The Wrong Question

"What is the single most important thing you should know about stroke rehab treatments?"

That's easy: You're asking the wrong question.

If you are talking about rehabilitation treatments you are talking clinical stuff. You are talking about a clinician-- usually a therapist-- in a clinical setting. And both clinician and clinic are great but they are not enough during two time periods:

1.  Every day

2. Once you're discharged from therapy.

Let's consider why clinical stuff "every day" is not enough. How much therapy might you get? An hour-- two-- three? Recovery is a full time job during the first few months after stroke and it is the first few months after stroke that you're still seeing therapists. So even when therapists are there, there almost always not there enough.

OK, now lets take "Once your discharged from therapy." Discharged from therapy is in and of itself the very definition of not enough therapy, because you've been discharged. Discharged like a bullet from a gun, off you go! So once you are discharged you are definitely not getting enough clinical stuff.

So maybe the question ("What is the single most important thing you should know about stroke rehab treatments?") is wrong. What if instead the question was "What is the single most important thing you should know about stroke recovery options?"

Isn't that freeing? You are no longer under the rules of managed care because managed care does not care if you try, on your own, to take on your recovery using whatever options you can find. You can spend as much time as you want. And even if recovery options are an adjunct to rehabilitation treatments, they expand the opportunities for recovery.

So, "What is the single most important thing you should know about stroke recovery options?"

Sweat equity. That's it. The more you put in, the more you make your brain uncomfortable and force it to change. The more repetitions, the more challenge, the more focus— the more recovery.