.  You would be hard pressed to determine if you heart was beating irregularlyor not.  Only an EKG can tell for sure.  Either case can increase your risk of an acute ischemic stroke.

Why does Atrial Fibrillation Increase Stroke Risk?

When the atria quiver, they do not have the concerted effort of the heartbeat to move blood out of the chambers.  If your heart beats normally, most of the blood is ejected with each stroke.  With atrial fibrillation, only a small portion of the blood is ejected.  The rest of the blood pools in the chamber.  When your blood pools, clots can form.  Clots greatly increase your risk for an acute ischemic stroke.  The clots that are forming in your atria can sometimes become detached and travel through your arteries to your brain.  Once in the brain, this clot can block off the passageway of narrow arteries, and all the brain tissue beyond the clot will die.  This is the definition of an acute stroke, and the reason why it is so important to diagnose atrial fibrillation early and treat it aggressively.

What is the Treatment for Atrial Fibrillation?

The treatment of atrial fibrillation takes a great deal of work on the part of the patient and the doctor.  If you have an EKG performed that determines your atria are not pumping correctly, you will need to take a medication that helps to thin your blood.  In actuality, your blood is not thinner.  It is just less likely to clot when taking this medication.  Your doctor will likely put you on a regimen of warfarin (Coumadin) to treat your atrial fibrillation and decrease your risk of an acute stroke.  With this medication, you have to have frequent blood tests to determine if your blood is at risk for clotting.  This lab test is called an International Normalized Ratio, or INR, and it determines how well warfarin is working.  If it is working too much, you are at risk for bleeding events, such as a bloody nose, bleeding in the stomach, or an acute hemorrhagic stroke.  If the medication is not working well enough, you are at risk of your blood clotting and leading to an acute ischemic stroke.

Getting the right dose often takes an extended time period, and you may sometimes need to be hospitalized to get your INR in the proper range.  This is accomplished by adjusting the dosage of the medication, sometimes requiring different doses on different days.  Once your INR is stabilized, you will still need to have your blood checked periodically to make sure that it stays in the desired range.  For some people, this can mean biweekly or monthly blood tests to keep the INR stable.  It is worth the effort, though, because with this medication, your stroke risk would reduce dramatically.

References

National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; Atrial Fibrillation and Stroke Information Page; September 2011

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/atrial_fibrillation_and_stroke/atrial_fibrillation_and_stroke.htm

Reading Rehabilitation After Stroke

When you have a massive stroke, many faculties are affected and harmed as a result.  One of the most devastating side effects of a massive stroke is the inability to read afterward.  This can either be a problem with language itself, or it can be a result of other acute stroke issues, such as visual field disturbances.  For that reason, the rehabilitation of reading after a massive stroke is not an easy case.  You have to pinpoint the type of difficulty you are having with reading and then take specific rehabilitation actions to attempt to restore those functions.  Most stroke victims who have trouble with reading after an acute stroke have brain damage on the left side of the brain where the language functions are located.  However, any massive stroke can directly or indirectly affect the ability to read, write, and understand language.

Peripheral Alexias

Alexia is the inability to read effectively after an acute stroke.  It is not to be confused with dyslexia, which is the inability to read correctly as an innate trait.  Strokes in the brain cause many different alexias, and some of them are referred to as peripheral.  These alexias do not directly impact the language center of the brain, but are more likely caused by some other brain abnormality, such as the inability to see in certain visual fields.

The most common type of peripheral alexia is hemianopic alexia.  Essentially, this is vision loss after a stroke and is caused by damage to the visual cortex.  When the problem with vision gets close enough to the center of the field, it can create problems with trying to see the whole word on the paper.  For this reason, stroke victims have to constantly go over words, or they miss part of words that are on the page.  Rehabilitation therapies for this symptom of a massive stroke focus primarily on improving the eye movements themselves.  The best way to combat this symptom of a massive stroke is to read aloud from a scrolling text bar while a therapist watches you read.  This keeps the eyes moving in the correct way to compensate for the missing visual field and improves reading speed.  Although speeds never return to normal, they do improve substantially with this method.

Pure and global alexia is another type of peripheral alexia.  Stroke victims can generally make out and recognize letters and parts of words, but they cannot put them together.  Therapists usually make stroke patients read words out loud many times or trace the letters of the word they are trying to read.  This is thought to stimulate the part of the brain that puts the words together.  Neglect alexia is the inability to see prefixes or suffixes of words due to a problem in the visual field.  Reading through a prism is used to help stroke patients see more of the word they are trying to read and circumvent the neglect.

Central Alexias

Central alexias are most often the result of language loss.  Stroke patients who have this type of reading problem will generally have aphasia, or trouble speaking, and trouble discerning auditory language, as well.  Again, this is damage to a specific part of the brain and requires a different type of rehabilitation to overcome damage to these sections.  Most stroke victims with this type of alexia will experience more difficulty with the speech and auditory problems they are having, but if the aphasia is minor, the ability to read becomes more of a focus.

Phonological alexia is the type of central alexia where a patient cannot sound out the words.  Stroke victims are able to read words they have seen in the past, but when confronted with a new word, stroke victims are unable to sound the word out and read it.  Therapists will usually pair words that are unknown with known words that have the same beginning sounds to prompt the brain to remember the section of the word and hopefully, put them together with the rest of it.  Rereading aloud is also used in this form of alexia to correct the stroke victim and reinforce the pronunciation and understanding of new words.

Deep alexia builds on phonological alexia but adds semantic errors into the mix.  For instance, stroke victims will read the word fork, but say and understand spoon.  Stroke victims know the words, but the wrong mental association comes up along with it.  One way to combat this type of alexia is to read words with the picture associated with it.  This will help the brain make the connection between what the word actually says and what it means.  Another type of therapy focuses on repeatedly writing words over and over to lock in the meaning of the word.  This shows great gains for the treated words, but does not help with other words.

Surface alexia is the opposite of phonological alexia.  Stroke patients are able to see and recognize the patterns of words, but they pronounce them only as fragments of the word.  For instance, colonel would be pronounce col-on-nel instead of the correct way.  Treatments for this include pairing the words with pictures and repeated drilling of the correct pronunciation.  Of course, only words that are likely to come up in a stroke patient’s lexicon are included in this form of therapy.

References

International Encyclopedia of Rehabilitation; Rehabilitation of acquired alexia; Alexander P. Leff and T.M. Schofield; 2012

http://cirrie.buffalo.edu/encyclopedia/en/article/267/

Tags

neuroplasticity one-side negect online community online support pain patients psoriasis reading recovery rehab rehabilitation research returning home risk safety self-esteem sensory dysfunction sex silent stroke sleep apnea sleeping disorders smoking spasticity speech therapy stroke stroke exercise stroke help stroke in women stroke prevention stroke rehab stroke rehabilitation stroke risks stroke survivor stroke victims support symptoms therapy thrombosis TIA tips treatment vision Women women stroke work

Follow Us