This concise and practical book is a 'how-to' in the truest sense of the word - it charts a path through the maze for you and enables you quickly to become the expert-patient. / The Street-wise guide offers you real-life options for real self-recovery and self-management of the physical limitations caused by stroke. / The author is himself a stroke survivor who has created, over the last twenty years, an internationally-known new approach to innovative stroke rehabilitation. / Every stroke results in different outcomes, dependent on thousands of variables. A clear-cut background to stroke and the problems it may cause is presented here. Here you will learn: * Why your own stroke has caused physical and psychological limitations. *How to regain action control and self-manage using evidence-based and innovative strategies. *How to take advantage of your brain's capacity for neuroplasticity by learning how to dramatically extend the 'therapeutic time window' you may be told about. / Dr. Balchin reveals how best to recover lower and upper limb action control as well as strength and cardiovascular health via the introduction of a special re-training programme that you can adopt, adapt and explore further to your own requirements. / He shows you how to transition to successful 'life after stroke' - whatever is your ultimate goal. This may be about enhancing your quality of life and coping abilities or seeking ultimately to get back to work. Dr. Balchin shows here how novel home-use and clinically-based tools based on technologies to improve motor recovery can work. The reader is offered key information on robotic devices, and on brain computer interfaces, as well as virtual reality and non-invasive brain stimulation. / Dr. Balchin explains the drugs that stroke survivors are prescribed and what they do, how to access further direct clinical and community sources and what you need to know of the availability of further cutting-edge interventions on the horizon. / The book will be of major assistance to anyone who has had the misfortune to have had a stroke and is entering the recovery phase, and to their families and supporters. The text is written for stroke survivors, but it has considerable relevance to those with other neurologically disabling conditions, such as acquired brain injury or spinal injury. / Most importantly, this book will help you to show those who care about you most that you can do it. You can beat stroke!
About the Author: Dr. Tom Balchin, MEd, PhD, FRSB, is the Founder and Director of the ARNI Institute [Action for Rehabilitation from Neurological Injury]. He has worked at Goldsmiths College, University of London, Brunel, Reading and Middlesex Universities specialising in high ability, gifted education, the creative brain and stroke rehabilitation. He is currently Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Oxford Brookes University.