I am Thankful for my Stroke

freedom

to speak if i had listened to the

doctors

i would stay here speechless

today well listen

imagine you are in full control

of your life you have your own business

making money nice family

smart kids let’s say

you have it all then you get

hacked not by

somebody but your own brain

all of a sudden you cannot walk

talk and take care of yourself anymore

it happened to me

here i am sitting

in a wheelchair half of my body

is paralyzed i cannot make a sound

and i’m wearing a diaper

the doctors predict

that i would never walk and talk again

i hear this saying severe stroke

major stroke

first i’m devastated

nobody will love me like this

i’m a burden to my family

luckily those thoughts

didn’t last very long

instead i gave

myself an extraordinary

assignment to prove

the doctors wrong how did i do that

why cannot stand in front of you

and talk

why because

i learn to think outside the box

which box the box

of things we already know

or comfort zones if you want

studies have shown that only

three percent of us

create ideas outside the box

why i think we are

scared of losing our reputation

if might go wrong

we might look like a fool

when we are stuck in something

we tend to go around in circles

and try the same things

or over and over again

we are using the knowledge inside the

box

my new habit became acting

and thinking outside the box

and that had changed my life

forever how did i do that

well i’m not an expert in this

but this worked for me

first education as soon as i can

read again i read everything about

neuroplasticity that is the

brain’s way of adapt and

reform itself

then i combine this new science

to what i already knew

while keeping

my goals in my subjective mind

always always i was

searching for simple answers

any kind of input that will

bring me closer to my goals

then i put my ideas

into practice in a trial

and error two books

most of my ideas were

crap but the few goods ones

as well

this is in short how i manage

to outsmart my ability

to walk talk and use

my arm in a more normal way again

against all odds

one year post-stroke

i can’t walk with a stick in my hand

and the brace on my foot

the therapist told me

i would wear the foot brace forever

because a drop foot which i had

cannot recover after this much time

a drop foot is like this

if my hand is my foot

and it drops like

this and it cannot get up

i didn’t accept it

on my first vacation post

stroke i decided to

throw away my stick and my brace

forever i was walking

i was wobbling around barefoot

and people came up to me and said

are you all right i didn’t say anything

but

i couldn’t talk

they probably felt i was crazy

but i wasn’t crazy not at all

you see i had started barefoot walking

and i know that barefoot walking

give so many more sympnos

to the brain

so i walked perfect

on grass in the sand

in water on stones

and even later on snow

i figured this uneven ground

will make my foot go

up i was

imagining myself as a cave woman

who had to walk otherwise she moved

behind them by some kind of

animal i was

right in a few weeks

my foot started to go up

in a few months i could walk

almost normal again

what about my arm my arm is still

a working progress but

at least i got rid of most of

my spasticity

spasticity occurs when there their

statements

to the nervous system

it’s by a stroke or an

injury or disease it

makes the muscles stiff and

flexed i remember

i was watching an interesting lecture

on babies and our inborn

reflexes i

was thinking to myself maybe

i could lose my spasticity

by training all the ways from the start

like in payday i was doing

pre-crawling exercises me making

the movement that the baby does

before it starts to

crawl

two years of very hard work

but as you can see in this video

it worked

what about speaking

why can i stand of you

in front of you and speak perfect

like this i’m just kidding you

it’s not perfect but i’m working on it

instead of repeating all those words

that the speech therapists wanted me to

do

i concentrated on the

mechanics of speaking the tongue

i read about the tongue i watched

people’s tongues i felt people’s

thumbs and voila

a tad stock

we can all challenge ourselves

to think out of the box

you don’t have to be in a situation

where i was struggling to

survive in fire and listen

to the doctors inside the box

approach i wouldn’t have you recovered

this far

no way m

imagine if we can

lose our fear of criticisms

apply the out of the box

principle and realize that many men

their

arrows will be made then we can see

enormous opportunities before us

even for mankind

that’s why i can say i’m thankful

for my stroke right i can

almost hear us say that

but i am you see

my life wasn’t all that happy

before my stroke it

was too superficial

and i worked myself silly

60 hours a week in a job

what meant nothing to me

i didn’t have enough time for

family and friends but

now i have and guess what

i’m working in an

out of the box research

based experimental clinic

for brain injuries and

i found my true purpose

in life that is

to invent tools to make it

easier for people to recover

i want you to think about this

today’s standard care

what’s yesterday’s experimental

treatment and before that

in many cases one

man or woman’s out of the box

idea we should never forget that

thank you

you