Updated: Mar 26, 2020

Here, we are sharing our team’s wonderful journey with our client who is a stroke survivor.  Stroke is a long term rehabilitation condition which we can see the positive progression of the treatment and exercises. Our client Mr Jason aged 65 was diagnosed with stroke (Left MCA- Right side of upper and lower limb affected) on July 2019 and he was hospitalised for 2 weeks. Mr Jason visit our centre early august 2019 to seek rehabilitation for his condition. He visit our centre weekly twice for rehabilitation exercises and acupuncture. 

What caused the stroke: it could be from lifestyle, stress, smoking history or medical history (High Blood pressure).The main complaint from his family member was he not able to move independently and was hope to make him walk independently with walking stick. Upon assessment, our goal is to re-educate the movement and make him to do his daily activities independently. We focus to train the specific and chain of muscles to work during the movement of body, leg and arm by using acupuncture, physiotherapy techniques or exercises and Electrical Muscle Stimulation.  Physiotherapist have specific exercises and technique to treat stroke client which is highly effective for them. After 5 session he was able to move independently around the bed and able to stand independently with walking stick without the need of assistance from therapist. The progression of our client improved day by day because of his self-discipline and support from us.

Now, he able to walk without any assistive device and with supervision of his family member. The progression was out of his and his family expectation. Currently he is still under our rehabilitation program to improve his quality of life.

Here we are sharing some of the exercises that Mr Jason was doing for past 6 months at our centre .

Initial stage of stroke:

1. Bed mobility: learn how to move around the bed

2. Active assisted movement of affected side: to learn the movement of affected side

3. Re-activate the function muscles of arm and leg on affected side (EXAMPLE: knee control exercise)

4. Activities in sitting/ standing: to train the trunk balance (EXAMPLE: Reaching activities)

5. Prevent further complication: deformity/ muscle wasting/ contracture (keep affected side active/ move in every 1- 2hours)

Recovery stages:

1. Perform activities in standing: weight bearing

2. Re-educate synchronise movement on both upper and lower limb in standing/ sitting

3. Balance activities in standing with different level of difficulty

4. Gait training with assistive device progress to without assistive devices

5. Balance activities in walking with different level of difficulty

All the exercises are tailored to each an individual based on our assessment and understanding about pathophysiology of and types of stroke.

We believe that this post will help everyone to know more about the stroke survivors to the world.

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