I’ve never been the most patient of people and even less so when bored and frustrated so you can imagine my recovery so far has been a mental slog with lots of days to fill, a keen personal interest and partial medical knowledge I’ve been reading up on so many stroke treatment options especially newer ones soI’ve hopefully got 2 to try this month (October).

FES knee / leg stim will get a whole post soon because there’s been a saga to get to this point but it’s essentially a band that will wrap around omy affectedleg and when I start a leg movement (aka walking) it stimulates my leg muscles to complete the movement safely and quickly so it helps me immediately in the short term and long term the repeated practice should become the norm for my brain There’s 2 of these deviceson the market:one I’m going to trial for 2 weeks and another which I have seen but is custom made and less obvious to wear but is unable to be trialed due to the customisation but the devicesare much of a muchness so if I like the loan one there’s no reason why I wouldn’t get on with a different type too

Medical trial2, I’ve already completed one trial based around grip of my affected hand and sleep quality;the second trial I hope to be involved with uses a proven nerve stimulator (on a huge nerve in the back of necks) to promote hand and arm movement but rather than have more surgery to implant it, it will use an ear piece that resembles an ear bud ,I reached out to the study team after having info sent via friends of friends at work, and so far the communication is promising, it looks like I meet the criteria, correct age, stroke type and impact and they want to help me for multiple reasons of:my work being a close hospital link, the trial hospital being the place where I had my stroke and the tenuous people links I should know more before the end of the month but I’m excited to try something pretty much proven to help and be involved in medical advancements, the geek in me finds this very pleasing It also comes with a huge amount of physiotherapy which is always good to build in what I have plus I’ve researched thi trial so much I think I could run it myself, but it’sgot to be beneficial to go into something like this aware and educated

I’ll update both of these situations in due course

The idea that by Christmas I could be walking fair distances (like to the pub on Christmas Day with my family, pretty much unaided (no stick or wheelchair) and have some arm / hand use is so very exciting but I darent build my hopes up there’s a lot of smaller steps and hurdles to get through yet and if anyone fancies driving me over to Stockport for possibly some electric brace / stim fitting I would be most appreciative and probably buy lunch and beer too