I had a mild stroke a month ago due to an unexplained tear in a neck artery. This affected my walking and balance. My walking has improved but I’m still a bit wobbly. I can go out in my garden and walk around slowly but outside in my quiet street it feels horrendous when I’ve tried to go for a short walk. It’s as if my body and eyes are out of sync. Going in the car is even worse even at a slow speed. Has anyone else experience this?
2 Likes
Hello @Springchicken
I’ve recently had a TIA, I’ve noticed lots of differences. There’s a narrow path where I walk my dog on a local nature reserve and I’ve walked up it lots of times, I recently walked up it and found I had to concentrate much harder and make a real effort to ensure my balance. Hope this improves for you soon.
5 Likes
Aye, this has been my world after having had four cerebellar strokes. I have cognitive spatial-visual mismatch where body, vision and movement experience difficulty synchronising.
3 Likes
Hi spring chicken!
Welcome! Great community this i hope u get as much out of it as I have - I am sure you will.
This unsteadiness will (or should - im not a doctor) improve but it will take time. When u think about it your brain has had an injury and is improving so any wobblyness is reasonable given the trauma. It just needs time for that neuroplasticity to get to work. Well thats my belief i think it’s reasonable?
Overall you sound to be doing very well: keep up the walking be kind to yourself too obviously take care with driving take a day out when needed and all that good stuff im sure you’ve already thought of. Recovery is not linear good days and not so good but overall gradual improvement builds a firm base.
Keep posting friend if you can? Every post here helps everyone i think it’s fair to say. 1 month is very early on so ur doing very well. Hope this helps or reassures a bit. Have a great weekend.
5 Likes
@Springchicken - firstly welcome to the forum. It’s nice to meet you and thank you for sharing your experience.
Secondly, and perhaps, I should say possibly this should be the first thing, I have to ask, should you really be driving if you as you say
It’s as if my body and eyes are out of sync. Going in the car is even worse even at a slow speed?
Seems to me this is a highly dangerous thing for you to be doing, both for yourself and for other road users.
I am not sure what medical advice you have been given following your stroke, but I wonder if you should have been warned to not drive, at least until something has been checked or some probationary period has elapsed.
I expect other stroke survivors may have a better understanding of this and may be able to better advise you.
Please stay safe!
Namaste|
2 Likes
@Springchicken hi & welcome to the community. Sorry you’ve had cause to join us.
The sensations you describe where what I felt after having my stroke too. Whenever I was a passenger in a car the sensations were awful but it did settle down in time.
A month is still very early on & things take time to improve. Just give yourself a bit of time & take it steady for now. Keep doing these things though as the more you do the better it will become.
@ManjiB I don’t think @Springchicken meant driving more as a passenger. You’re right about not being able to drive for at least a month after a stroke.
4 Likes
Hello@Springchicken, Welcome to our community !
Whilst I am sorry to hear of your stroke, I must advise you to leave your car in the garage.Eye problems are so common and I have been struggling with mine for over 5 years. Please be patient and give your brain a chance to recover, but it can take a long time.
Wishing you a full recovery.
Regards,
Bob Isle.
2 Likes
Hiya….yeah this was a phenomena I noticed after my stroke 18 months ago when I first started to walk afterwards… in particular the goods on the shelves in my local Spar seemed to pulsate at me…that’s all gone now, although I still get neuro fatigue sometimes if I go shopping all day…for me it seemed to have something to do with standing/maintaining balance whilst juggling other things….curiously my driving wasn’t affected (altho I didn’t drive for the first three months) as I do this sitting down!! So try not to worry too much, it’s going to take a bit of time as everyone on here will attest to…I like to look at it as the brain recovering from an almighty wallop….simplistic maybe, but I try to be kind to myself x
3 Likes
Hi Baldric
Thank you so much for your very helpful reply. It has given me some much needed reassurance. I’m endeavouring to do a bit more each day with the odd rest day for good measure. I must accept it will take time to recover and be me again.
The whole thing came out of the blue as they often do and that alone has been a shock. I hope you are well on the road to recovery. Many thanks again SC.
2 Likes
Hi Bob
Thanks for your reply. I’m not going to even try to drive myself. I was referring to being a passenger in my partner’s car. We tried a very short, slow drive around the local streets and I felt dreadful. It was very unsettling as I felt like I couldn’t take it all in. It made me nauseous too. I except it’s early days and I need to be patient.
4 Likes
Hello, thank you for the welcome and your reassuring reply. It’s so good when someone else has experienced how you feel and understands. It’s hard for family sometimes.
I will definitely keep going with the walking as it has improved and try to be brave enough to try the car at a later date, although that worries me. Am I right in thinking you too suffered a tear to a neck artery? No one seems to know how or why it happened.
Take care and thank you again. SC
2 Likes
Hi,
Just to say I’m not actually driving. I experienced these symptoms in my partner’s car. I know you can’t drive for a certain amount of time and have no desire to drive at present. SC
3 Likes
Do keep trying travelling in a car that way you will start to get used to it and it will get easier. I still get an odd occasion where I suffer the same but it is much less frequent now.
Yes, I did have a tear in my carotid artery and I have no idea how it happened. Just one of those things a I guess. It worried me a lot initially in case it happened again but all has been fine since.
Be patient and things will start to improve for you.
Best wishes
Ann
3 Likes
Perfectly normal this early in your recovery. Mine was a mild stroke and it took me about 12-18 months for those visual issues to return to normal.
But that didn’t stop me from being a passenger in the car. And longer journeys were harder. You have to keep on trying. Your brain has to relearn, and the only way is through repetition.
Some little tips to alleviate the effects that I used are, closing your eyes for spells when in the car and be looking down when you open them. Take something to read in the car, or do simple puzzles on your phone. That way you are are only glancing up and out the windows periodically…but your brain is still getting the exposure it needs to experience in order to learn and desensitise itself.
It’s like vertigo and the constant visual changes are just coming at you too fast for your brain to register, a bit like warp speed through space 
And even though it will still try to register and process everything it’s taking in, it gets scrambled and overwhelmed. Because it’s still a little bit broken, hence things like dizzyness, nausea, disorienation.
And that’s the other thing people don’t tend to consider after a stroke…the broken brain. A sprained ankle or broken leg, you know not to stand on it, you won’t abuse it, because it’ll hurt like heck. And you will protect it accordingly to ensure the recovery. The brain’s protected by the skull and doesn’t feel pain in the same way as the broken leg. So it introduces these symptoms in order to get you to give it a break, let it rest a minute or three. Likewise with the fatigue most of us experience, they’re all methods your brain uses accordingly to either rest or regroup/reset itself. So listen and learn your brain’s signals, there’s likely a pattern to them, they’re telling you something…that’s enough of that…move on, it just takes time to figure them out 
And welcome to the group, you’re likely to learn a lot more here than the doctors have time to teach you. The search bar can find most topics of concern to you but you go with what’s easiest for your brain to cope with. So just ask, if it’s easier than trawling through posts to find your particular needle in the haystack 
It’ll certainly be easier on your eyes
Lorraine
6 Likes
Hi Spring chicken, I too have difficulties since my stroke 5 months ago, I have no confidence in walking outside unless I am with someone, then have a stick.
But this sounds far worse even in the car, have you told the Doctor? and was they any help. Good luck
2 Likes
Hello Lorraine, thank you so very much for your extremely helpful and reassuring reply. I’ve only been in the car once as a passenger and it was awful. I will follow your advice about taking a book etc and closing my eyes. I have already learnt a lot from joining this page especially the need for repetition to retrain my brain. It’s true what you say if it was a broken bone we would give it time to heal. Our poor brains need to rest and recover in their own time. Repetition has proved positive in regards to my walking and I’m able to go a bit further ever day or other day.
Are you now back driving yourself or have you decided to give up? As I’m in my 70’s I’m not sure what the outcome will be. I would certainly miss my car.
Anyway thank you again your advice has been invaluable.
Chris.
2 Likes
Yes, I was back driving about 18 months after the stroke, but for first few months I wouldn’t drive alone. It still took time to build up my confidence because, needless to say, I had all the “what if’s” of another stroke running through my head, as you do. But I’m fine now, and still driving a manual car, though I don’t do motorways, I leave those to my hubby
I’m 64 and don’t want to have to rely on my hubby to take me to all my fitness classes and stroke meetings and such, so I’ve no intention of giving up driving any time soon. But my hubby is talking about talking about switching to automatic car, not that I need it, but it’s easier as we get older I suppose.
Out of all the various fitness classes I do, pilates has got to be the best one I’ve had for improving my balance. And this is because every movement you make requires tucking your belly in, your abdominal, in order to stabilise yourself and protect your spine. After a few classes of that, you will find you start automatically doing that as you go about your daily life. I now do daily weight resistance training at the gym and have 3 other body balance/strength & Balance classes I attend in the week as well as the pilates. Which I only started a few months ago. And the class is all over 50s with all the varying issues of old age such as knee/hip/joint issues, heart/stroke issues etc to contend with. So you don’t feel out of place or struggle to keep up with a younger and fitter crowd, it’s more our pace But it works, if you stick with it. You’ll be surprised at what you’ll unlock in yourself
Lorraine
1 Like
Hi Rups
First of all I’m so sorry you have had 4 strokes, that’s really hard to bear. I was told mine was mild but it has still left me with the symptoms you describe. I try to go for walks each day, each slightly longer than the other. Things seemed a bit easy visually today 
but that might change again tomorrow.
For me it’s not being able to go in the car, as a passenger, due to the unpleasant sensations it causes. I’m going to persevere and try to retrain my brain. I hate the thought of being stuck at home.
Chris.
3 Likes
I had no trouble as a passenger in the car at the front, but by gosh I felt giddy sitting in the back. I refused for many years to sit in the back. Now, it is not so bad, however, I still opt for the front if I can. There is a lot of visual noise, driving in a car, akin to motion sickness on a boat. The brain does need to experience it time and time again for it to recalibrate. Fortunately, cars don’t rock about like boats. You could try wearing sunglasses to mute the visual stimulus, I did that for a while. Another thing you can do is stick your tongue out, this reduces brain chatter and sensory overload. This works for me, on wobbly days, I frequently walk around with my tongue hanging out. I don’t care what people think because it makes me feel better.
3 Likes
Apart from the tongue bit, which I cannot relate to or have tried, I must say this even at the risk of sounding like a broken record, but even if I sound like a broken record, I am happy to go on record and say that (I believe) what you are describing here Rupert is “Car sickness”.
Ok, before there are any extreme reactions to what might come across as an ignorant (non-stroke survivor) or absurd suggestion, I can say with absolute certainty the exact same things used to happen to me when I sit in the back of a car. Oddly enough, I even nearly thrown up when I once decided I should read a book on a long journey as a back seat passenger, but luckily for all, I managed to avoid that.
So this (“car sickness” in my view) happens to people whether they are stroke survivors or not.
Rupert - you have explained this very well or as they say “In a nut shell”.
That’s it in a nutshell.
So now when I am a back seat passenger, first rule
- most important rule - don’t be a back seat driver
- I don’t read or look down for too long
- Look out of the windows (side or windscreen if you can see ahead)
- Talk or listen to music and focus.
That is how I deal with “car sickness” and yes, you may not agree that this is what you are experiencing, but that is OK. In time, you will find an explanation and a solution to whatever it is you are experiencing.
1 Like