What should I know about ‘life after stroke’?
Recovery from a stroke takes years of ongoing effort. You may feel anxious, angry, depressed, or tired — Dr. Mehta understands the emotional and physical challenges and incorporates holistic care into your treatment plan. She doesn’t focus on one part of your body, but rather helps you put your life back together by supporting your medical, social, emotional, and vocational needs.
To achieve the best possible life after a stroke, you need to partner with a team of experts. Dr. Mehta works with your other physicians, psychologists, speech and language pathologists, rehabilitation specialists, and all the professionals on your post-stroke team to ensure that you receive coordinated care throughout your rehabilitation.
What physical conditions may affect me after a stroke?
After a stroke, it’s common to have residual physical problems. All the conditions you may develop are addressed in your rehabilitation plan. These are a few examples of post-stroke conditions you may need to overcome:
- Dysphagia, or difficulty swallowing
- Paralysis, that may be in one part of your body or widespread
- Foot drop, when your toes drag due to difficulty picking up the front of your foot
- Hemiparesis, or muscle weakness on one side of your body
- Incontinence, or inability to fully control your bladder
- Pain, which may occur immediately or weeks or months after your stroke
- Seizures, due to spasms or convulsions
Many patients also develop post-stroke spasticity, which occurs when overactive muscles continuously contract. As a result, the muscles become stiff and difficult to move.
What should I know about post-stroke spasticity?
After a stroke, damage in certain parts of your brain can interfere with nerve messages between the brain and muscles. As a result, the muscles contract and stay that way for an extended time. The impact on your coordination and muscle movement may affect your ability to eat, dress, talk, and walk. Prolonged muscle contraction also causes painful muscle spasms.
As a specialist in treating spasticity, Dr. Mehta uses many different therapies to relieve this problem during your post-stroke rehabilitation. She may use one medical therapy or combine several, choosing from options such as Botox® injections, physical medicine, medications, or nerve block injections.
In addition to conventional medical care for spasticity, Dr. Mehta offers integrative options. For example, she’s a practitioner of traditional and medical acupuncture, which helps decrease post-stroke spasticity.
When you start to regain life after stroke, you can count on the support you’ll receive at Brain and Stroke Care: Sravani Mehta, MD.
