In your early days. Did you find it a struggle managing the different feelings on a daily basis.
Ste
1 Like
Just have a dry cut next time. Thatās all I ever had anyway because I canāt stand people messing with my head. And I wash my hair in the shower, but I never had the issue with anxiety from my stroke.
Is it anxiety or is it fatigue, Iām guessing itās fatigue that you are experiencing. And going to have your hair washed and cut will do that at barely 3 months post stroke. They are major excursions to the brain, an awful lot of information/data to take in and process in a still damaged brain. It can wipe you out for the rest of the day.
But it will get easier over the months, partly to learning to manage your day around such excursions as plan better for them.
Lorraine
Ste, My experience was slightly different in that we were camping in France when I had the stroke and I spent nearly four weeks in hospital there. I was kept lying in bed for a few days while they established what had caused the stroke by giving me CT and MRI scans. Once they knew I was got out of bed to sit in a wheelchair and a physio came to take me to his area where I was fitted with a foot brace and got out of the chair to walk about 10 yards and back between two rails to hold onto. I was given physio, speech therapy and psychology five days a week. It was all in French but I managed. The nurses tried their English out on me and we fell about laughing together. Their aim is to have stroke patients able to walk 25 yards and use a flight of stairs up and down by three weeks so they can be discharged. They are then collected and taken to the physio dept five days a week. They treated me in the same way so by the time there was a bed available for me at home I had the ability and confidence to do these things on my own. I spent a week in the isolation room in my local hospital where I had an OT assessment and three physio assessments but they were too busy to give me actual physio. I seemed to be nobodyās responsibility, sometimes I had to ask for food because non was automatically brought to me but the upside was I could have as many people who turned up to see in my room at any time. I still have the fatigue at times and I get frustrated by what I am still unable to do butting try to get out for a daily walk to see some green space and some trees whatever the weather and we get out to live music once a week. I manage to knit in a different way which is very satisfying. I do some cooking, make pastry and cakes, which often look a shambles but taste good so I donāt care. Iām up for trying most things and if they go wrong or I canāt do it, at least I have tried. Iām fortunate in that when I feel despondent I can distract myself by knitting or reading a novel even if I canāt remember what I read. Sorry this is so long but I hope it helps.
Best wishes, Mabel
1 Like
I use a Nurosym as part of my rehabilitation routine, not for anxiety, but for visual-spatial exercises and encouraging my brain to connect new pathways. I am also on Citalopram, so canāt say clearly if the taVNS has been effective for anxiety because the SRRI lifts a lot of that burden. When it surfaces, I have an existential anxiety more so than anything else. Nurosym is expensive but it can be paid off in instalments. It has the most widely conducted clinical trials compared to other taVNS in its range, so there may be something in that, however, these things donāt work for everybody and, apparently, takes up to six weeks daily use to potentially be efficacious, so by then the money back guarantee has expired 
2 Likes