I had my stroke like most people out of the blue.i was talking to my medic on the phone when i said my speech sounds slurred he made an emergency appointment for me to attend the doctors, i drove in YES, drove in, the Gp I saw I’ve never ever met before at my surgery, he said nope alls ok and I drove back home. Next day I fell as I lost use of my left leg and arm.
I was 29 stone and 8lbs then, so fell heavy and couldn’t get up.
Son came home rang 999..I had a stroke it was confirmed, a clot in my neck and clogged up artery of plaque.
I’m a year on this July from my stroke. I kept up with my calorie counting for losing weight now I’m 18 stone 4 pounds.
I walk with a walker sometimes I practice freely but I was disabled before my stroke and my other leg ( the not affected one) can give out and I fall so I have to be careful.
My speech is ok except I have my 2 front teeth missing which makes me list a bit! lol
I’m working on my left arm, I can straighten my fingers and open my hand I try to use it to open bottle tops etc.
Raising my arm is something I’m still working on though.
I’ve been diagnosed with endometrial cancer but because of my risk after a stroke the odds are against me for a hysterectomy, so a coil that’s medicated to help kill the cells is the option.
So yes life can be tough for us all but we all have our own worth and own fight. I just thought I’d tell you a bit about myself I do post regular.
@Sue1958 thank you for sharing your story. You’ve definitely had a rough ride of it but you’re still standing & making progress all the time.
Well done on the weight loss. That’s an amazing amount of weight to lose. You have done well & I am sure if will be better for your overall health too.
Yes Sue welcome! I am a fairly recent member myself. It was really good to hear of your weight loss journey. You seem to be a determined lady who doesn,t let anything stop you. Carry on doing what you ARE doing. Good luck!
Hi @Sue1958 thank you for your story, and you have done so well losing so much weight. What you say about how how your stroke initially presented itself and then the more substantial one the following day; that seems to have been the case for quit a few members on here that I’ve read about over the years. I do sometimes wonder if it could be avoided if medical staff were better able to diagnose it at that initial point.
I don’t if you already do either of these little exercises for your arm, but I thought they might help with getting your arm to raise.
The first requires either a wrist weight, resistance or even a shopping bag with a couple cans of food/bag of sugar/rice/whatever to give it some weight. Then just hook on your arm and some bicep curls: just raising your arm as high as you can and lowering it again. Do this from all 3 positions of out in front of you, up and down your chest/waist; and out to the side.
Do as many repetitions as you can in each position and give yourself a one minute rest between each set of reps.
The second one is the upright row and the image below show you how its done either with weights (a kettle bell and bar bell in this instance) or with a shopping back of groceries
But the main reason I chose these particular images is to show the muscles these exercise target (shown is Red), both front and back. And these are the muscles you need to strengthen to both trigger and aid your ability to raise your arm.
Another good one to help you IF you can get down on the floor, either rock back and forth on your hands and knees or even crawl around.
The most important point of this action is, the weight you are putting in your arms is firing ALL the muscles right up your arms, into your shoulders, shoulder blades and upper back. All crucial to arm movement.
That’s where we first started strengthening and training muscle memory as babies crawling around the floor, so don’t poo poo it Because that’s basically where our stroke brain are now at
Because that’s basically where our stroke brain are now at 