Is the common chorus I hear from any therapist or doctor when I ask about the possibility of full recovery.
There is nowhere that this becomes clearer to me than when I am at the university's OT clinic.
Everyone of the clients are stroke survivors and it is obvious that stroke affects everyone very differently and everyone recovers in their own way, at their own speed. Compared to some of the clients, I am a marathon runner physically, the affects of stroke vary widely, from those of us with significant paralysis in an arm or leg and some who are completely bound to a wheelchair, unable to interact with the outside world, to those suffering from aphasia, the inability to use or understand language, I feel at home there, no one is staring at me, wondering, but I used to sit and compare myself with other clients, why can that person use their affected arm when I can't? That person walks way more smoothly than I do, but I know now that I am healing in my own specific way and I feel very lucky to have the ability to communicate when so many lose that skill, plus it all boils down to the type of stroke the person suffered,I, of course, the girl who loves to be as overdramatic as possible, had the worst kind of stroke you can have! A hemmorhagic stroke damages more brain tissue, because blood kills brain tissue, an ischemic stroke, on the other hand, is still truamatic, but in this case, oxygen flow is cut off to the brain and the affects of this kind of stroke tend to be slightly less severe than in a hemorrhagic stroke, please do not misinterpret my meaning, I'm not saying that people who suffer from ischemic stroke have it easy, they don't there are still huge challenges, what I'm driving at is that there are parts of my brain thare just dead, we are in a waiting game to see when those parts will spring back to life, something I fully believe will happen.
S, instead of comparing myself to others, I am going to start appreciating my snoewflakiness.
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