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Comments for Hardened Knees
She may walk again


Hello,

Although it's difficult to answer your question without knowing what kind of a stroke your mother had, unless her bones have (since) been damaged or her nerves all eaten up, so to speak by acidity, there isn't any reason as to why she could not walk again if she has the will to do so. She needs the right knowledge on how to go about it, so as not to injure herself further.

I've been assaulted with head and liver injuries leading me to have 4 strokes in 3 years, although I'm healthy otherwise. The last stroke, wasn't one of the types you recover from.

It's tough, and I'm far from being back to my former self, but I taught myself and willed myself to get there. As a result, although I could not stand on my legs at first and was told to consider myself lucky I was still alive, I can now walk some though not under every condition. I can read and write again, and I'm even regaining some of my foreign languages and bits of knowledge in other fields which had been wiped out following the assault. Too much stress has me down in a flash though, and I do get a lot of that unfortunately, so I hope your mother doesn't have to cope with external stress as I do. There you could help her perhaps, but it isn't always easy!

There is a difference between the inability to stand on your legs (knee and nerve ankle injuries during a stroke are the typical reason why you'd do further damage to yourself standing up and walking too much too soon) and never being able to walk again.

One must try though AS IF they were walking from the very beginning, if possible.
While on my bed, I used to make my legs move (not raising them, so as not to damage the knees) while imagining myself swimming in the sea doing those movements or lying on the sand before getting up and running to the waves. Once that was done for a few minutes, I would keep my legs still and only move as frenetically as possible my toes for 15 to 30 seconds, imagining a very quick-tempo music to which I'd be dancing with my toes, sitting on a chair in a nice hotel, wishing it were not so posh there that I could not stand up and dance to that music.

I would never get up and dance like that at a hotel in real-life, but that was the whole point. I wasn't putting myself into the role of a cripple who would never be able to stand up again, but instead I'd feel that the music was an invite to dance, but while in such a palace where I would only have my toes discreetly dancing to the music in my shoes, without getting up to dance. Thus I was telling myself, this feeling means getting up, I'm not getting up now because the place doesn't call for it, if you've got manners, but otherwise I would be.

It may sound weird but it is the surest way to go if you want to walk again when badly hurt after a stroke. You see, the stroke will not only have produced acid waste damaging bones and nerve tissues, akin to that after a leg injury sustained in a fall or accident, but it will also have damaged parts of the connection system between the brain and body. So rehab alone doesn't work in the more serious scenarios of connection loss.

Visualizing herself in a situation where she'd be walking, while gently and briefly exercising her legs, visualizing sensing excitement and the need to get up when she activates her toes, will help her brain recreate working connections between the brain and the legs. Otherwise, you train the leg muscles, but the brain doesn't follow and as soon as the stroke-survivor attempts to send a message to their legs to walk, they collapse and can at times forever damage their legs.

Here's one more tip: make sure that when she lies or sits, her head and heart are staying well above stomach/butt levels and that her feet are above stomach level a bit, yet below the heart, and that there are cushions or a folded duvet under her lower legs as well as under neck and head when sleeping so that she doesn't harden her joints into a fixed position.

No physical pressure should be put against her head where the injury was sustained or is located. That's not easy when sleeping, but it does help a lot, as physical pressure against the brain diminishes reaction even further, and can make the heart stop even, in extreme cases. I have invested in pillows (some firm and some soft but well-filled for on top of the firm ones, and at times I make a patchy pillow thing with sewing to ensure that I have a lot of fluff around the pillow, but almost none in the center part, so that I almost only have air between the two pieces of fabric making the pillow right under my head, but a good support at neck level and on the outer parts of the pillow so that I do not have my head falling backwards either.

While sitting, I used to have to wear a neck pillow to limit the pressure keeping my neck in a upright position was putting on my brain. I sleep on two duvets, even in the summer, to avoid adding pressure to my spine and head. I am also aware that I can't cope with extreme temperatures (and not even with the slightest cold on bad days, although I had never been sensitive to cold before). I do not care what people will say, I'll wear a warm shawl when it's below 20¨C if I feel the need for one and most importantly something on my head to prevent escaping of body heat, even if before I'd have walked in a plain cotton shirt and skirt. Excessive heat is just as bad, so I keep ice cold water close at all times. My windows are wide open a lot, whether there is rain,shine, or freezing weather (but then only for ten or 15 minutes at a time).

You lack oxygen after a stroke, so air needs to be full of it, and with as little CO2 as possible (grilling and smoking are out, or let it be done by someone other than your mother and only outside or with windows wide opened and your mother in a different room. Otherwise the lack of oxygen or excess of CO2 will damage her brain, and make her further unable to walk among other things. If I want to know how little oxygen there is in a room, I need only try to walk in it. If my muscles are stiff, my feet are dragging, I can't lift my legs, and my head gets dizzy, there is a lot of CO2 there, even if it's not too much for an individual who hasn't had a stroke.

Anything making your mother's head hot or start shaking with cold will badly damage her weakened brain, so keep in mind that ridicule doesn't kill but a stroke does! Invest in fabric that you can make nice and elegant hats. If they are cute, they'll not pass as anything else but a fashionable statement on her part, which will lift her spirits in addition to keeping her head temperature regulated.

Before doing these things, I used to wake up feeling horrible and wondering if all the progress had been lost, it would take me hours to regain some energy and full clarity, I could not type anything nor read anything and so on. I often have to sleep in an uncomfortable position in an armchair with a stool for my lower legs and a travel pillow around my neck, but I'll do that rather than go back to lying in bed and losing all my progress when I'm in between two states of improvement or under heavy stress. At least almost fully seated, with only the legs in a bed-time position, I won't have that decline happen to my brain. Ask your mother if she'd not try that and see. She must move though, even if only for a short period of time, numerous times a day. If nothing else at first, from bed to armchair with the armchair only two steps from her bed.
Best wishes to you and your mother !

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