7
Stroke!
(Continued from page 7)
to cry. Don Osborne, the staff physical
therapist at the Northern Westchester
Hospital, was manipulating my impaired
fingers one day about a week after my at
tack. We were joking. The next minute,
inexplicably, I started weeping uncon
trollably. Don just kept on working my
hand, chatting away blithely. This kind of
understanding can help a stroke victim
immeasurably.
I spent more than two months under
Dr. Rusk's supervision and still get hospital-administered
physical therapy for two
hours a day, three times a week. I've been
most fortunate in such care. But most
stroke victims get their treatment at
home. With discipline, excellent results
can be achieved, and without expensive
equipment No exercise should ever be at
tempted without specific instructions from
your doctor, however. And he should check
on your progress regularly. As a practical
home guide, the U.S. Department of
Health, Education, and Welfare issues an
excellent pamphlet, entitled "Strike Back
at Stroke" (available at U.S. Government
Printing Office, Washington 25, D.C., 40).
It's quite complete on everything from
"What Is a Stroke?" and "How Families
Can Help Patients," to illustrated ways of
doing rehabilitation exercises.
Many common household articles are
better than expensive mechanical contri
vances for exercising. You can learn to
walk again by using the backs of two
chairs, sliding them over the kitchen lin
oleum in the same rhythm the arms nor
mally take when you move about "Much
To restore finger dexterity,
Jim practices simple knot
tying (top left), shuffling
deck of cards (lower left),
hand gripping (top right),
and opening a coffee can.
better than crutches." says Dr. Rusk.
Using the slotted metal key to open a
can of vacuum-packed coffee is a good ex
ercise for strengthening the wrist and
finger muscles. To develop control, try to
turn doorknobs. Get someone to tie a piece
of clothesline into a series of intricate
knots, then you untie them.
I play cards with my family every night
At first I couldn't pick the cards up off the
table with my weakened fingers, much less "
hold them. Now I can shuffle a deck, after
a fashion. At present, I'm hard at work
practicing penmanship with my bad hand,
making old-fashioned ovals and ups-and-downs,
as I did in grade school. My chil
dren practice with me nightly. It's a game,
but I notice that their writing has im
proved along with mine.
Plain walking, particularly up and
down stairs, even though it is labori
ous, is just about the best thing you can
do to exercise a stricken leg. If your house
has no stairs, any carpenter can build you
a portable set of three or four steps with
a handrail for practice.
For the stroke patient, just getting back
to doing things even halfway normally is
a powerful incentive to get well.
My own recovery, I am told, will be al
most total before the year is out My blood
pressure is under control, and I've trimmed
my weight Recently, I met an old acquaint
ance. He didn't know I'd been ill, and his
first words were, "I haven't seen you look
ing so well in years." He refused to believe
me when I told him what had happened.
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