Rehab a Long Road for Patient

By Dariush Shafa, Messenger-Inquirer, Owensboro, Ky.

Dec. 20–Without therapy, Glenn Young would not be able to walk today. He wouldn’t be able to get around the house, answer the door or be able to speak to people and be understood.

Today, the only real indicator that Young ever had the stroke is the cane that he uses when he walks, helping him keep the balance that a stroke nearly took from him.

Young, a 60-year-old Owensboro man, had back surgery in March 2002, but when he woke up from surgery he couldn’t move. Doctors later discovered that Young had experienced three massive strokes, one right after another.

“I didn’t know what was going on,” Young said. “The strokes had messed me up.”

Five years later, and after much intense therapy, Young is back to a nearly normal life. He uses the cane and keeps notes to help him remember.

Young is the first to credit the extent of his recovery to extensive therapy and rehabilitation.

“(It made) a big difference,” Young said. “Rehab really helped me.”

Recovering from a stroke is a lot like growing up all over again, said Bruce Mauzy, OMHS’ director of therapeutic services at the HealthPark on Ford Avenue. When people undergo a stroke, they often lose the ability to use something on their body, be it an arm or leg or the ability to speak. Reteaching them how to overcome the disability, or how to live with it, uses the same process that children use in their normal development.

“We take that adult through the same developmental sequence that a child has to go through,” Mauzy said. “We teach them to accomplish little tasks so they can move on toward the bigger tasks that they want to accomplish.”

For patients who have lost the use of a limb, electrical stimulation sometimes works to help patients relearn how to use the muscles in the limb. Repetitive motion may help a patient regain control of a weakened limb.

“What we do is we try to facilitate any motor function we can,” Mauzy said. “The rehabilitation process is what we call a restoration process. It tries to either restore some of the function they’ve lost or teach them to live with the impairments they have, relying on what they do have working.”

Teaching people how to make use of what they have may not be the same as giving them back everything they lost, but it’s no less important.

“Sometimes people dwell too much on what they’ve lost,” Mauzy said. “Everyone wants to live a meaningful life and contribute. If you lose part of your function, you don’t feel like you’re whole or at peace.”

Another important part of the process is overcoming fear, since many stroke sufferers doubt that they’ll ever be able to function on their own again, Mauzy said.

“Getting people over fear, that’s a big thing,” he said. “It really can impair their progress because it will keep them from progressing the way we’d like them to.”

Mauzy also emphasized the importance of family support.

“We really need family support for them to help motivate that patient,” he said. “It’s real key on restoring that hope, because most people live for their work or their family or recreation. That family support is critical to give them that hope to push themselves back.”

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Copyright (c) 2007, Messenger-Inquirer, Owensboro, Ky.

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