Life After a Stroke

By the time you finish reading this paragraph and click on the link, someone in the United States has had a stroke. Life after a stroke, no matter how small, will be different, as you heal from the first and take steps to prevent another.

Every 40 seconds, someone has a stroke in the United States. It’s one of the leading causes of disability. No two strokes are the same, and the complications after a stroke vary from one person to the next. What we can say is that, more often than not, life changes after a stroke.

To help navigate life after a stroke, our team here at Complete Neurological Care offers comprehensive stroke care.

In the following, we take a look at some of the potential complications after a stroke and what we can do to help.

Stroke prevention

No matter how large or small your stroke was, one of our top priorities is to prevent another stroke. Of the nearly 800,000 people who have a stroke each year in the US, 1 in 4 are people who’ve had a previous stroke.

Once you’ve had a stroke, you’re more at risk for another, but 80% of clot-related second strokes are preventable. To get started, we take steps to offset this risk, such as placing you on blood thinners, which work to prevent blood clots.

We also recommend lifestyle changes, such as getting more exercise, improving your diet, and quitting bad habits like smoking, which are key steps in improving your cardiovascular health.

Potential stroke complications

While stroke prevention is an across-the-board step we take for anyone who has had a stroke, further after-stroke care depends on the extent of the complications.

And depending on the location, severity, and duration of the stroke, people can experience a wide range of impairments in many different areas, including:

Movement
Speech
Swallowing
Vision
Cognitive abilities
Bowel and bladder function
Balance
Sexual function
Emotional regulation

As you can see, a stroke can have an incredibly large impact on your life moving forward, but there are solutions.

Rehabbing after a stroke

After a stroke, we fully evaluate your health and identify areas that were affected. With this information, we start you on a rehabilitation program.

In many cases, this starts with physical therapy to regain as much mobility, motor control, and balance as possible. We may also recommend occupational therapy to help you relearn daily activities, such as eating and bathing.

If your speech was impaired by the stroke, the after-stroke care typically includes speech therapy.

Another possible treatment consists of Botox® injections to help with muscle spasms or incontinence.

As you can see, there’s no one-size-fits-all treatment plan for someone who has had a stroke because the complications vary greatly in terms of extent and degree. What we can say is that there are treatments that can help you regain as much of your pre-stroke life as possible.

In most cases, the key is patience. You may have to relearn what you once considered fairly basic functions, but this patience is often rewarded, and many of our patients go on to lead happy, healthy lives after a stroke.

For expert care after a stroke, please contact one of our offices in Boynton Beach, Boca Raton, or Margate, Florida, to schedule an appointment with one of our stroke specialists.