New Specialist after 5 years
Well, I have a new Rehab Specialist. I told my physio I want to learn to run and he said the expert for that is Gavin who was one of his colleagues a while back. Gavin did his Phd on returning Stroke survivors to running. And he's got a program based at a local hospital. So I contacted Gavin and explained my situation. It turns out my private Health insurance, which has been pretty useless so far in my stroke recovery will cover his program and the linked rehab specialist. So I got the referral from the GP and met the new rehab specialist yesterday. She did all the usual poking and made me walk around her room without my shoes. She also called Gavin in and they did some more poking with the end result that I'm joining the running program and her spacticity clinic. I'm booked in for lower limb botox and formal assessment/measurements in mid January and they want to get me into a gait analysis program that's just starting up, where they'll use sensors to measure my walking muscle patterns and work out what is cause and what is symptom and therefore where they need to concentrate strengthening exercises. She also talked about possible tendon lengthening surgery to correct the shortening of my calf, although she wants to try all the other methods first. This is the first specialisat who's seemed interested in doing something about the calf which has been my main concern since the clonis started(in the first few days after the stroke) and I was able to understand what it meant and what the result would be. It's funny but the calf and twisted foot have always been higher in my priority list than the dead arm, even though the arm would probably be more useful in day to day living.
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