Recovery After Stroke

Life can change in an instant.
One moment you’re planning your workday or setting goals for the new year — the next, you’re facing a diagnosis you never saw coming: a stroke. Add in pre-existing conditions like type 2 diabetes or the relentless pace of modern life that often leads to burnout, and recovery can feel overwhelming.

But if you’re reading this, know this: there is a path forward.

Stroke, diabetes, and burnout are interconnected challenges, but they can also become unexpected catalysts for powerful personal transformation.

For many people, the warning signs were there — subtle at first, then growing louder over time:

• A creeping fatigue that no amount of sleep could fix.
• High blood pressure that was easy to brush off.
• Blood sugar levels that seemed manageable — until they weren’t.
• The constant stress of work, family, and obligations presses in from every side.

When we live at full tilt for years, our bodies eventually demand our attention in ways we can no longer ignore. Stroke, diabetes, and burnout is not just a collection of separate issues — it’s often the result of a life stretched beyond its limits.

Surviving a stroke, managing diabetes, and recovering from burnout can feel like running three marathons at once.
It’s tempting to feel defeated. But for many, this moment becomes a wake-up call — not the end of the story, but the beginning of a profound new chapter.

Here’s what recovery often teaches survivors:

• Prioritization: Health moves from the background to the forefront of daily life. Sleep, nutrition, exercise, and emotional wellbeing become non-negotiables.
• Mindset Shift: Small wins are celebrated. Gratitude becomes a daily practice. Setbacks are viewed not as failures, but as learning opportunities.
• Lifestyle Rebuild: Old habits that once seemed impossible to break — poor eating, overworking, ignoring stress — are replaced with mindful living.
• New Connections: Supportive communities, whether in-person or online, become a vital source of encouragement and shared wisdom.

The real victory isn’t just recovering physically — it’s discovering a deeper, richer way of living.

Recovery is not about perfection.
It’s about making small, sustainable changes that align your mind, body, and spirit toward healing.
If you’re navigating life after stroke, managing diabetes, or climbing out of burnout, consider these small but powerful shifts:

• Adopt a “food is medicine” mindset.
  Focus on whole foods: vegetables, lean proteins, healthy fats. Reduce processed sugars and refined carbs to help both brain recovery and blood sugar control.
• Monitor your body’s signals.
  Tools like continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) or fitness trackers can help you spot patterns and stay proactive about your health.
• Set realistic work boundaries.
  Stress management isn’t optional anymore — it’s essential. Rebuilding your health may mean reassessing your workload, especially if you run a small business.
• Invest in emotional recovery.
  Counseling, mindfulness, gratitude practices, and positive self-talk can help manage the emotional rollercoaster of recovery.
• Celebrate progress, not perfection.
  Every step forward — however small — is a step away from burnout and toward a stronger, healthier you.

If you’re facing the complex intersection of stroke, diabetes, and burnout, know that thousands of others are walking a similar path — and thriving.
Recovery isn’t just about getting back to where you were.
It’s about building a future that’s even stronger than your past.

Your wake-up call may be the very thing that leads you to the most meaningful chapter of your life.

Mike’s story of stroke, diabetes, and burnout shows how recovery, resilience, and emotional healing can lead to a stronger, healthier future.

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Highlights:

00:00 Introduction and Acknowledgements
02:47 Mike Maki’s Stroke Experience
10:01 Facing Diabetes: Managing the Unseen Battle
18:45 How Blood Sugar Spikes Shape Recovery Choices
24:51 When Work Can’t Wait: A Stroke Survivor’s Relapse Story
32:12 Surviving Business and Stroke Amid Chaos and Uncertainty
42:06 Faith, Gratitude, and Emotional Healing After Stroke
50:26 Small Food Changes, Big Health Impact
1:05:36 Forging a New Path: Mike’s Journey Through Stroke, Diabetes, and Recovery

Transcript:

Bill Gasiamis 0:00
Welcome everyone before we dive into today’s extraordinary conversation, I just want to take a moment to thank you for being a part of this incredible community. Your support, whether it’s through sharing the podcast, leaving a review or simply tuning in each week, makes a massive difference. Together, we’re creating a space where stroke survivors, caregivers and allies can feel seen, heard and inspired, as you may have heard in recent episodes.

Bill Gasiamis 0:28
Since 2015 I’ve been personally covering all the costs of producing the Recovery After Stroke Podcast to ensure stroke survivors, caregivers and their loved ones have free access to valuable resources. Last year, I opened up the opportunity for those who feel they’ve received value from the podcast to support it through Patreon. You can find it at patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to everyone who has supported the podcast in any way, your encouragement surely keeps me going.

Bill Gasiamis 1:03
A very special thank you to my most recent Patreon supporters, David and Luke, your generosity means the world to me and helps me ensure I can continue creating episodes that support stroke survivors everywhere. If you are unable to support financially, simply listening to the ads without skipping them goes a long way toward keeping the project alive. I’m incredibly grateful for everyone who listens, supports and engages with the podcast in any capacity.

Bill Gasiamis 1:34
It means everything to me and helps me stay committed to reaching my goal of 1000 interviews and beyond before we get started. I’d also like to take a small moment to remind you about my book, The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened. It has been a resource for many stroke survivors and their families, offering practical guidance and hope during challenging times. You can grab your copy on Amazon by searching my name, Bill Gasiamis, or by going to recoveryafterstroke.com/book.

Bill Gasiamis 2:09
Now I’m thrilled to introduce today’s guest, Mike Maki. Mike’s story is one of courage, reflection and transformation after experiencing a wake up stroke earlier this year, he shares his honest journey through recovery, learning to manage type two diabetes, navigating emotional impact of burnout and redefining what matters most in his life. His story will inspire anyone facing recovery after a stroke or a health scare. Let’s jump in. Mike Maki, welcome to the podcast.

Mike Maki 2:47
Thank you so much. I’ve been looking forward to it, and I really enjoy your videos that you’ve been producing, and I am just it’s been little over two months since I had my stroke, and it’s really been a tremendous help for me watching the videos that you put out.

Bill Gasiamis 3:06
I’m glad. Second of January this year, if I’m not wrong, correct?

Mike Maki 3:13
Yep, man, the first of January was like any other day, and I was expecting to go back to work on the second, get out of bed early and get started for the kind of it was a weird week, because it was the first was on a Wednesday, so Thursday was kind of back to work week for the short week. And, yeah, my whole little world got turned upside down that morning.

Bill Gasiamis 3:39
But what did you notice? What did it feel like?

Mike Maki 3:45
So the odd thing with, and I actually just saw my neurologist here this past Tuesday for a file, just a routine follow up, and he called it a wake up stroke, where he said that it probably happened during the night, when I was asleep. But the weirdest thing to me was my wife, normally, she worked, she goes for a walk with a friend a couple times a week, and she gets up crazy early, like 4:30am in the morning.

Bill Gasiamis 4:20
Wow, she’s one of those people.

Mike Maki 4:21
Yeah, she’s dedicated. I wish I had that, but she got up, and normally, what she does when she’s leaving, she just, you know, it’s still dark in our room, she went to usually gives me a kiss on the forehead, lets me know she’s leaving. And for some reason, and it’s never, ever happened before. It startled me so bad. I mean, I almost struck her, you know, just because it’s dark. I mean, it just so, I thought I was just having some kind of a dream, and she startled me. And then, so that was probably about 4:30am to 5am, my alarm went off at six, when I normally would get up.

Mike Maki 5:04
And I just was like, I’m going to snooze a little bit, which I sometimes do. I mean, I don’t want to make but and then probably 6:30am I’m like “Well, I gotta get up, let the dogs out, then I gotta get going about my day.” And I just, I felt off, and when I started to get out of bed, felt like my left arm, my left leg were severely asleep, like I slept funny. And I was thinking “Oh, you know, it’s just, it’s my limbs are asleep from I must have slept really strange.” Well, I took the first step, and it didn’t let up. And I knew something was wrong.

Mike Maki 5:45
Somehow I was able to make it to our kitchen, and I was debating, I’m like, my gut right away knew, I mean, was telling me it was a stroke, but I didn’t want to, like, in the sec, in that moment, except that’s probably what was happening to me. So I’m like, I don’t know. I’m like, so I decided I’d call, give my wife a call, because by now, she’d be on her way to work. I wanted to make sure that the hospital that was close by us was in our insurance network.

Mike Maki 6:17
Because I didn’t want to go somewhere that was going to cost a fortune, or, you know, and she’s like, I’m coming home right away, because she didn’t want me. I was going to drive to the hospital. And she got home, like, in 20 minutes. Hopefully she drove safely, but she got home super quick, and we decided, so we went right into the hospital, I think within like 30 minutes, they were giving me a CT scan, and soon as they had the CT scan, They admitted me, or said I was going to be admitted to the hospital.

Mike Maki 6:53
Spent a good part of the day in the emergency room while they’re trying to get a room ready. And it seemed as the day went on, the my condition, at least as far as my leg and my arm got worse, because by the end of I wasn’t even able to walk, or if I were in the hospital bed, I wasn’t even able to get out at that point.

Bill Gasiamis 7:17
Intense.

Mike Maki 7:19
Yeah, it was. It’s amazing how quickly your world can change. You know, just things can change in your everyday life.

Bill Gasiamis 7:27
But what was your previous medical history like? Is it just all good up until then? Or did you have some speed bumps along the way?

Mike Maki 7:37
Yeah, overall, it’s been good. You know, just like physical injuries, like rotator cuff, things like that. In hindsight, now that I look back, there’s a lot of like, things that I should have been doing, as far as, like, high blood pressure, and like, a lot of those little boxes they start rattling off, and you’re like “Oh yeah, I’ve got that. I’ve got that. I do have type two diabetes as well.” And, I mean, I have to admit before.

Mike Maki 8:09
I’ve always been what I consider healthy, like active and work can be a fairly physical job at times, you know, I was kind of gave myself some leeway and said “Well, this, you know, I’m always working, you know, physically hard, but I wasn’t really taking care of myself the way I really should have.” The doctor said it could have been some genetics, I’m sure. And you would, I’m sure you would know, as running a small business, there’s a lot of stress involved. That was some of my first things.

Mike Maki 8:40
Was one, I wasn’t so much worried about myself, but I was thinking, obviously my family, and then also I look at my team at work, their families are dependent on our company, providing their living as well. So I mean, I take that seriously. I’m sure most people do. If they’re running a small business, you really feel that weight on you like, I don’t want to let these people down.

Mike Maki 9:10
And to be honest, I kind of struggled a little bit first after the stroke, feeling like I let people down. More I felt more that way than I did. I let myself down, but, I did let myself down too by, you know, not taking care of some of the things that now in hindsight where definitely things that I could have had better control of.

Bill Gasiamis 9:35
Mike’s story is such a powerful reminder that even the toughest moments can spark real change. Let’s pause for a moment, and if you are finding value in conversations like this, here’s how you can help keep them going. Stories like Mike’s are exactly why I started this podcast to connect, inspire and offer hope to stroke survivors and their families. If you found value in these conversations. Love your support on Patreon.

Bill Gasiamis 10:01
By becoming a patreon at patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke, you’ll not only help keep this podcast alive, but also join a community of people dedicated to recovery and growth. Every contribution makes a real difference. Now let’s dive back in with Mike as he shares more about rebuilding his strength, finding new strength after stroke, and the lessons he’s learned along the way.

Bill Gasiamis 10:01
How much do you know about type two diabetes? I speak to a lot of stroke survivors who have type two diabetes, and they just sort of say it as if it’s something that’s happening to them that they really can’t do much about. So what do you know about it? How interested did you become in so understanding it? When you were told you have type two diabetes?

Mike Maki 10:51
Yeah, unfortunately, I’ve been or I’ve dealt with that for, like, probably six to eight, I want to say maybe it’s even eight years now, time just goes by so quickly. And there’s been times where I’ve managed it really well, and then there’s other times where you’re just like, you get tired of taking the medicine, some of the medicine that I was taking for it. And I don’t mean that this is just really an excuse now that I look bad, but it made me feel sick, and I’m like “Well, what am I doing to myself?” I take this medication. It makes me feel worse than the diabetes does.

Mike Maki 11:29
But it’s easy to, like, you said, you just kind of, like, say it as a word, and you don’t really, like, really dive into it. I wasn’t, like, closely monitoring my blood sugar like I should, my medication I hadn’t actually taken for a bit. I mean, I hate to admit it now, but it wasn’t because it did make me feel ill and sick, and I felt like the medicine was doing more harm to my body than what the disease was. But I’m sure wasn’t, but it was the easy way to justify it to yourself by saying, you know, you tell yourself that.

Mike Maki 12:06
But it just kind of, you know, taking it years of taking the medicine and feeling horrible after taking the medicine, that wears on a person as well. So, I mean, I know it’s a very short window now, but since the stroke, my wife, again, she’s been my rock, but she’s been a lot more aggressive about control, like making sure I control my diet. So that’s been a lot better. And I’ve, you know, they’ve got me on all kinds of medications now for the even more than prior to the stroke, and I’m taking aspirin as well.

Mike Maki 12:45
But like for controlling the my blood pressure and cholesterol and with the diabetes so far. And granted, it’s a very short window, but everything, this is probably the best time that you know, as far as my blood sugars and everything have been since I’ve even been diagnosed with the diabetes. I mean, one of the things that not to put a plug in, but I did get your book, and I really wanna you know as much as I hate that the stroke happened, and I would never wish that, you know, a stroke on your worst enemy.

Mike Maki 13:23
I really do feel. I want to make this an really important event in my life, and make it one of the best things that happened to me. I haven’t quite I kind of realized when I did get the book that I I’m still dealing with a little bit of reading, and then I get a little have some trouble, so it may take me a while to get through the book. But what I really enjoy.

Bill Gasiamis 13:51
Yeah, that’s good, I’m glad. You know type two diabetes is completely reversible, right?

Mike Maki 13:56
Yeah, I’ve watched a lot of that. So, I mean, I’d really like to, control what I can control as far as diet, and at least get it to that point where I could, and I’ve watched some other things, like taking some things that, you know, to supplement or get away from, because the idea of being on those heavy medications your whole life is that’s daunting. Especially if they don’t make you feel good.

Bill Gasiamis 14:24
It’s hard, right? This is the thing people don’t realize. I mean being on the meds for the rest of your life to reduce your blood sugars is hard. Changing your diet is hard. Which one you prefer? Which hard is the better one. Now, changing your diet isn’t actually that hard, it’s just more of a mental game, right? Honestly, if somebody was and this is not medical advice, this is not nutritional advice, I am not qualified to give advice.

Bill Gasiamis 14:55
But from what I’ve seen online on some videos and interviews of people who are medically trained. It is simply by changing your diet, stopping to consume, sugars, alcohol, that type of stuff.

Bill Gasiamis 15:23
So decreasing your consumption. I’m talking about completely cutting out sodas, alcohol, beer, all that kind of stuff, and avoiding high carbohydrate foods like bread and wheat based breads and all that kind of stuff, and eating a heap of vegetables and protein, fish, meat, chicken, any animal protein that you can imagine, you are going to decrease the response that your body has to insulin and to sugar, and the reason that you’re that people are type two diabetic is because the pancreas isn’t working appropriately.

Bill Gasiamis 16:14
And it’s not able to do deliver the right amount of insulin to decrease the blood sugar and to send the blood sugar away from the blood into the muscles where it’s supposed to be used. So if you just ate a ton of vegetables and protein and then added a little bit of exercise into your routine, to get sugars out of your blood into your muscles, and then get it burnt, you could improve your diabetes out of sight, like dramatically, and eventually, by continuing that for a month or two, you would find that the need for the medication would decrease.

Bill Gasiamis 17:00
And then with your doctor’s advice and guidance, you could completely get off it. And then if you continue doing that, that’s going to help you heal your brain from the stroke. It’s going to help recovery, and it’s going to give space for the inflammation to go away and for the healing to kick in, it’s such an it’s one of the most reversible conditions out there.

Mike Maki 17:28
Yeah, and I definitely have seen a lot of videos like that. And I think, one of the things that have been really useful for me, I’ve gotten and I never had it before, but a continuous glucose monitor, and it’s really that’s super helpful to see, like, how the ebbs and flows of your body, like I’ve been eating really, really well. I mean, at least as good as I possibly have a very in the last two, you know, since the stroke.

Mike Maki 18:05
And it’s really interesting to see that even, I eat an egg and, like, I can see what it does to my body, where before, I would just check it two or three times a day. And you just literally if your life’s kind of, your glucose is a movie. I’ve just seen a snapshot of a picture with, but this can, you know, with now, looking at my phone, I can literally track it and see that’s been a very helpful tool. And I can, I think it’s going to be really a useful thing for learning, as far as you know what you’re, and how your body reacts to it.

Mike Maki 18:45
Because, like, a lot of things are very strange. Like, sometimes where my blood sugars will go, they go down at night. Like, can get really low at night, and then, like, four in the morning, they start going up and, I mean, I haven’t eat anything, you know, it’s like, it’s amazing how your body is, you know, fluctuating throughout the course of a day.

Bill Gasiamis 19:11
Yeah, it changes. It changes your understanding of what you’re doing. Has an impact. Like, when you have a beer, it has an impact. When you eat bread roll that has an impact. And then you can tell that if you’re doing something, all those high insulin spikes, blood sugar spikes are bigger part of all of those are bad for you. So the idea is to decrease the amount of them, to limit them, so that your body can deal with them every so often. But what we do, what the Standard American, Standard Australian diet, what we do is we wake up in the morning.

Bill Gasiamis 19:49
We have carbs. Bread spikes your blood sugar. You go and get a coffee on the way to work. It has two things of sugar in it spikes your blood sugar. There you get hungry about lunchtime, or you have a snack in between, you have a muesli bar or a chocolate bar or something like that spikes your blood sugar. You have lunch, you have bread, and all that kind of it spikes your blood sugar. And that is not how it’s supposed to be. Every meal shouldn’t be spiking a blood sugar, and we shouldn’t be eating as much as we are.

Bill Gasiamis 20:18
So it’s like, if you can learn from that glucose monitor, then you can go, you know, what is this worth? The negative impact on my body or not? I that’s how I kind of play the game in my head. Is this improving my recovery, or is it giving it a setback? I don’t want recovery setbacks, man, I’m dealing with enough stuff. I don’t want to deal with more. And I don’t want to be like you, I don’t want to be responsible for the next one like I don’t want to be the guy that causes that. Yeah, and that’s how I kind of get my head around my nutrition, and I started many years ago, though, Mike.

Bill Gasiamis 20:57
So I’m well and truly, what’s the word conditioned for asking myself the question and then making the right decision? Now it’s very important for people to know that, as well as all of the amazing things I do every so often, I’ve gotta go out and have a beer with a mate. One beer, right? Do you know? And I have to have a burger instead of the steak. I have to because I’m human, but I use those things as sometimes food, which used to be an all the time food.

Bill Gasiamis 21:36
And it’s just not, right? We’ve moved from stuff that’s once in a blue moon to all the time, and now we’re going to switch it around and go back to once in a blue moon, especially sweets and cakes and chocolate bars and all that kind of stuff.

Mike Maki 21:58
And it’s a slippery slope, because once your glucose spikes, you then your craving even more. It’s like you slowly start circling down the drain.

Bill Gasiamis 22:09
That’s it, it’s a cycle, for sure. So what happened with work we have, you been able to kind of get back and start steering the ship again. Where are you at with that?

Mike Maki 22:23
So it’s a challenge, and I’ve always again. I don’t know what your situation was before your stroke, but like a lot of small business owners, a typical week for me was probably 60 to 80 hours, easy, typically. I mean, there’s no my office is connected to our house, so I’m always looking at it, I know there’s work to be done. So since the stroke, it’s kind of been a weird thing, like, literally, four days after the stroke, I was working on my laptop trying to get billings done, which, in hindsight, was a, really a dumb idea, but I felt the pressure.

Mike Maki 22:59
I got it, you know, to get money coming in so I can pay everybody. I got to make sure we’re billing for the work that we’ve done. My team has been amazing, they’ve really have stepped up. You know, again, this is another example of this could be the best thing to happen to me, because it’s really open to my eyes. I knew they were capable, but I didn’t want to burden them with a lot of the things I was doing. So now I’ve realized that they can handle a lot more than maybe I was giving them prior.

Mike Maki 23:33
So that’s been good, but I’ve still I’ve just been trying to ease into it, and I make mistakes like today, I went to, I’ve been okay to drive, but it was supposed to be very limited. And today I had to meet one of my guys to help them swap out a piece of equipment on on a system. And I drove 45 minutes, which was, I got there and I felt car sick, and I felt like my brain was way over stimulated, and I was kind of worthless while I was at the job site, to be honest, and then had to drive back.

Mike Maki 24:14
And, you know, you’re kind of like, well, that was a lot different than those five minute drives that I’ve been doing. Like, you quickly learn that you really need, you need to respect those boundaries that you should have had, and I’m trying to be better with it, but I know with work, I still make mistakes, like I’ll end up spending a little bit more time trying to do a little some paperwork or a a billing thing, or that type of thing, but it’s been greatly reduced to me, if I had to put it, it’s less than four or five hours a week that I’ve been working compared to what it was before.

Bill Gasiamis 24:51
So I’ve done exactly what you said. So after the first bleed, I was in hospital for seven days, and then I was out and I was supposed to work for the next six weeks or do anything. But, you know, the bills need to be paid. Invoices need to be sent, the guys need to get the work done. So I get my dad, I wasn’t allowed to drive, so I get my dad to come and pick me up and take me down to site and check out the job and speak to the client, and I would have been the mess like I wouldn’t have been anything like that we used to seeing.

Bill Gasiamis 25:26
And I was completely zonked out and all over the place on meds and whatever. And it was really hard. But every job is crucial, right? Because the cash flow is such that if one job doesn’t get paid, then, then you gotta find the money somewhere, and you gotta pay people. And it’s a challenge, right? So anyway, we got through that, and then at the end of the six week period that I wasn’t supposed to be working, I was meant to go back to hospital for follow up, and a couple of days before the follow up, I went to work, they came and got me, some of my team came and got me.

Bill Gasiamis 26:09
We went to work, and I wasn’t working, but I was sitting down watching them work, just to be there. I don’t know why I went and they were working, and I started having another episode. The bleeding started again, and the room was spinning, and I couldn’t keep myself upright, and I had to slap my face to try and wake myself up, and all this weird stuff. I needed to throw up. And eventually, they drove me home, and when I got home, I told my wife to take me to the hospital. We passed the hospital on the way home as well, and then we went to the hospital, and they checked.

Bill Gasiamis 26:50
They checked me. It was bleeding again, and then I was admitted for another three days. And the first seven days, I had the laptop in my hospital bed, I was working from the hospital bed. I couldn’t believe what I was doing, but I had to do it, because that’s the type of be you can’t just pause it. Everything kind of fails after that, your long term clients wonder what happened, and all that type of thing. So we couldn’t just pause it, and then, after that second, bleed, then I was in a completely different world. I was, like, spaced out.

Bill Gasiamis 27:28
I couldn’t think, I couldn’t type an email, I couldn’t write, I couldn’t speak to people properly. I couldn’t begin and end sentences. It was really hard, terrible. Somehow, I have no idea, actually, how. I can’t recall how I found the courage, not the courage. I found the strength or the I don’t know, whatever it needed, I needed to find to just stumble across the line with all these things that we needed to get done and just keep it going as long as we could possibly keep it going. And then I had a good run for about a year and a half after the first year.

Bill Gasiamis 28:12
And then, it bled again, and then I went into surgery, and then I had to rehabilitate my left side, and then I was basically out of work. The company was getting some leads, some inquiries, but I couldn’t commit to anybody for anything, and I especially couldn’t put in the the hard yards. I couldn’t put the hours in, and I couldn’t do quoting properly because I couldn’t get the numbers right, it was a mess. The whole thing was a mess, and my income has been negatively impacted ever since.

Bill Gasiamis 28:47
It’s been a minimum of 10 years where I haven’t earned a decent income, and I couldn’t shift that in any way. Like, there’s no way to shift it because you’re unwell, your brain doesn’t work. You can’t physically be places, you can’t, you know you’re incapacitated, you’re not walking, I mean, but the mind the entire time, the minds are going, how can I be more productive? How can I get more money? How can I get more work done?

Bill Gasiamis 29:19
And it’s not possible, just physically not possible. It’s such a weird state to find yourself in that small business people just keep countries ticking along. Without them, there’d be nothing, you know.

Mike Maki 29:39
And I think most are, like, super dedicated to their business. I mean, obviously family is like, top, one of the very, very top things to me. But in a way, it becomes part of your family because you spend so much time at it and you’re always worried about it, so especially if it’s in your house. We have a off site location, but I still do most of the office work from my house.

Mike Maki 30:09
So it’s always, it’s always, it’s never gone. But I mean, we, I’m not sure how long you’ve been going, but this is our 27th year. It’s like, I’ve put every, you know, like it’s all I’ve known as an adult, keeping this going. We’ve been going for 20 years, but that break happened probably after about eight or nine years.

Bill Gasiamis 30:40
And then, you know, intermittently I’ve been working while I’ve been recovering through all the dramas. I had a three year break, a total break, where completely walked away. And that was from 2016 to 2019 and then I went back to work in 2019 and six months later, we were in the biggest, craziest lockdown the world has ever experienced. Here in Melbourne, we were locked down for the best part of two and a half years. We were locked down for the majority of the time.

Bill Gasiamis 31:17
That would be so hard, and we’re trying to run a business, and I don’t know what in that time, but we literally were at home for the majority of that time, so it’s okay. Do you run a business in that time? It was so strange, and that’s when I wrote the book. I wrote the book because I had time to write a book. That’s how much time I had on my hand. It was ridiculous.

Mike Maki 31:45
We were lucky because, during COVID, our line of work was kind of borderline considered essential. So I’m like, we’re just going with it. We just kept working. So we got lucky where a lot of, you know, like hospitality and things like that, everything was just completely stopped, but we were fortunate when it came to that.

Bill Gasiamis 32:12
We were essential. But it had to be, because it’s a property maintenance company, it had to be, you know, there’s a leak in my wall or something like that and then there had to be and there was so inconsistent. Some trades could work inside. Some couldn’t. In some months we were allowed to work inside. Some months we weren’t allowed to work inside. And the only way we could get work was we had to tell our clients.

Bill Gasiamis 32:44
You have to send me an email that says you have an imminent leak, or you can see through the wall outside, or people can see inside your house through the wall, or something like that. I don’t come up with something that makes it possible for me if I get stopped, which they were randomly also stopping people and checking their paperwork. For God’s sake, can’t believe I’m even saying it still it triggers me, and I was giving them the instructions on the phone what to write in the email, and then I would have that email with me so we could go to work.

Bill Gasiamis 33:29
And the government paid people to stay at home. Employees were paid to stay at home under this particular money printing schemes, you know, where they could just get people to stay at home, and we, as a business, received over two years, our compensation was $10,000 a year, and that’s the most we could do, and that pretty much went to pay taxes and stuff like that. So it was kind of like, what the Aussies say, I don’t know, it’s maybe said overseas. Well, it’s like pissing in the ocean, like, it makes no difference.

Mike Maki 34:15
What’s the point? Wow, I think we were fortunate with Ken the way things worked out for us as far as work goes. But still was stressful, you know, you didn’t know, like, were we going to be shut down the next day or and like I said, you feel a real commitment to your people, and your customers.

Bill Gasiamis 34:43
So, what was the cause of the stroke? Was it an ischemic stroke? Was there a a clot that occurred somewhere? Do they know where it occurred, or do they just know where it ended up?

Mike Maki 34:56
Yep, I want to say it was ischemic, and it ended up in my hyperthalamus, and on Tuesday, when I saw the neurologist, he actually had a picture that he printed out for me, you know. And in my mind, I was thinking it would just be like a little p because they kept saying it was a small stroke, but if I had to scale it like, with the rest of it, like, look like, at the size of a quarter, you know, where was dead? He’s like “That’s where it’s white, right there. That’s dead.” And it was a blockage. When I did get, I did ask me if I was able to get the drug that they can give you right away, the PK, is it?

Bill Gasiamis 35:46
TPA.

Mike Maki 35:48
Yeah, and he said they didn’t because they couldn’t isolate when I actually had the stroke. It was, you know, could have been at 11 o’clock the prior evening, but, no, he’s optimistic. I’m still definitely have deficits on my left side. And the one thing that I think I struggle with more than the physical deficits is the fatigue, you know, because you get so tired.

Mike Maki 36:17
And I mean, if the way I try to describe it the best I can. But like, if, unless you have went through it, it’s hard to understand and kind of, like, are you crazy? Are you just making this up? Can you know, like, but, man, just the simplest task you can get so tired and that’s, that’s been a challenge, but that’s improving, I mean, it’s like anything. It’s like every day, try to get a little better each day.

Mike Maki 36:48
And think you do see those, it’s just so slight at times, the improvement, it’s hard to see the forest through the trees, type of thing, where, you know, I’ll say, I feel like I haven’t improved, and my wife like, you have you walk around the block. No, you couldn’t even walk, you know, a month ago. But it’s those little things you you don’t see every day when you’re going through it. That can be a challenge.

Bill Gasiamis 37:13
It takes some time you have to reflect, and then it’s good to ask people and get them to give you their feedback. I was going to counseling when my counselor told me, You’re talking much better this time. And I was like “Oh, okay” Because I’m conscious of when I missed words or forgot words, but the number of words I was missing and forgetting were less, and that was what she noticed, and she picked up on and told me about whereas I was focusing on what I was missing. So it is good to have people kind of track your recovery and then tell you how you’re going.

Bill Gasiamis 37:55
And it’s also good for you to what’s the word like, get some evidence for your own self as well. So record yourself or write something down and then check back on that in six months from now, and just give yourself the opportunity to actually prove to you that you are having wins. You know that you are getting better.

Mike Maki 38:20
Nope, that’s a great advice, because it is, like I said, it is just hard to see that new. And I think I’m naturally critical, you know, I’m always like “Oh my, my left hand drives me insane because it’s not doing what I want. I get so mad at you know.” And so, yeah, when you do make those improvements, it’s nice. You know, where at first, I couldn’t even move it, and now I’m trying things with my fingers or what have you. And I mean, a month ago, I wouldn’t even been able to do that. So it’s definitely making good progress, but it’s not as fast as you want.

Bill Gasiamis 39:00
But, yeah, patience is the most important word here, and also you gotta be kind to your limbs, actually kind like you gotta consider them. You know somebody who’s injured that you know that you wouldn’t be nasty to for them not being recovered enough yet, you’ve gotta really recruit your hand into your team and let it know that, hey, I know you’re doing your best. I’m going to be patient with you, and I’m going to rehabilitate you, and I’m going to allow you the time that you need to heal that’s really important than getting angry at it and frustrated with it.

Bill Gasiamis 39:43
Because that’s not going to that’s not going to get you an outcome that is going to do positive. It’s going to create the environment for less Neuroplasticity to happen. And what you want to do is you want to encourage Neuroplasticity. So positive vibes only is the only way to what’s the word to talk about your hand.

Mike Maki 40:06
Yeah, please.

Bill Gasiamis 40:09
I had a friend of mine had a stroke who said the nurse came into her the nurse came into her house. I think they were checking up on her, and they were just asking her “Okay, so how’s your bad hand today?”

Mike Maki 40:30
Yeah, I was teasing, like some people at the hospital, because we were like “You mean, my bad leg?” No, you’re affected.

Bill Gasiamis 40:39
Yeah, not your bad leg, your affected leg, right?

Mike Maki 40:43
It’s just, yeah.

Bill Gasiamis 40:45
It’s a completely different feeling when you say bad legs to affected leg, and it’s like “Okay” and she was so and she told her off, she said “Never refer to my hand as my bad hand. Always refer to it as my recovering hand.”

Mike Maki 41:02
Yeah, no, I think that’s great. There’s a lot of things in the world I think, like we, you know, like languages taken hijack me, use things and it’s kind of ridiculous. But in this case, I definitely agree with that. Where goes thinking of in the positive is so much better, you know, than thinking this is bad, or it’s not good, or whatever you’d refer to it.

Bill Gasiamis 41:31
Yeah, it changes your neuro chemistry, like it completely changes it.

Mike Maki 41:35
Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis 41:36
So that’s a really simple way to change it for the better is this, just pay attention to the words and how you refer to yourself. You know, a lot of people wouldn’t speak to their friends the way they speak to themselves, because, like you said, we can be harsh.

Mike Maki 41:53
Yeah, that internal voice that you have sometimes can have a bit of a negative vibe to it at least, at least for me, it can so try to try to improve that.

Bill Gasiamis 42:06
Yeah, so how has this impacted you, emotionally and psychologically? Like, where are you at with that part of the recovery? Because I know that some people have the physical part, and they kind of go “Oh, this is it. This is how I’m going to deal with it, and then I kind of miss, or skip the emotional part and the mental health part.” Where were you at with that, those two?

Mike Maki 42:30
You know, I feel pretty good at least as far as the emotional part of it, I’ve always been, I’m a Christian, and I’ve always, faith has always been an important thing to me, and I think my faith has grown quite a bit during this journey. As far as, like, Hey, I’m just like, putting my myself and God, you know, God’s hands, or what if other people might, into a higher power, instead of, it’s not going to be me. It’s going to be I’m working towards getting better, and whatever happens, I’m going to make the very best of it.

Mike Maki 43:08
This could have been way worse. When I spent the month in the hospital, and like the acute physical or the therapy, and there were people that had a way, way worse than what I did, you know, and then you realize, like I should be Thankful I still have the use, even at that point of my right side, which is my dominant side, it could have been, I don’t know if their whole body, but, it even been worse if would have been my dominant side, that would be much harder to deal with.

Mike Maki 43:45
So I think this has been a good, I don’t want to say humbling experience, but an experience where you kind of learn that there’s a lot of things that are in my control that I need to take care of, whether it’s my diet or what have you, but the things that are outside of my control, I need to be willing to accept it and make the best of it and try to just keep continuing to improve on it. If I’m able to.

Bill Gasiamis 44:15
Yeah, I like that. It’s like you’re taking responsibility for what’s your for you, what you’re able to influence. And for lack of a better word, you’re outsourcing the rest to a higher power, call it God, call it spirit, call it whatever you want. Doesn’t matter. And then what that does is allows you to have a little bit of faith in the people that you’re dealing with and how they’re supporting you, and the technology that’s available, and all the things that you’re going to need to continue rehabilitation.

Bill Gasiamis 44:49
And at the same time, you’re taking action to change behaviors, habits, things you’ve done that you didn’t realize, were working against you so that they’re no longer working against you. That’s pretty cool. That’s the best way to go about it. And then what that does is enabled you to mobilize in the areas that you can affect positively.

Mike Maki 45:19
Right, it’s definitely enlightening and eye opening when a life changing event happens to you, especially when it’s not planned. Again, I’ve had, like, rotator cuff, and you schedule that surgery, and you know, it’s coming up in a month, and this was, when it’s just out of the blue light that you realize there’s a lot of things outside of my control that I need to figure out to one accept it, but then how do I make How do I make it? The best of it as well.

Bill Gasiamis 45:56
Gratitude is a great way. What you said, the things that you realize you can be grateful for, and then there’ll be people whose dominant side was affected, and they might not have that same experience that you had, but they could still find things to be grateful for, you know for sure, and they could say that they’re grateful for something else that serves them, because gratitude sort of takes away the power of being, decreases your victim mentality.

Bill Gasiamis 46:32
It kind of softens that and allows you to see other things that are really important to see, that are worth seeing, that are necessary for you to notice, so that you know that not everything is working against you, even in the most dire times, not everything is working against you, some things are going in your favor, and understanding that helps to shift emotionally how that feels.

Mike Maki 47:01
Yeah, I’ve been so thankful for the support of my wife and family. My daughter is, she just graduated from college and is a nurse, so that, you know, that’s and she’s still living with us because she just graduated. That’s been a huge blessing. It’s like my son been able to help some, but he doesn’t live in the house anymore, but just the sacrifices and the things that they’ve done, you’re just that gratitude, and you’re just so thankful for and you just, I just hope and obviously, it’s not for everybody.

Mike Maki 47:38
But you just hope that whoever’s dealing with things, whether it’s stroke or some other that they have that support network that they need because it’s crucial, because it’s easy to fall into that a dark space, or want to have a pity party for yourself, because you know, like life’s throwing you all these curve balls, and I agree, you know you need to get that mindset set that where you’re really, you feel that no matter what the outcome, you’re going to make the best of it, and then I think, then you’re going to have a much better outcome at the in the end.

Bill Gasiamis 48:21
I just realized I wanted to ask you earlier about the glucose monitor. That continuous glucose monitor, what does it cost to have one of those?

Mike Maki 48:31
So, that was a bit of a battle. So I tried to get it years ago, and it was not allowed by our insurance. And it did take a while for me to it took, like, three weeks or something, after the doctor had recommended it in order for me to get it. And eventually our insurance did. So I know everyone’s insurance is different, but our out of pocket expense for three months was only was like $100 okay, that’s what the insurance supplementing it, to be honest, I probably, even if they wouldn’t have covered it.

Mike Maki 49:13
I probably for, let’s say it had been $500 or $600 I would have paid that, because I think it’s such a valuable tool, at least for me. I mean, I’ve been dealing with diabetes now for quite a lot, but it’s an eye opening as far as, like, what’s happening in your body. I used to just take my blood sugar in the morning at night. Well, that’s just such a small window of what’s happening. It’s just, it’s amazing, like, there’s tender I’ll eat, and it actually, my blood sugar actually drops.

Mike Maki 49:47
And you’re like “Why is that happening?” Or “Hey, physical therapy was really hard today, but it made a pretty big impact on my sugar level.” So you know that exercise is a big factor, and I’ve seen things like you were saying where, they’ll talk about even eating your food in a different order can make a big impact on your glucose levels, which, that was kind of news to me, and I’ve been at least, I thought it well, relatively informed as far as dealing with my diabetes, but so I haven’t.

Mike Maki 50:26
I’ve only had it a week, so it’s a short, very window, but I think I’ve even seen that a little, you know, you eat the proteins and things first and all of a sudden, one it helps make you feel satisfied or not as hungry. But then your body starts break, you know, breaking those down even before it would have even if you’re having very minimal carbs you eat those the very end, or what have you.

Bill Gasiamis 50:56
Yeah, the way that it gets metabolized slows down because the body’s busy metabolizing what first went into the stomach, and then it just shifts it so fiber, protein, carbs last and hopefully, after you’ve had your fiber and your protein, the amount of carb you eat is less as well, right? And those carbs, those fibers and the protein maybe have had a little bit of fat on it. So the fat, you know, sort of getting around that carb and decreasing its impact as well, because the fat will bind to the carbs and kind of make it a bit harder to digest.

Bill Gasiamis 51:36
Even that helps. So, yeah, the order of your food is so important. If you ate the bread first, then it would spike your blood sugar right, and then the fiber and the protein wouldn’t have such a great impact on reducing that blood sugar spike. It’s fascinating when you learn and when you sort of start seeing things than later, what I’ll do is it’ll train you to go, I’m going to, I’m feeling a bit snackish. I’m going to go and get a overripe banana on on the bench.

Bill Gasiamis 52:17
Well, that override banana is going to have a different response to the just not green banana, the banana that has just moved beyond being green, they’re going to it’s a completely different meal, right? And that’s what it’ll train you to do, to know where you’re at, and what you can and what you should avoid, and what order to have it, and how much of it to have, because quantity matters as well. So well for sure half a banana is going to be way better than two bananas.

Bill Gasiamis 52:48
And that means, if you have half a banana, that means you don’t have to miss out on it if you really love it. And there’s somebody who has type two diabetes, you can go, I’ll have half a banana with some nuts or some peanut butter or something like that, and it completely changes the profile of it, as opposed to having two full bananas with nothing else.

Mike Maki 53:12
Right, exactly.

Bill Gasiamis 53:14
Yeah, what would you say has been the hardest thing about stroke? Mike.

Mike Maki 53:19
Well, I would say, for at least for me, is been dealing with the fatigue because it just, it comes out, you know, relatively out of nowhere. I mean, it’s still usually associated with doing something, but just doing some, sometimes very, very simple task, and getting so tired and having to take a break that’s been, it’s kind of been hard, because I’m used to again, you know, I want to be a doer, like, if we need to get something done at work, I want to roll up my sleeves and do it, and it’s hard to take a step back from some of those things.

Mike Maki 54:06
So, I would say that’s probably been the hardest, you know, there’s still some of the physical things have been difficult, but those are things, at least, you see a little bit more progress, and you’re overcome, somewhat, overcoming them. It’s hard to say, where you’ll end up, you know, again, I always struggle with that word normal.

Mike Maki 54:30
Like, you know, where I’ll ever get back normal, whatever that is, right, like, so I just want to get as far as I possibly can, you know, get back to whatever the normal becomes, it will be the new norm, or whatever. But, yeah, I would say it’s been the fatigue.

Bill Gasiamis 54:52
Do you notice a pattern in the fatigue? Do you notice there’s certain days, times that it gets worse? Was better, or is it just all over the place?

Mike Maki 55:02
It seems like it’s been all over the place, and it is usually associated with some task, whether it’s physical or a mental task, or, you know, even just doing like the occupational therapy, even if it was something that wasn’t physical, but we were, you know, filling out questionnaires or doing some memory things. You know, next thing you know, you’re like, get home and you’re like, I think I need to take, like, a 15 minute nap. I’m just shot like or nothing.

Bill Gasiamis 55:35
That’s good. That’s good that you’re doing that. Do you ever notice your fatigue getting worse after a meal?

Mike Maki 55:43
I haven’t noticed that, but I guess, I mean, it may have happened, but, I mean maybe too because we tried to walk, you know, try to walk some, you know, he said that after the dinner meal. And I actually have been really, I mean, my diet’s been very strict since so egg would, yeah. I mean, it’s amazing.

Bill Gasiamis 56:08
The walking after dinner actually also is a massive boost to decreasing, right? That insulin, that blood sugar spike after dinner, it’s a massive, makes a massive difference, that’s good.

Mike Maki 56:23
So it hopefully can keep increasing the distance that I’m going. And it’s kind of like life as all these ironies, we literally, we’d had a dog. I mean, we’ve always had two dogs, but I, one of my favorite things is to pheasant hunt. And it’s more just getting out with the dog. And I just love, you know, loving it, being out with friends. So the dog, one of the dogs that we had, had that we recently put down, he had gotten gun shy, so I hadn’t been able to hunt with him for like, six years. Like, I mean, because they’re more of a pet than they are hunting dog for us.

Mike Maki 57:03
Because so that was hard. So I went six years, and we finally found a place. This summer, we got a puppy, you know, I was going to be hunting with, my expectations were going to be hunting going to start over fresh with the new dog, now with the stroke, it’s kind of like, well, hopefully that still ends up being the case.

Mike Maki 57:26
So that’s kind of been the little carrot that’s been a good driver for me to like, if I’m doing a few reps with my physical therapy and I want to quit, it’s kind of like, well, do you really want to get back out there with the dog, you know, and train this puppy that we just got that’s gonna, hopefully live a long time and so, yeah, but it’s a funny how things like that happen.

Bill Gasiamis 57:49
Yeah, and you’re currently using a cane, aren’t you?

Mike Maki 57:52
Yeah, so, hospital was all walker, then I went to quad cane when I came home, and now they move me to like a walking stick, like you might use if you were hiking. I really like that a lot. That’s worked out really good for me so and normally, when I’m around in the house, I don’t even use that. I just kind of surf the pieces of furniture. If I lose my balance a little, but it’s getting better, but I would certainly not go anywhere walking without the walking stick at this point.

Bill Gasiamis 58:30
Well, that’s good. It’s good that you’re transitioned from the other stuff to the walking stick, and hopefully, stages without the walking stick, that’d be amazing. What would you say has been the biggest lesson, like, what has stroke taught you?

Mike Maki 58:53
You know, I mean, we’ve talked about a little bit, but I probably go back to that, the idea of control, what you can control and accept what’s out of your hands, and I’m not quite it, make the best of it.

Bill Gasiamis 59:13
That’s a pretty good thing to learn. Yeah, implement that.

Mike Maki 59:18
Because I feel like pre or prior to the stroke, it was more if I felt like something was out of my hands, I was just gonna try to bowl, you know, bully, whatever the task was, and just power through it. Where now I, I feel like, in hindsight, you just it makes you more accepting. And I don’t want to make it sound like you just give in no, but you just need to be more forgiving to things that are out of your hands and to yourself really.

Bill Gasiamis 59:52
Yeah, absolutely. You know what’s been really cool lately, I’ve been contacted by people who have, had this stroke recently, very recently, which means that they must be including you, doing searches for support after stroke, and finding the podcast and finding it really early in their recovery. And that is amazing, because it’s not something that I had, you know, I didn’t have, right. It’s about stroke recovery.

Mike Maki 1:00:24
You know, I’m sorry that you didn’t have. I mean, I’ve been grateful for I just, I can get caught watching them, and, you know, I’m really looking forward to digging into the book. So my goal is to try to, like, I think the first day I read like, 50 pages in my mind was just like, all messed up. So I’m like “Nope, I gotta break this down. Give myself five or 10 pages.” I’m just going to try to ease into it.

Bill Gasiamis 1:00:50
And that’s more than enough. Yeah, I was going to ask you so like, why was it necessary for you to come onto the podcast?

Mike Maki 1:01:03
I, you know, you’ve interviewed so many wonderful people, and they’ve helped me so much. I didn’t know that my story could really help people, because, you know, I don’t know, but I also wanted it to like, if it did help one person, I also wanted to try to contribute a little to your work, because I really appreciate what you’re doing, you know. And you need content, and whether or not you might have a video that’s a dud, maybe I’m the dud, but at least we gotta work through it a little bit, you know.

Mike Maki 1:02:01
So I really appreciate that.

Mike Maki 1:01:41
That was my hope that in some way, maybe some strange way, someone could, associate with my you know, it’s a relatively short journey at this point compared to what when you look at what you’ve gone through and all the things that have happened over the years. I know I’m early into this, but if I could even help one help one person, it’s worth it.

Bill Gasiamis 1:02:06
It definitely does help, because I get people responding every single day, telling me so every day, and they respond to the weirdest episodes, or to the one I never expected, or the one I did years ago, or, and it’s unpredictable because we’re all so different, and we all have things that we relate to each other about, and other things we don’t relate to each other about, yeah, all of a sudden.

Bill Gasiamis 1:02:34
What happens is somebody goes “Oh, man, that’s me.” That you know, somebody might come across this and go “Oh, that’s my diabetes journey.” Or “Oh, I didn’t know that about diabetes, or I didn’t know about a glucose monitor.” The jewels that they pick up are unexpected. Don’t realize what people pick up that is important. You think it’s a passing comment, but it’s like “Oh, no, that really resonates.” So, yeah, they all help. Let me tell you, I had this thing in my mind that kind of said, like, I think I want to do 1000 interviews.

Bill Gasiamis 1:03:10
We’re at, we’re not at 350 yet, and I’m not sure how long that’ll take, but that’s a big job, like 1000 stroke survivor interviews, and then I’m thinking, if I get to 1000 then the job’s done, like there’ll be ample bits of information in there that anyone can stumble across forever on YouTube. And just find it and go “Oh man, I need to hear that episode.” Or that’s the guy that resonated with me, or I’m like that, etc. So yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you for reaching out and doing that. That’s I just wanted to get a sense of what it was about.

Bill Gasiamis 1:03:51
Because the last question I wanted to ask you was, what do you want to tell other people that might be listening to this, and I’m not sure, just, you know, want to hear some wisdom about what you’ve learned about stroke. You know what I mean? Like, do you have some something that you want to just say to people, impart on people, or just lay on people’s just so that they can think about.

Mike Maki 1:04:24
You know, it might be kind of simplistic, and that’s kind of just my nature is sometimes simple as better, but I think a little bit about, you know, realize that you’re not the first one going through this, and that, you know, they’ll even, unfortunately, be more to go through it, and that you can learn from other people, and that this isn’t the end, it’s in a new, in a funny kind of way, a new beginning, and that a lot of it’s going to be what you make of it. And use, you know, what other people have been through to learn from.

Mike Maki 1:05:07
And again, that’s why I love your podcast so much, because it, you know, even if someone’s had a different type of stroke or what it you can learn, you really can learn a lot from their journey. And sometimes it’s a lot easier, I live in Minnesota, where the, you know, we can get a fair amount of snow. It’s a lot easier walking in the steps of somebody else through two feet of snow than trying to blaze a trail yourself through the snow.

Mike Maki 1:05:36
So you can kind of piggyback on what other people have been through. It’s not going to be exactly the same, but you can craft that into what your personal journey is, and try to figure out how you can make the best of it. So I don’t know if that’s real words of wisdom, but that’s the way I look at it.

Bill Gasiamis 1:05:57
I love that analogy about the snow. I certainly appreciate what that means. I don’t get out to the snow much, but I know exactly what you mean when you say that. And yeah, the person that’s taken those first steps through the snow is definitely creating an easier path forward for the next person. And right, that’s a great gift. That’s an amazing thing.

Mike Maki 1:06:22
Yeah, and that’s what you’ve done a lot with the podcast. You know, there’s a lot of other really good content out on whether it’s YouTube or books or so.

Bill Gasiamis 1:06:34
I’m stunned at the amount of people that want to help. I didn’t realize that I would be able to get 350 people to come on my podcast. At the beginning, I had to find out where they were and search for them and then ask them. And I wasn’t sure that people would say yes when I asked them, but my God, hardly nobody said no. And now I don’t ask people ask me, because they find me instead of me looking for them. And it’s just, it’s a relief, it’s so much easier. Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast. I really appreciate our chat and best best of luck on the ongoing recovery.

Mike Maki 1:07:15
No, I really appreciate that, and thank you so much for having me. It’s really an honor for me, because, like I said, you really are doing a lot of great things.

Bill Gasiamis 1:07:24
Well, that brings us to the end of this inspiring episode with Mike, from facing a sudden wake up stroke to taking responsibility for his health, managing his type two diabetes and reshaping his life after burnout, Mike’s story is a powerful reminder of the strength we all have within us. If today’s conversation resonated with you, I’d love to hear from you. Please leave a comment, like and subscribe on YouTube, if you’re listening on Spotify or iTunes, a five star rating or review would be amazing. It really helps others discover the podcast and join our growing community.

Bill Gasiamis 1:08:03
Remember to check out my book The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened. It’s available on Amazon by searching my name, Bill Gasiamis, or by visiting recoveryafterstroke.com/book. And if you’d like to support me or the podcast directly, head to patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. Thank you for being here and for making this podcast part of your recovery journey. I’ll see you in the next episode.

Intro 1:08:31
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The post From Stroke to Strength: Mike’s Journey Through Diabetes and Burnout appeared first on Recovery After Stroke.

I was working on my computer, replying to emails, when I received the same article twice—once from a podcast listener and again from someone I coach in stroke recovery. That headline hit me like a bolt of lightning:

It’s not every day we hear the words “drug” and “stroke recovery” in the same sentence. Naturally, I had to look into it—and now I want to share what I’ve learned and what it might mean for us.

Published in Nature Communications, the study led by Dr. S. Thomas Carmichael, Chair of Neurology at UCLA, explored whether the benefits of physical rehabilitation could be reproduced in drug form.

Here’s the core finding: a new drug, tested in mice, restored lost movement and brain connectivity by mimicking the effects of physical rehab. Specifically, it reactivated parts of the brain that had gone “offline”—not damaged, just disconnected.

The implications are massive. Currently, there are no approved drugs that aid in stroke recovery. Survivors must rely on physical rehabilitation, which many can’t access or sustain due to fatigue, cost, or limited healthcare support.

The drug targets a special type of neuron, parvalbumin neurons, that help generate gamma oscillations, a brain rhythm necessary for coordinated movement. These rhythms often vanish after a stroke, leaving certain brain regions disconnected.

UCLA’s new compound, DDL-920, helped regenerate these connections and restored coordinated movement in mice. That’s a first.

Let’s be real: this drug isn’t available yet. It’s years away from human trials. But the study raises an important question:

There are already a few treatments out there aimed at “reawakening” sleepy or disconnected parts of the brain:

Even with promising developments, physical rehabilitation remains vital. Whether you’re using a walker, in a wheelchair, or working with one functioning side, movement matters.

Every effort you make counts, because neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to rewire itself) is driven by repetition and action.

Besides medical options, there are things you can do today:

The UCLA study brings hope for the future, but we can’t sit around waiting. The journey of recovery demands curiosity, experimentation, and effort.

Whether it’s exploring new treatments, improving your diet, or moving just a little more each day, you have more tools than you think.

And if that pill comes to market one day? You’ll be even better prepared to benefit from it.

Until then, let’s keep doing the work.

UCLA Article

Etanercept for Stroke Recovery: MYTH? or Reality – Andrew Stopps

Perispinal Etanercept & Stroke Recovery Story: Dwayne Semple

Reviving the Brain: Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy for Stroke Recovery | Dr. Amir Hadani

HBOT for Brain Repair and Stroke Recovery – Shai Efrati

https://youtu.be/qMdm1g71NeY

UCLA stroke drug study gives stroke survivors fresh hope for recovery. Discover how this breakthrough compares to treatments like etanercept and HBOT.

Highlights:

00:00 UCLA’s Discovery of a Stroke Rehabilitation Drug
04:59 Identifying Brain Connections and Candidate Drugs
09:25 Challenges and Current Interventions
14:21 Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and Future Research
18:11 Importance of Physical Rehabilitation and Lifestyle Changes

Transcript:

Bill Gasiamis 0:01
I’m sitting here doing some work on my computer, sending emails, and I received an email for the second time in two days on the same topic from two different people. The first one was somebody who follows the podcast. The second one was somebody who I coach on their stroke recovery journey.

Bill Gasiamis 0:20
And I’ll read you the title of the article, and then I’ll read some sections of the article, just so you can get a sense of what it is that they’re talking about. So the heading goes, UCLA discovers first stroke rehabilitation drug to re establish brain connections in mice.

Bill Gasiamis 0:39
It continues by saying a new study by UCLA health has discovered what researchers say is the first drug to fully reproduce the effects of physical stroke rehabilitation in mice. So what this drug does is it creates improvements in the brain through a pill that physical rehabilitation often can achieve for stroke survivors during their rehabilitation phase.

Bill Gasiamis 1:15
The findings published in Nature Communications tested two candidate drugs derived from their studies on the mechanisms of the brain, effects of rehabilitation, one of which resulted in significant recovery in movement control after stroke in mice.

Bill Gasiamis 1:36
There are no drugs in the field of stroke recovery, requiring stroke patients to undergo physical rehabilitation, which has shown to be only modestly effective. So what they’re doing is they’re downplaying a physical rehabilitation in this particular publication, and they’re saying what they’re going after is the going after a pill that will mimic the effects of physical rehabilitation, but take it to the next level.

Bill Gasiamis 2:06
The goal is to have a medicine that stroke patients can take that produces the effects of rehabilitation, said Dr. S. Thomas Carmichael, the study’s lead author and professor and chair of UCLA, neurology, rehabilitation after stroke is limited in its actual effects, because most patients cannot sustain the rehab intensity needed for stroke recovery.

Bill Gasiamis 2:30
So he’s discovered that and correctly so that a lot of stroke patients can’t have the intensity of physical rehabilitation needed to recover those parts of the brain that are not functioning correctly, and that might be for a number of reasons, because fatigue gets in the way, also because maybe insurance forgets that they need to support these people and stops paying.

Bill Gasiamis 2:58
And as a result of that, there isn’t enough physical therapy that’s being done for stroke survivors to actually get the effects that they may otherwise have been able to get if they were able to sustain the physical rehabilitation. I mean, it’s not news to stroke survivors that insurance companies don’t support enough and that physical rehabilitation is difficult. We know that, and we need all the help we can get, and hopefully this particular drug addresses that issue.

Bill Gasiamis 3:32
Now, further stroke recovery is not like most other fields of medicine where drugs are available that treat the disease, such as cardiology, infectious diseases or cancer. Carmichael said rehabilitation is a physical medicine approach that has been around for decades. We need to move rehabilitation into an era of Molecular Medicine, and I kind of agree with that statement, like physical rehabilitation is the only tool that we’ve had.

Bill Gasiamis 4:05
It’s kind of like, the brick layer has only ever been able to use a trail to lay mud on a brick and lay bricks. It’s been done like that for centuries. And I think what he’s referring to is that although physical rehabilitation is a really good tool for stroke survivors, it’s probably not as effective as it could be because of the limitations that are associated with physical rehabilitation.

Bill Gasiamis 4:35
The pain the patient’s abilities, and also the lack of, in my opinion, the lack of support by insurance companies. In the study, Carmichael and his team sought to determine how physical rehabilitation improved brain function after a stroke and whether they could generate a drug that could produce the same effects, working in a laboratory with mice models of stroke.

Bill Gasiamis 4:59
And with stroke patients, the UCLA researchers identified a loss of brain connections that stroke produces that are remote from the site of the stroke damaged. So what they’ve identified is areas of the brain that have been taken offline because of the stroke but are not damaged.

Bill Gasiamis 5:19
So if the stroke happened here, they may have found that there’s an area of the brain back here that has been taken offline, that isn’t damaged, but it has been taken offline as a result of the stroke that happened over here. This part of the brain may be damaged, but this part of the brain isn’t damaged. It’s still there. It’s kind of sleepy, it’s alive, but it’s not connected to the rest of the brain.

Bill Gasiamis 5:44
And what they are hoping to do is find a way to re link that part of the brain to the rest of the brain so that it can take over the tasks that were lost with the damage that occurred after the stroke. So the UCLA team found that some of the connections that are lost after a stroke occur in a cell called the paravalbumin neuron.

Bill Gasiamis 6:12
Oh, my God, I butchered that. This type of neuron helps generate a brain rhythm called gamma oscillation, which links neurons together so that they form coordinated networks to produce a behavior such as movement. So basically, those particular hard to pronounce neurons create a particular function called the gamma oscillation, and that is what helps connect that area.

Bill Gasiamis 6:40
Usually that’s offline to the rest of the brain, and because of the stroke, that oscillation has been temporarily made not available, and therefore that part of the brain is switched off and makes it look like that person has lost that particular function. Some people might describe that area that’s offline as a penumbra. Usually, the penumbra that is spoken about is spoken about in this part of the brain where the damage has occurred.

Bill Gasiamis 7:11
A Penumbra is an area that’s been inflamed by the injury, and usually it is the first thing to come back online within the first six months. But what they’ve discovered is that after stroke, there’s penumbras in other areas that have been previously overlooked. So Carmichael and the team identified two candidate drugs that might produce gamma oscillations after stroke.

Bill Gasiamis 7:34
So what they’re hoping is that these drugs will create those gamma oscillations, those movements after the stroke, and specifically work to excite the par Val buen neurons. The researchers found that one of the drugs developed in the UCLA lab of Varghese John who co authored the study and produced significant recovery in movement control in mice. So they’ve identified two drugs, and as a result of that, they are seeing that they’ve been able to reproduce recovery in the mice in their research that have experienced the stroke.

Bill Gasiamis 8:16
So as we get to the end of the paper on the reporting of what the study found. The final part says it first identifies circuitry that underlies the effect of rehabilitation in the brain. So it identifies the circuitry that underlies the effect of rehabilitation, that is responsible for the rehabilitation that can support the rehabilitation, and then identifies a unique drug targeted in this rehabilitation brain circuitry to promote recovery by mimicking the main effect of physical rehabilitation. So the plan is to identify if there’s areas in the brain that can be supported and rehabilitated.

Bill Gasiamis 9:05
And then what they do is they use one of the drugs to create or support the brain circuitry that’s been switched off to promote the recovery by mimicking the main effect of physical rehabilitation. So what they’re doing is they’re trying to determine where those areas of brain that switched off are.

Bill Gasiamis 9:25
Then they are providing the patient, in this particular case, the mice with one of the two drugs to see whether or not one of those two drugs has been able to support re exciting those neurons and therefore restore function, and then the final sentence goes further studies are needed to understand the safety and efficacy of the drug before it can be considered for human trials.

Bill Gasiamis 9:51
Of course, this is the difficult part. Is that we see a study like this, and as stroke survivors, we latch on. The hope that it’s going to be available very shortly, and that would not be able to take advantage of it. And unfortunately, it’s not going to be available for quite some time, because before it moves into human trials, the mice trials have to be done, and they have to be proven to be successful again and again, and then they need to replicate that in human trials.

Bill Gasiamis 10:19
And then from that, there is a number of years that need to pass before human trials can be proven affected, and then before a drug can be developed and then approved by all the people who need to approve it, and then made available to stroke survivors. And that’s, I suppose why I’m doing this video, is to then say, okay, so what do we do now? This stuff is not available.

Bill Gasiamis 10:42
It’s a great story for the future. But what do we do now? We need something now. Well, there are already some options that treat specifically those areas of the brain that are switched off, that are dormant and are needing support to come back online, and one of those interventions is perispinal etanercept, the controversial etanercept that lots of stroke survivors know about.

Bill Gasiamis 11:10
And I have spoken to two stroke survivors who have had results with etanercept with Dr tobernick, and the links of those interviews will be in the description of this particular video, and that’s what ataricep does. The problem with atanocept is that it is off label. That means that it’s being used in an area that is not approved for use, and usually a tennercept was being used for people who had rheumatoid arthritis to decrease inflammation in their joints. And it still is very effective and being used in that space.

Bill Gasiamis 11:46
And for some reason, it has moved around eight or nine years ago into being used for people who are experiencing stroke. And the main person who has been involved in that particular project is Dr tobinick from Florida, and as a result of that, he has been able to restore function in some, in many, many stroke survivors, and in some cases, also not been able to support stroke survivors.

Bill Gasiamis 12:13
And that’s my problem with the tennercept, is that when you go to receive a tennercept, you don’t know whether you’re an ideal candidate. So you have to pay you have to fork out the cash, you have to go there, do all the treatment, and then you may not get a result, and that’s the only way of knowing. And the reason being is because there’s not a method beforehand to determine whether or not somebody is the ideal candidate.

Bill Gasiamis 12:38
But it’s available right now, and there’s plenty of people that have had the opportunity to receive some injections of a tennercept, and they’ve had results. The other intervention is hyperbaric oxygen theory and of therapy. And I’ve interviewed two doctors who offer hyperbaric oxygen therapy, who have clinics in the United States, in Israel and in the United Arab Emirates.

Bill Gasiamis 13:02
And again, the difference being is that this particular protocol of hyperbaric oxygen therapy is five days a week for three months, I do believe. And it’s really, really expensive, but the difference is at least that they will be able to determine whether or not you have additional areas in the brain, those penumbras, those sleepy areas that are offline and can be rehabilitated, and as a result, can restore function.

Bill Gasiamis 13:33
That is the beautiful part of the method that they use for hyperbaric oxygen therapy is they determine whether somebody is a candidate or not, before they go to the expense to work out whether or not they can participate in the therapy with hyperbaric oxygen therapy. So the links to those two interviews are also going to be in the description. You can go and check out those interviews as well.

Bill Gasiamis 13:59
And the big challenge with etanercept and hyperbaric oxygen therapy is that they’re very, very expensive, and not many people can afford those particular treatments, especially since they’ve had a stroke, and then they’re not working after stroke. To come up with the funds to do that is really difficult when medical bills and everything else is piling up.

Bill Gasiamis 14:21
So there are a couple of the things that are already available to do what this drug is meant to do, and some of the challenges with getting access to those particular two interventions now the third one is repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, which is a non invasive brain stimulation technique using magnetic fields to activate specific brain areas.

Bill Gasiamis 14:49
How it helps is that it can promote plasticity and potentially improve motor function. And the way that it works is that the brain stimulation happens from the outside of the brain. With magnets and is placed on a targeted area, and it’s supposed to excite the neurons in that space and bring them back to life, if they are there to be rehabilitated, and that is supposed to help in rehabilitating people and supporting their brain to come back online.

Bill Gasiamis 15:17
Now I haven’t interviewed anyone who has done that particular therapy, and I don’t know much about it, but it is currently available, and some people might have already accessed it. And if you’re one of those people and you’ve had some results, or you haven’t had results, it’d be really interesting to speak to you about it and hear what you have to say.

Bill Gasiamis 15:37
Oh, and it’s important to mention that that therapy is specifically used for people who are recovering from aphasia and hemiparesis, and often it is done in rehab, in rehab in stroke hospitals in the early stages of their recovery. So they’re the three treatments that are currently available that are similar to the drug that these researchers at UCLA are trying to develop.

Bill Gasiamis 16:07
And one of the reasons why this study is occurring is because it’s probably backed by a pharmaceutical company, and they’re looking for the next thing to create to support stroke survivors. Because if they develop it, if they work out what it is, they can pay it into and then they can make a lot of money out of it, which is understandable and is necessary. But that is why there isn’t a lot of research being done in paraspinal etanercept, because etanercept is off label. It probably has fallen out of that where it is still patented, and as a result of that, there isn’t a ton of money to be made in that space.

Bill Gasiamis 16:48
So nobody’s pushing for research to be done in that area for stroke rehabilitation, when it’s already proven to be effective in arthritis. And as a result of that, they’re just running with what they have approval for, and it seems to be doing what it’s doing for arthritis, but it does create a situation where the only way what’s the word you can progress the science and the uses of a particular drug is to do what Dr. Tobinick is doing, and that opens him up for controversial comments from people who don’t get results because of the lack of being able to determine whether or not you’re a good candidate for a tennercept.

Bill Gasiamis 17:32
And then you get the other end where people do get great results, and then they rave about it. So that’s the challenge. Is that when there aren’t studies being funded to do the work to determine the efficacy of a particular intervention, well then it’s up to up to a few people to do that work, and they put themselves at great risk of scrutiny by people who have been disappointed they didn’t get the outcomes that they wanted, and by people who are skeptical as to whether or not etanercept works, there seems to be a lot of research that etanercept does work.

Bill Gasiamis 18:11
A lot of people reporting that it does work, and unfortunately, it is very expensive, and nobody else is doing the work to determine its efficacy in this space. So that brings me to the last thing. What’s the last thing that we can do to support bringing those sleepy, dormant parts of the brain back online, physical rehabilitation, as much physical rehabilitation as you can, whether you are hemiplegic, whether you’re in a wheelchair, whether your left arm or your left leg doesn’t work, or one of the other ones don’t work.

Bill Gasiamis 18:50
The more physical rehabilitation you can do, the more results you get, the more chances that you’ll be able to wake up some of those sleepy areas of the brain. I can’t emphasize it enough how important exercise is. After a stroke, doesn’t matter if it’s hard, doesn’t matter if you hate it doesn’t matter if it hurts. You have to find a way to become physically active, even if it’s sitting down in a wheelchair or standing up and holding on to a walker in any way, shape or form, physical rehabilitation is really, really important.

Bill Gasiamis 19:21
And if you can’t get access to it in a medical facility or in a rehabilitation facility, you have to find another way to get access to it. Now, what else can you do to support the brain? Well, you can stop smoking, you can stop drinking, and you can stop eating large amounts of carbohydrates, especially the carbohydrates of the kind that are wheat-based and from flour and sugars and all the carbs that cause high loads on the body and focus on a higher protein and vegetable diet.

Bill Gasiamis 20:00
And then avoid sodas and foods that are going to be inflammatory after a stroke. I hope you enjoyed this summary, this video, this breakdown of this new finding by the UCLA. Please share your thoughts and comments and feelings in the comments below. I will respond to all of them. Let’s start a conversation, and like, share, subscribe to the show, and I look forward to hearing from you, and I’ll see you on the next video.

The post This Drug Mimics Stroke Rehab – And It’s Real. Here’s What You Need to Know appeared first on Recovery After Stroke.

When it comes to preventing stroke, most people think of managing blood pressure or cholesterol. But there’s another major—and often silent—risk factor many overlook: atrial fibrillation, or AFib.

AFib is the most common type of heart arrhythmia, and it’s more than just an irregular heartbeat. It’s a condition that can significantly raise the risk of ischemic stroke, particularly if it’s undiagnosed or unmanaged.

In this article, we’ll explore what AFib is, how it increases stroke risk, and most importantly, what steps you can take to protect yourself or a loved one.

Atrial fibrillation is an irregular and often rapid heart rhythm that begins in the upper chambers (atria) of the heart. Instead of beating effectively, the atria quiver or “fibrillate,” which can cause blood to pool and form clots.

These clots can travel from the heart to the brain, leading to a stroke—specifically an ischemic stroke, which occurs when a blood vessel is blocked.

The link between atrial fib and stroke lies in the potential for blood clots to form in the heart. If a clot escapes and travels to the brain, it can block blood flow and oxygen—causing brain cells to die within minutes.

• People with AFib are five times more likely to suffer a stroke than those without the condition.
• One in four strokes in people over age 80 are attributed to AFib.
• AFib-related strokes are often more severe and carry a higher risk of long-term disability or death.

AFib can affect anyone, but the risk increases with:

• Age (especially over 65)
• High blood pressure
• Diabetes
• Heart disease or heart failure
• Sleep apnea
• Excessive alcohol consumption
• Family history of AFib

It’s also common for AFib to be asymptomatic. Some people feel palpitations or fatigue, while others don’t notice it at all—making regular checkups and heart monitoring essential.

While some people feel nothing at all, symptoms can include:

• Heart palpitations (fluttering or racing)
• Fatigue or weakness
• Dizziness or lightheadedness
• Chest discomfort
• Shortness of breath

If you’re experiencing any of these symptoms—or even subtle changes in how your heart feels—it’s worth discussing with your doctor.

Managing AFib typically involves:

• Blood thinners (anticoagulants) to reduce clot risk
• Rate and rhythm control medications
• Lifestyle changes (diet, exercise, alcohol moderation)
• Procedures like cardioversion or ablation in some cases

The goal is to prevent clot formation and restore normal heart rhythm, significantly reducing the chance of a stroke.

1. Get Diagnosed Early
   Many people discover they have AFib after a stroke. Catching it early can save your life.
2. Stick to Your Medications
   Blood thinners are critical in reducing the risk of stroke in people with AFib.
3. Monitor Your Heart Regularly
   Wearable ECG devices or even smartwatches can help detect irregular rhythms.
4. Cut Back on Alcohol
   Heavy drinking can trigger AFib episodes and increase stroke risk.
5. Address Lifestyle Factors
   Manage high blood pressure, quit smoking, stay active, and eat a heart-healthy diet.

Understanding the link between atrial fib and stroke empowers you to take action. Whether you’re living with AFib or supporting someone who is, the path to prevention starts with awareness, medical guidance, and lifestyle change.

Atrial fibrillation may be common, but it doesn’t have to lead to stroke. With early detection and the right treatment plan, it’s absolutely possible to live a long, full, and healthy life.

If you’re a stroke survivor or navigating AFib, check out our Recovery After Stroke community, where we share survivor stories, medical insights, and support tools for recovery and prevention.

Jeff Ryberg’s stroke was caused by AFib and alcohol. His inspiring recovery offers hope, healing, and lessons for stroke survivors everywhere.

Jeff’s Instagram
Support The Recovery After Stroke Podcast On Patreon

Highlights:

00:00 Jeff’s Introduction and Background
01:56 Jeff’s Stroke Experience
04:17 Atrial Fibrillation and Alcohol Use
09:35 Jeff’s Transformation and Recovery
13:46 How a Stroke Saved My Life: A Listener’s Powerful Reflection
23:44 Challenges and Support in Recovery
35:49 Post-Traumatic Growth: Finding Meaning After the Storm
42:05 Recovery, Friendship, and the Two-Hour Window
58:42 Post-Stroke Reflections and Advice

Transcript:

Bill Gasiamis 0:00
Hello everyone, and welcome to Recovery After Stroke, I’m so grateful you decided to join me today, whether you’re a stroke survivor, a caregiver or simply someone seeking to understand the recovery journey. On a deeper level, I wanted to thank you for being here. Your presence helps build this incredible community, one story, one episode, one connection at a time. More and more people are now discovering this podcast while still in hospital, sometimes just days after having had a stroke.

Bill Gasiamis 0:34
That kind of early connection is exactly what I needed when I had my own stroke back in 2012 and it’s why I started this show in the first place. It is also what inspired me to write the book, The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened. If you’re looking for more insights into navigating stroke recovery, not just physically, but emotionally and mentally. I invite you to take a look and check it out. It’s written from the heart, and it’s there to support you wherever you are on your journey.

Bill Gasiamis 1:07
Today, my guest is Jeff Ryberg, and his story is a powerful one. Jeff had a stroke at 55 caused by Atrial Fibrillation and alcohol related heart failure, but thanks to timing, medical intervention and a moment of clarity that changed everything. He not only survived, he transformed. In this episode, Jeff talks openly about his long history with alcohol, the signs he missed, the life threatening impact of untreated AFib and what it looked like to turn it all around. His journey is one of redemption, healing and purpose, and I think it will resonate deeply with many of you.

Bill Gasiamis 1:49
Let’s dive in. Jeff Ryberg, welcome to the podcast.

Jeff Ryberg 1:54
Thank you for having me. Thanks, Bill. Appreciate it.

Bill Gasiamis 1:56
Tell me a little bit about what happened to you, Jeff.

Jeff Ryberg 2:01
So, about two and a half years ago, I was feeling kind of poorly, and for a couple weeks, had been complaining about being tired, and I went to the doctor, I think, the Friday before, I got sick, and they gave me some medicine to get my AFib under control, had some AFib issues.

Jeff Ryberg 2:23
Atrial Fibrillation.

Jeff Ryberg 2:25
Atrial Fibrillation, right. So I went into the doctor and came home, I went to bed. Woke up early in the morning, my fiance is a nurse, and I said “Hey, I’m not feeling good.” And anyway, long story short, the ambulance came pick me up, took me to the hospital. My heart was failing, I had like a 15% to 20% on the left side. So I was in, had cardiopathy. Heart failure was kicking in, and they had me on pretty high blood thinners, heparin was involved, and doing all these things. But a day had passed, and they had gotten a lot of oxygen and things like that.

Jeff Ryberg 3:10
So the next day, my son was in the room with my oldest son, is 33 and I had to go to use the restroom, and he got him up at a bed, and he said “How come you’re talking so funny. What’s going on with this?” And I had a stroke, in his arms as he was taken to the bathroom. And this is where things get a little bit interesting. Is that it I had it in the hospital, luckily enough, and at 55 they said I was really young to have a stroke, which I thought I was old at the time, but had the had a stroke in his arms.

Jeff Ryberg 3:49
What became kind of like, like to say a miracle was that the specialist that was in the whole area for the University of Washington happened to be in the hospital on my floor just a couple doors down, working with somebody else. So within 45 minutes, MRI, CT scan, and then did a thrombectomy, two blood clots, one each side of my brain, and got them out.

Jeff Ryberg 4:17
So that led me to, I’m here with you now to talk about my experience and the what led up to that, and how fortunate and lucky to be in that situation, that I was to have that procedure, and we can talk more about that, but it was a very fortunate position. But every day I’m thankful to to be in obviously.

Bill Gasiamis 4:42
Yeah, it’s a pretty intense situation. So tell me about the atrial fibrillation history. When did you discover that that was a thing and that you need to be managed?

Jeff Ryberg 4:54
Well, I think, Bill had been going on for quite a while, so I think over the years, I have a, obviously, had a drinking problem, and that’s one of the things that would initially start the AFib. Would, I’d have like, a heavy night of drinking, and then my heart would race, and I would just probably pour more on top of and then all of a sudden, you know, I wouldn’t race anymore, and it wouldn’t feel at it. So I’d been to the hospital a couple times over the years for racing hard, and I never really thought much of it.

Jeff Ryberg 5:24
And then eventually, I think, as you kind of put the pieces together of this puzzle here is that atrial fibrillation probably was from alcohol use, the coronapathy from alcohol use. And one of the things that I tell people as I tell the story, is that when you’re in the hospital and someone asks you, how many drinks a day do you have? And I said to the cardiologist I have, I don’t know, two or three. And he said, are those doubles or triples? And I said, I don’t know, maybe. So you’re probably 10 to 15. And I said “Wow, that’s pretty good, probably pretty close.”

Jeff Ryberg 6:00
And as you drink over the years, you just get used to 10 to 15. That sounds like a lot, but over the course of a night, you know, you just kind of is what it is. So I think atrial fibrillation led to my situation that I’m in, or I was in over the years, and since it’s been two and a half years, I haven’t had any more atrial fibulation. I’m down about 40 pounds. I have a glass of wine here and there, or, you know, but it’s not more than half one or one here and there. So it’s there’s no alcohol. I’m a designated driver now, which never would have happened about three years ago.

Jeff Ryberg 6:46
I can promise you that, but I think that’s what led to it. And I think as the more people I talk to, and the more things I read online, and the cardiologist, multiple cardiologists I’ve had have all said the same thing, one of the things that was interesting was the I tested positive for the gene for cardiomyopathy. My dad had it, and so they thought that I would never really come out of the cardiopathy woods. As far as a heart was weakened. And I maybe jump ahead too much here, but as is, the years have gone on.

Jeff Ryberg 7:21
My cardiomyopathy is in full remission. I don’t have any issues with my heart any longer. It’s back to beating at 50% – 55% I don’t have any of the blood blood pressure medicine, blood thinners, all of that has been moved to the side for at least for right now, but I think it’s a matter of making the right decisions, eating correctly, losing the weight, cutting out the alcohol, like I said, making good decisions. But to answer your question, the AFib is probably was there for a lot, much longer time than I thought.

Bill Gasiamis 7:59
The war was behind the excessive drinking of alcohol? Was there a reason for it? Is it something that you just always did, kept doing? Was it to change your the way you felt, or what was behind it?

Jeff Ryberg 8:18
Yeah, I think it was self-medicating for anxiety issues, I think. I’m a salesperson for a long, long time, for 30 years, and so a high functioning alcoholic is what I would probably call myself, and most of my people I do stuff with, is it just alcoholic. Sounds like a different person, but a functioning alcoholic means you drink a lot and you’re able to perform. And I think a lot of it, you just get stressed out, so you just pour alcohol on it to help, you know, your situation that you’re in. And that’s kind of that was that for a long, long time, 30 years, probably.

Bill Gasiamis 8:53
Just take the edge off. Feels like it takes the edge off.

Jeff Ryberg 9:00
Yeah, I just, I don’t take a lot of medicine. Obviously, as you hear my story, as I slowly weaned myself off of medicine, I just not a big fan of how I felt on some of medicines. And so same with, you know, taking pills to calm myself down, that’s not really what I did. So I would just pour booze on it, have a couple drinks. Things are great, but that’s not the way to go. Obviously, that had a huge effect on my life and it, you know, change the way you view, you know, getting a second chance is a big deal.

Bill Gasiamis 9:35
Let’s take a moment to reflect on what Jeff has shared so far from a hidden heart condition and years of heavy drinking to a sudden stroke that changed everything. This experience is a reminder of how quickly things can unravel and how powerfully they can rebuild. If this podcast has brought you hope or helped you feel understood, one way you can support it is by listening through. The ads, it may seem like a small gesture, but it helps cover production costs and allows me to keep sharing stories like Jeff’s.

Bill Gasiamis 10:08
And if you want to go even further, consider joining us on Patreon, at patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. Your support helps bring these conversations to those who need them most, especially in those early, uncertain days of recovery. Now let’s get back to Jeff’s story and hear how he transformed his life after stroke, one intentional step at a time when I’ve spoken to other people who have had have been alcoholics and have drank excessively and try to give up a couple of times.

Bill Gasiamis 10:42
One of the challenges they have is that they’ll go through the process of slowing down the amount of alcohol they drink, but then these emotions come to the surface that they’ve never dealt with before, and that often makes it difficult for the alcohol consumption to stop, because then that was the whole reason they were drinking. And they don’t have a strategy to deal with the emotional side of not drinking alcohol, the stuff that’s coming up that they’ve repressed suppressed for years.

Bill Gasiamis 11:13
Because they just didn’t realize that one of the things they were going to need to do was seek counsel, seek a counselor and get some support. Like that. Did you in your 30 years, had ever been something that came into your awareness that I should stop this, and then you’ve put some steps in place to stop but then found yourself drinking again?

Jeff Ryberg 11:36
No, I think I just always thought I could control it. I thought I could just kind of work myself through the situation. So counseling was had been married before, so the counseling did wasn’t for my drinking. I think people would always say “Hey, you drink too much.” And then he just kind of dismiss it like it’s not a big deal. But when you have kids, my daughter is 20 and a couple years she came to me and said “Hey” she sat in my office and said “Could you please, please stop drinking? Please stop doing this. I don’t want to go through this again.”

Jeff Ryberg 12:07
So when you you put in a situation like that, and you’re afraid, I think people that in my situation, and I would tell anybody that’s listening, is that when you’re afraid, you’ll stop drinking. And when you get really get afraid to have another stroke or multiple strokes, or you’re in that situation, you will stop, and you should stop. And that’s what happened to me, is, I think if this didn’t happen to me, Bill, if I didn’t, it saved my life. And people say, you hear quite a bit, is it?

Jeff Ryberg 12:36
It probably saved my life, because I probably would still be drinking right now, you and I wouldn’t probably be talking. I That’s a Friday afternoon. I’d probably be at some place having a couple cocktails and but I think the what happened to me was I got a helmet check and someone said “Hey, we need to pay attention to what’s important to you.” And what’s important is the people around you, your son that was in a room with you, your daughter that said, Please, and your other son. I mean, there’s, there’s so many signals and signs that people just ignore.

Jeff Ryberg 13:03
And one of the messages I wanted to say was, I want to get to the people before they get to my situation. How do I get to someone to say, hey, look, you were you given opportunities, and this is one, I got another one. This is another chance. And it’s an interesting because, you know, some of the people you try to talk to don’t get it. They hear you talking, they’re not listening to you. And I think my message is to get to those people, or my plan is to those folks, and I’m listening.

Bill Gasiamis 13:35
It’s a good thing to do. Are you on YouTube, by any chance, have you been commenting on my videos recently?

Jeff Ryberg 13:46
No, I haven’t been. You know, what I had, yeah, I don’t know I was on there. We looked at them. I watched, we were, I was taking, we’re have a place over in Eastern Washington, and we were taking a drive, and we were listening to a couple of them. There was one of them that was about alcohol that we listen to, and I don’t know if my fiance commented on it or not she may have.

Bill Gasiamis 14:06
There’s a comment by somebody on one of my videos. What stroke survivors wish they knew is what the video is called, and what it is is about a 9 minute video. And I asked the whole bunch of stroke survivors what they wish they knew about stroke, what when they were going through it that they were never told. Anyhow, the person who commented was WordsmithWorks3541, I don’t know if it’s you or not.

Jeff Ryberg 14:33
No.

Bill Gasiamis 14:33
Okay, but have a listen to this comment. This is I just read it five minutes before we sat down to record this. And now have a listen to what they’re saying “Prior to my stroke.” Okay, this is definitely not you “A drug an alcohol abuser. I had a horrible diet, was a fat load, and was losing my family, while I understand what Bill is saying about losing the old you. So I’m talking about letting go of that old person prior to stroke, and kind of evolving it and changing it turn it into a more improved version, while that person understands what I’m saying about that…

Bill Gasiamis 15:09
The old me.” he says “Caused my stroke, but ironically, my stroke saved my life. I don’t miss the old me that said I was overcome with crushing guilt about what I did to myself and my family three years later, and things are lighter and light years better. Thank God.” So, unbelievable.

Jeff Ryberg 15:35
Yeah, that’s, that is a message that I think you don’t get until it happens to you and just the absolute miracle of how it happened. It could’ve happened, if you think about it, what if I wasn’t in the hospital? What if wasn’t in my son, what if the specialist wasn’t there to do a thrown back to me, which is extremely rare, to do it anyways, to do two of them, and come out of with very little or no side effects. I, Bill, when I woke up in the recovery, they had said I had a stroke. And I said, I don’t have, I didn’t have a stroke.

Jeff Ryberg 16:17
And they said, you did. And they kept making me smile, and they kept asking what time it is and can you know what date it is? And luckily, there was a clock right behind the nurse’s head. Every time she’d asked me, was super easy, so I’d say, yeah, it’s June 23 at whenever.

Jeff Ryberg 16:30
So I was cheating, but I didn’t even know how to stroke, and I had gone to the neurologist two months later, and they wanted to check me out. And the lady said “Hey, here’s, let me show you your brain on the scan.” I said “Great, and she was here where the damage is.” And I said “What damage? I don’t have any damage.”

Jeff Ryberg 16:49
And she said “Right here, this white stuff, right here, is the damage from your stroke, and to that, to this.” I mean, I didn’t have no idea. I had no idea had gone three months after in recovery, I mean, I was fine. I mean, I on occasion, a couple little things here and there. But for the most part, I got extremely lucky to come out of this way did in the hospital for a week, six days, a few days in an intensive care.

Jeff Ryberg 17:15
But to come out the way I did, you know, was extremely, extremely, extremely lucky. Yeah, a miracle, if you want to call that. But yeah, it was, I can’t, it’s hard to describe.

Bill Gasiamis 17:33
So the heart condition, the genetic predisposition for cardiomyopathy, and then that has settled down, though. So it was an issue has settled down. Has your heart function improved increased? Is that what you’re talking about a little earlier?

Jeff Ryberg 17:53
Yeah, yes, it is. I don’t have any AFib symptoms or cardiomyopathy symptoms. It had completely gone to remission, the X-Rays, or the MRI, I did after the fact I see that the cardiologist once a year, I won’t see him until probably June. So my three anniversary is June 22 and it’s interesting too. As I go, do the all the reading I do online, which is too much, too much research. You know, stroke survivors aren’t supposed to live this long it could. I mean, it depends what you read. We’re not going to make it three years, whatever, but I spent too much time doing that.

Jeff Ryberg 18:31
And then that stress myself out. And then my thing is not knowing specifically what happened. I think we know what happened to me. I think we know that drinking probably caused this. Maybe it was a virus, maybe it was all these things, but not knowing is the hardest part. I say to my friends all the time, if you had broken your leg and you had to go in and get a cast, you knew that you broke your leg.

Jeff Ryberg 18:50
But when we have a stroke, when you had yours, I had mine, I don’t know exactly what caused it, so I don’t every time I go and get a sniffle or I sneeze, I’m like “Oh, is this going to be another stroke.” So that’s hard part. And do it research, research on.

Bill Gasiamis 19:07
Yeah, the common thing of what they call a cryptogenic stroke, a stroke that occurred that people don’t understand what the cause was, is “will it happen again? Why did it happen? Is this another stroke? Etcetera.” and what it requires is a little bit of vigilance, not over vigilance, but vigilance so that you do take the necessary steps to get yourself to hospital, to get yourself checked out, even if it’s a false alarm, because I had three bleeds from the same blood vessel.

Bill Gasiamis 19:41
And that means I went to hospital three times in two and a half years where it was definitely bleeding, but in amongst that time, I went about another 10 or more times where it definitely wasn’t bleeding, but we thought that it was. And it’s like, what am I going to do? I’m not going to die wondering. I’m definitely going to get myself to a medical professional where my history is, where they know who I am. And I’m going to go there and I’m going to say “Sorry, guys. I know I’m back again, but this thing in my head hasn’t been resolved. And, yeah, it might be bleeding again today…

Bill Gasiamis 20:25
And I think this is best place for me. You need to do a scan on my head.” And that was it, that would do the scan, and we would work it out, and I think it’s like, it’s appropriate to be vigilant in this scenario, and to think about, is this going to mean that, etc, get to know your body, understand what it’s like, get some feedback from medical professional, a scan, whatever, to ease your concern and to prove that that wasn’t a situation you needed to worry about. And then go about, get back to going about your life now.

Bill Gasiamis 20:59
You’ve made some massive steps, all the things that you’ve done, lost weight, stopped drinking, etc, that has significantly decreased your risk of stroke, like dramatically, the numbers are unbelievably in your favor. Now your cardiomyopathy has settled. That’s because the there’s no inflammation from the alcohol that causes inflammation in the body, let alone in an organ that’s susceptible to it, right?

Bill Gasiamis 21:28
Because you have a genetic condition, so that’s amazing. So everything you’re doing is on the right track now with the alcohol, I wonder, did you have a did you go cold turkey? Did you slowly stop decreasing it? How did that go? What was it like to experience that?

Jeff Ryberg 21:47
Well, so I quit cold turkey. They had me on a watch. That guy’s gonna have seizures from quit drinking at the time. For someone like me, I just stopped. And I didn’t drink for a year and a half or two years before, I had a sip of some anything, and it was fine. I had no problem with stopping it. Didn’t make me have any kind of nothing. I didn’t sweat, didn’t have any issues like that. So I was blessed to not have any issues that came up with that. But I think just the the fear of the unknown and my the doctor that I had my dad had as well.

Jeff Ryberg 22:25
I had him as had the same doctor, and he had said to me, and I can see him saying, If you drink again, you’re going to die of a stroke or another heart failure if you drink again. So this is a specialist, one of the top guys, and so I didn’t, because I was afraid and I didn’t I wanted to stop, I wanted to change my life. And I think, yeah, most people will fall back off the wagon and get back on a drink again. That’s just not going to happen. It’s one of those things where, like I said “I will have a half a sip of this or that.” And it’s almost like I’m in the game.

Jeff Ryberg 22:59
I get a pinch hit, or I get a pinch run, and that just makes me feeling so part of the team, and that’s it for me, and that’s fine. That’s all I need. And that’s rare as well, where most people that are card carrying a members, they’re not going to be able to, you know, have just the one sip and call it good. But, you know, great. I mean, I do have that ability.

Bill Gasiamis 22:59
Did you replace it with something? So a lot of people will say to me, when they’ve quit something that they were will call it addicted to, or they have a tendency for addictions, that kind of stuff. They replaced it, like with ridiculous gym sessions, and they went to the gym 15 times the first week, etc. Well, how did you go?

Jeff Ryberg 23:43
But, man, that’s so funny, I said that. So, I love to gamble a little bit. So when you start to pick up other habits, I don’t gamble a lot, but we have, you know, a little gambling ground here, so I love doing that. But impulsively, I found that after the stroke, man, if I want to buy it, I’m going to buy it, or if I see something, I’m on it. If I want to, you know, my ability to slow down, my those kind of things, have just gone in the ditch. And so my kids and everyone thinks it’s so funny. All the clothes, I gotta buy new stuff.

Jeff Ryberg 24:17
So we just start buying stuff, or gambling or whatever I’m going to do. So it absolutely 100% I gave up booze for other things, but it’s all fun stuff. It’s nothing that’s going to cause me troubles. One of the things I thought was interesting was that I know about you, but when people say all time”Hey, you look fine, that you don’t have any issues. Got nothing wrong with you.” but at the end of the day, man, I get tired at 10 o’clock, 9 o’clock, I’m when I’m done, I’m done, or if I go, I don’t know about you, you go to the mall.

Jeff Ryberg 24:51
And it’s just, there’s just, like, there’s a million lights going off, and you’re like “Where in the hell right?” It’s just, and you’re not, you’re normal, but you’re not. And so you try to put on this facade that, hey, everything’s great, but at the end of the day, you’re kind of like, Hey, I’m still not, I’m not bad in 1000 right now, I’m in, I’m trying, but it’s taken a lot more, you know, effort than it used to. Yeah, that’s not, you’re the same way.

Bill Gasiamis 25:17
Yeah, they’re very common stroke symptoms, right. So afterwards, fatigue, over stimulation, the lighting, fluorescent lighting in malls, etc, just completely change the way that your brain experiences that, and the noise, the people, just all the stuff going on. It’s a lot for your because it all happens through your eyes. There’s a lot for your eyes to process and then your brain to deal with when it’s also trying to heal from the injury that it experienced from the two clots that went into your brain, right?

Bill Gasiamis 25:52
So that’s what that is, and the fatigue is telling you, like you said, when you’re done, you’re done. That’s how I am. Like, it doesn’t matter what’s on the to do this. It doesn’t matter how urgent they are. There is just a time in the day when I hit the wall, I’ve hit the wall, and there’s no going over it, under it, around it, there’s just stopping at the wall and relaxing and doing whatever I have to do, and then reassessing the next day, and gathering myself, and then getting the tasks done that was supposed to be done the day before, in the new day.

Bill Gasiamis 26:28
And then moving on and just playing that game again and see where it end up at the end of the night, I have nights where eight o’clock in the evening I am completely gone and I need to be in bed. And then I have nights where I can go till, well, I don’t feel like sleeping until 11:30 or 12 o’clock in night. And it, I don’t really know, I can’t predict it. So just go with the flow. The hardest part about going to bed late is, if I don’t get enough sleep during the night, is waking up and being a little bit groggy.

Bill Gasiamis 26:59
My left leg is, you know, struggles to wake up. It takes a bit longer to wake up. My left arm, same thing. So that’s the only risk that I have, is the next day, is if I have a late night after feeling energetic, I pay for it the following day. So there’s no, yeah, you can’t interest there’s no balance. It’s just like you have a certain number of hours of energy, you might sneak another one in on today, but you’re not going to have that tomorrow.

Jeff Ryberg 27:34
That is identical. That is exactly my left side saying it would. It takes a while to get it going, but once I get rolling, but I’ll shut down at dinner if we’re at I was some friends at 9 o’clock, or I can go to 11 or 12 and I’m not tired. Same kind of deal. So it’s interesting that you’re have that same was yours on the right side or left side?

Bill Gasiamis 27:53
Mine was right side.

Jeff Ryberg 27:55
Yeah, same, yeah. The bigger one was on the right for me. But my that was had prowess on the left. So, when I had the stroke, my left side was paralyzed, and then when it came out, it was gone, which is, I can’t, it’s unusual. I was watching the Jamie Fox special. If you’ve seen that.

Bill Gasiamis 28:21
Haven’t seen special. He had some kind of a stroke, yeah.

Jeff Ryberg 28:24
Yeah, that’s interesting one. So I watched that, and his was very similar toward the end where he was saying something about he didn’t realize he had one. There’s no way he had one. I didn’t, you know, it’s similar to my situation, where I was like “There’s no way I had one there.” You can’t tell you had one, but his, it’s an interesting to hear him talk about his situation. Yeah, very, very similar to yours as well.

Bill Gasiamis 28:50
So what happened with work? How did you navigate that? Was there a stop work? Was there a transition back?

Jeff Ryberg 29:00
Well, so again, I’m probably unique. I probably took about a week off from work, which, knowing what I know now, I probably would have taken a lot more, but my job is very important to me, and I don’t take a lot of time off. But so for that’s why, when I went back into to the neurologist and said there’s damage. I was like, I don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s I don’t know what you and there’s no damage.

Jeff Ryberg 29:26
But sure enough, there definitely is. And so it was about a week, maybe a week and a half, and I was still kind of doing emails. I was in the hospital, I didn’t work at all, technically, probably two weeks overall. But that was it, that was about it. And then I’m back on the kept me busy, but I think maybe that’s what helped my brain keep going and stimulating, whatever it was. But it was, yeah, unusual, very unusual, to have that kind of surgery, and I’m just bounce right back. I said just was strange.

Bill Gasiamis 30:01
When you got back to work, were you full time? Back to normal routine, the whole time?.

Jeff Ryberg 30:08
Full time, yeah, I work. I get to work from home. So that helped a lot. So my customer, I didn’t go see for a while, but for most time, I was just working from home and making phone calls, and no one really would know the difference. I think my work knew I was had a stroke, but, yeah, there was no special, you know, help on that side. Just jump right back in. And I think again, that probably helped me mentally to just prepare that I was going to be fine. But that didn’t take me to probably a year later.

Jeff Ryberg 30:42
I kind of realized as I read through what had happened to me how serious this was. I mean, even when I go back now that some of the reports on my charts weren’t there until like, six months ago, and then your heart rate’s about 50 when you’re reading it, and by the time you’re done, it’s about 100 you got, holy crap. That’s what happened to me. That’s where I was, right. That’s the program that was going on. And the, you know, having two sides and the doctor, all the things that were going on was a lot, and it’s eye opening. That’s when I kind of got more involved.

Jeff Ryberg 31:13
I do a couple of stroke groups a month, which I didn’t think was going to be for me. And my fiance said “Jeff, I think this would be good for you to go and talk to these people.” But I think it’s interesting that I didn’t know how much I could help them or how much they could help me, but at the end of the day, it is amazing the give and take on both sides, how much they help me and how much I’d like to help them.

Jeff Ryberg 31:37
And just listen to their stories. And what’s, you know, all the things that they’ve done. So it’s been, again, it’s one of those things where it changed. It changed my life. I wouldn’t be getting to meet the people I get to meet with. And, you know, it’s a treat.

Jeff Ryberg 32:14
Silver lining.

Jeff Ryberg 31:55
Yeah, one of the things I wanted to share how much more time we got, but I wanted to, want to show, I wanted to share one, other one of these, I like to say a miracle. I wasn’t sure why it happened, but I was at a football game, and this guy came. I was sitting kind of by myself in this huge stadium, and this guy came walking up the bleachers and not up to stepped up the bleachers, and he sat down right next to me, and he said “How you doing?” I said “Great.” And he said “You know, these teams?” I said “Yeah, this my neighbor’s son plays for one of the teams.”

Jeff Ryberg 32:31
And turned out he was a pastor at a local community or somewhere around their town. And we talked about, you know, our kids. And I say, I learned my lesson about, you know, calming down, I had a medical issue. And he said, I know you did. And he said, I know you were given a second chance to make an impact. And I don’t know who this guy was, I’ve never met him before my life. And he said, You’re given a second chance to make an impact. And I, we talked another few minutes. He got up and left, and he came back, and he put his hand.

Jeff Ryberg 32:31
He said “I just want you to know you need to make an impact.” And he left. So my thing that I would want to share is that something, someone wants me to do something and reach to people to say, you can do this, if I can do it, and I can recover and I can get through with very little or no effects to this, and you can quit drinking, and you just be a better person. As far as the thing, the choice that you make, anybody can do it. And so anyway, I thought I shared that with you and those listening. I think it’s a miracle. It really is.

Bill Gasiamis 33:38
It’s just, my head can’t wrap itself around that type of a situation. You go and you sit down somewhere, like it’s almost random, and you’ve been through all this stuff, and then there’s this person, and then they say these words that you’ve never heard another human being in your life say to you, and they seem to have an insight into your soul that they just possibly can’t and then they just lay down some wisdom on you. And then they just get up and they just disappear like it’s.

Jeff Ryberg 34:11
Well, he, you know, he sent me a, I think, on my phone. He wanted to send me something to read. If you don’t mind, I can just take a minute to read this. But I think it’s important that somebody that doesn’t know me, that just came and tracked me down and sat next to me, could have said, anyway, there was nobody around me for 50 feet. But he found me out, sat down next to me and dropped this on me so somebody was trying to get my attention. And he said it says “A life that matters is ready or not someday it will all come to an end…

Jeff Ryberg 34:48
There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, no hours or days. All things you collected are whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else. Your wealth, fame and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance. It will not matter, what you owned or what you’re owed, your grudges, your resentments, frustrations, jealousness, will finally disappear. So to where your hopes, ambitions, plans to do this will expire. The wins and losses and once seemed important will fade away. It won’t matter where you came from…

Jeff Ryberg 35:17
It won’t matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant, even in your gender, your skin color or your will be irrelevant. So what will matter? What will matter is that, not that, not what you brought, but what you built, not what you got, but what you gave. What will matter will not be your success, but your significance. What will matter is not what you learned but what you taught. What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage or sacrifice that enriched, empowered, encourage others to emulate your example. What will matter is not your competence but your character…

Jeff Ryberg 35:49
What will matter is not how many people you knew, but how many people felt the lasting loss when you’re gone. What will matter is not your memories, but what memories that the one, but will the memories that live on for those who loved you, what will matter is not how long you’ll be remembered, but for what living a life that matters doesn’t happen by accident.” Now this is what I was believing in before this person sat down next to me, but to hear somebody send that to me just randomly is, is not by accident.

Jeff Ryberg 36:22
And I was raised religious, and I believe in a lot of things, but when things like that happen is, I think, almost miracle type stuff that got my attention, and that’s why I’m here and one of my friends from the stroke group. Scott said, Hey, Jeff, this unit and Bill would hit it off. And I think this is where you need to get your message out to so.

Bill Gasiamis 36:48
I agree, I agree 100% I love hearing that story. Let me lay something down your way as well. Let me give you another bit of an insight. So you’ve heard of post traumatic stress disorder. We all have, most people know that what it is, it comes from many different events in life. What’s traumatic for one person may not be traumatic for another, but we hear about it, spoken with veterans a lot, but it doesn’t. You don’t have to have been a veteran to experience post traumatic growth. It could be just anything that you experience trauma from, right?

Bill Gasiamis 37:23
So anyway, there’s these two guys around the late 1990s doing some work in the United States, a guy called Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun. They’re researchers, and they are into psychology and all that kind of stuff. And they coined a term called Post Traumatic Growth. So post traumatic growth. And post traumatic growth is something that people experience at the same time that they may be experiencing PTSD post traumatic stress disorder, and it happens together and in and then not one is not separate from the other. They kind of coexist.

Bill Gasiamis 38:04
And post traumatic growth occurs after a PTSD type event, like a really dramatic event, a stroke, what you saw on the battlefield, a car collision, anything like that. Doesn’t matter what it is. And these are the things in for people to be experiencing post traumatic growth, they have to kind of tick the boxes in these five domains, and those five domains are, number one, tell me if you tick these a new appreciation for life.

Jeff Ryberg 38:33
Yep, 100%

Bill Gasiamis 38:36
Stronger, more meaningful connections with people, increased empathy and greater sense of compassion, even towards those who have gone through something, some similar struggles. In other words, the way you relate to others has improved.

Jeff Ryberg 38:51
Absolutely 100% Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis 38:52
Tick 2 out of 2, then personal strength, a recognition of inner resilience and the realization that one can endure more than previously thought. Leading to increased confidence in handling future challenges.

Jeff Ryberg 39:07
100% Yeah, absolutely.

Bill Gasiamis 39:09
Tick 3 out of 3. Number Four new possibilities, the discovery of new paths, interests or life directions that may not have been considered before the traumatic event, such as career change, personal projects or advocacy work.

Jeff Ryberg 39:25
And 100% Yeah, absolutely, it’s just crazy.

Bill Gasiamis 39:29
4 out of 4. The final one, the fifth domain of post traumatic growth, spiritual or existential change, a deepened spiritual connection or a shift in beliefs about meaning and purpose in life, which may or may not be tied to religious faith.

Jeff Ryberg 39:45
Yeah, 100% Yeah. All of them, without a doubt, it’s, I don’t wish anybody to have a stroke, but to be able to get a the opportunity to appreciate. The things that I didn’t probably before that was right in front of you. I like to call it a helmet check, and I got a couple of them, pretty good ones, and someone wants me to get a second chance at doing something, and I will not waste it.

Bill Gasiamis 40:15
Yeah.

Jeff Ryberg 40:17
It’s definitely, yeah. Definitely changed.

Bill Gasiamis 40:25
And tell me about the family unit there, who lives at your place?

Jeff Ryberg 40:29
Yes, yeah, I’ve got three, three kids, two boys and a girl, the two older ones, 34, almost 34 and 31 and then daughter’s 20, and she’s graduating this year from college. So, yeah, it’s just my fiance and her two kids live here, and then my other ones kind of live outside the house.

Bill Gasiamis 41:00
Was your fiance on the scene back then a couple of years ago, when all that was happening was she around? Did she know the old version of you?

Jeff Ryberg 41:09
Yeah, it’s funny. So definitely, she’s a NICU nurse. So she’s used to take care of the little babies, which is perfect for me. I worked out fantastic. So she knew. I mean, she just had me, you know, called 911 quickly, and she knows that there’s something different that she kind of goes through and says, he’s especially, we’ve got to leave and go someplace. She’s the first ones, hey, let’s, you know, get you out of here. I know you’re tired or whatever. So she’s picked up on a lot of those things.

Jeff Ryberg 41:37
I’m a really bad patient. I’ll be honest with it, she would if she was here to tell you that I don’t, I don’t take good direction, I don’t take medicine very well. I don’t, I don’t follow the rules very well on some of those things. But I think maybe that’s helped me survive this thing, right as I kind of do it my own way, a little bit. But yeah, she’s been there every step of the way, and I’m absolute another blessing, another absolute blessing that I had the her to be there to help me get through this, because it’s not easy for the caregivers.

Jeff Ryberg 42:05
I gotta tell you, as I watch some of the other folks, that they’re just as into it like we are. I mean, we had the we had the experience, but they’re experiencing it with us. And I’m not sure which one’s harder, because she’s gotta put up with a lot traveling, having to go someplace, we miss out a lot of things, because it’s difficult to kind of do the some of those things that I used to do, but we’re getting there. It’s a process. I got the opportunity I work a couple times a week, and that helps we do that together, and keeps the, you know, activity going, and, yeah, very, very fortunate.

Jeff Ryberg 42:38
So the quality of life my home life is, is very lucky to have that as well. A lot of folks helping me. And when I told people I was going to do this, they’re waiting to get to see it, or figure out how to watch it, or whatever. So there’s, there’ll be a cast of 1000, I think, trying to see what this looks like.

Bill Gasiamis 42:56
When you when you were drinking, were you drinking alone, or did you have a team of people that you did the drinking with?

Jeff Ryberg 43:03
Kind of both, I think towards more towards the end, I was probably by myself, and a lot of people would say, I don’t drink alone, but I had no problem with that. I think particularly towards the end and you stop, I wouldn’t even count. I’d count to 10 or 12. Just mix a drink with vodka, and I would just sit there, and I was fine. I just would, I was never really drunk.

Jeff Ryberg 43:24
Most people would say that never saw me drink so much, I was drunk. But I would definitely in both situations with my friends, you know, we’d like to go to the watch the games and do whatever, but mostly it was kind of a combination of both, unfortunately.

Bill Gasiamis 43:41
With your friends. What’s that like now? A lot of stroke survivors who have stopped drinking struggle with reconnecting with friends, because the whole premise around the friendship was, let’s go and have a drink, or let’s go and get drunk, or and now that person who doesn’t drink anymore, it makes it uncomfortable just because they say they don’t drink alcohol, for the rest of the people that drink alcohol, and it changes the dynamic. How did you find the dynamic with your friends change or stay the same?

Jeff Ryberg 44:13
Yeah, they’re all been pretty good to me. It’s more me than it is that side of it. They have all been very help. They wouldn’t let me have drinks. So even if I wanted to go have a bunch of drinks, they would take it away from me. They don’t push it on me. No one saying, hey, let’s have a couple. And they get it. They want me to be around. But I think for me to go to a bar, unless they’ve got gambling there, then I’ll go and I have fun with that. But now it’s hard, I mean, I got about two hours in me.

Jeff Ryberg 44:40
Most football games are three hours, so it’s hard for me to go there and sit there for three hours as they’re drinking pitcher after pitcher. And I’m the one watching how much they drink. I’m like “Oh my God, they’re going to have another one, they’re going to have another they’re going to have another beer.” And that was me. I was the one that was grabbing her to say, let’s get a couple more going. But so they’ve been great. I’ve been very lucky with that good group of friends, haven’t lost anybody as far as that.

Jeff Ryberg 45:03
I don’t go to the bars as much, I mean, because not as much fun anymore. I mean to sit there and do that, but I’ll have my soda water and lime, the place I used to go to frequently. I’ll show up now, and they’ll bring out the soda water and lime and they know that I’m not drinking. So it’s been nice. And so if I can keep the same kind of routine, I feel somewhat normal, if that makes sense.

Bill Gasiamis 45:25
You feel part of the action, but not partaking the things that are not good for you.

Jeff Ryberg 45:30
No, and, yeah, the drinking and driving that’s not an issue, which that took me a while to get used. To jump in my car and think to myself “Oh, I better be careful driving home.” But now I’m like, I’m not having any drinks, so it’s you know.

Bill Gasiamis 45:46
Would you have driven under the influence? Do you think?

Jeff Ryberg 45:48
Yeah, 100% Yeah. That’s another one that was just not a good life choice. Was very fortunate that I didn’t get myself in some trouble with that. So that was, yeah. So that is thing in the past, really. I know my friend, my friends have been very good, and my family and my kids have been very understanding and never an issue with, you know, pushing on me.

Bill Gasiamis 46:15
Yeah, you know, those online purchases that you made, is there been any regrets that you thought laid out. What did I point out for?

Jeff Ryberg 46:23
Man, it’s, you know what it is, It’s just clothes. If you go to my house, I have the same in my closet. I got, I don’t know what it is, I’m gonna have one of those. I gotta have a blue one. I gotta whatever. So my kids, like “Dude, stop buying stuff.” Man, you got more of the same clothes, they’re all blue or gray or whatever. I couldn’t wear them all, but I was an extra large. Now I’m like a medium large. I’m kind of all my clothes are too big. I look like one of my dad’s stuff.

Jeff Ryberg 46:47
So, almost 40 pounds is a lot, and most of was in my gut, if you see pictures that I mean, it was just so that, in itself, being able to be healthy and be around for my daughter to have her dad there is, you know, walking down the aisle is a big deal. I was very big deal. I guess I want to get to the people that were me three years ago and say “Hey, here’s what, here’s what it looks like.”

Jeff Ryberg 47:18
If you want to see what it looks like to have a stroke, I invite you to come to one of my groups during because not everybody is in the same position I’m in for a year in some are affected a lot more, and they’re not able to do the things that we get to do. It just, it’s a matter of just how it worked out. So if you take care of yourself now, you won’t be in that situation later. So yeah, that’s my message.

Bill Gasiamis 47:42
Yeah, prevention is the best medicine. I mean, though, if you can get through to people, to, you know, stop doing some of those behaviors, I mean, that’s the ideal scenario. That’s exactly what you want for them, but it’s not always is. Do you reckon there was any hope of anyone getting through to you in any way, shape or form, until you had like before, beforehand, if you had never had a stroke? Do you think anyone could have gotten to you and said you’re drinking too much? Or you’re doing this to yourself, or you’re making yourself unwell? Did you feel unwell?

Jeff Ryberg 48:18
Yeah, I did. Towards the end, I did. I started getting a little bit like, tired. I remember mowing the grass, and then, God, I was kind of tired. I walked up to the stairs, and I was kind of tired. And, like, that’s weird for me to be that tired. But, you know, people would sell the time, hey, you know, you need to slow down a little bit. My family would say, you know, you have another drink. Or I’d argue with my fiance or my kids. And it was always like, a little, maybe a quick trigger for but now I don’t have that as much right, more calm and relaxed, and things aren’t as big of a deal anymore.

Jeff Ryberg 48:49
But no, noone probably could have reached me. As far as making me stop drinking, I would have come up with a reason to but I go into a meetings, things like that. I haven’t done that. I haven’t done any of those things, probably should stop in but I think at the end of the day, I think I feel pretty good where I’m at unless I could help somebody else while I’m there, I would be happy to go to a meeting and talk to somebody else at why I stop.

Jeff Ryberg 49:15
I have a lot of friends that are in the summer situation that I talk to, but you know, people have to kind of find it their own way. And I don’t want to tell them, preach them about you need to quit. I just want to say, here’s your options. This is what I that’s what it looks like over here and over here. And, you know, I’ll help where I can.

Bill Gasiamis 49:34
Yeah, it is a little bit like that. I mean, I don’t think anyone could have told me to stop smoking before my strokes or drinking, or anything like that. I wasn’t drinking excessively or smoking excessively, but I was drinking doing a little bit of both. I wasn’t eating well. I was probably too stressed at work, not sleeping enough, you know, just the stock standard things that people do. And this blood vessel that. Of mine, that burst was always probably going to burst, but I didn’t make it harder for it to burst. I made it easier, you know, I created the perfect storm around it so that it can burst.

Bill Gasiamis 50:11
It’s a blood vessel that I was born with which is faulty from the beginning. It’s called the anterior venous malformation, and I just didn’t know it was there and and then after the stroke the first one, the first plate, I was like, yours, well, I don’t want to be the cause of the second one or third one or any other one, and I don’t want to not be here at 37 I definitely want to be around so I’m going to do everything I can to avoid it, even though I couldn’t avoid it.

Bill Gasiamis 50:41
Because, you know, once the genie is out of the bottle, it’s pretty hard to put it back in. And then and now, even now, like, you know, in the last probably 12 years, 13 years, maybe I’ve had 10 drinks in total, and I just can’t do it, but it makes me feel like I’m having another stroke. So there’s no point.

Jeff Ryberg 51:09
Yeah, no. I met a guy that had a stroke, and he said, he has one or two drinks, he feels like he’s a mess. And I that same with me. If I have one, it’s not the same. It’s just it’s gone. That thing of it is gone for me, it’s saying “Did you have headaches and stuff when you were having your situation?” Did you know that you’re having a…

Bill Gasiamis 51:30
I had a pretty obvious signs like my entire left side went now over a week. So it started with my big toe, and then it kind of crept up as the bleeding increased in size. It the numbness crept up from my big toe to my foot, then to my calf, then to my knee, then to my hip, then up my chest and then my entire left side. Took about seven days to get there and then, but I was ignoring it the whole seven days, other than going to the chiropractor to tell him, I think I’ve done something to my back. You need to sort out my spine.

Bill Gasiamis 52:06
And the chiropractor said “Well, there’s nothing, nothing there. You need to go to the hospital and get that checked out.” I argued with him. I didn’t want to go that Friday because we were working the next day was going to be a big day. And then I came home, my wife said, what did the chiropractor say? And I say, he said, I should go to the hospital. And she said “Well, what are you doing here?” And I said, “Well, I can’t go to the hospital. I got to work tomorrow. If I go to the hospital now at this hour, I’m not going to be out of there for hours.”

Bill Gasiamis 52:39
And anyhow, she said “Well, I’ll take you to the hospital. They’ll check you out, they’ll tell you there’s nothing wrong, and then you can go to work tomorrow.” I agreed with her. I thought that was a great idea. And then, of course, when we went there, they did a scan, and they said “Oh, there’s a shadow on your brain.” And it made complete sense when they said there’s something wrong with your brain, when they said it. But up until that time, the numbness, the last thing in my mind was that there’s something wrong in my brain.

Bill Gasiamis 53:06
Now the chiropractor didn’t say it, but he knew there was something wrong in my head, but he didn’t say those words. He just said “You should go to the hospital.” And when I went there, wow, yeah, they confirmed it, but they didn’t know what it was. They didn’t know if it was a tumor or a blood vessel or what. They had no idea because the blood was in the way, and it was not allowing the scan to pick up the issue, and it took some time to work out what the actual issue was.

Bill Gasiamis 53:36
But yeah, man, that was the start of February 2012 and that whole situation went on for about two and a half years, until November 2014 when it bled for the third time. And then they said “We’ve got to take it out. Now you need brain surgery.” There’s no getting around it, they took it out. And that can’t do anything. Since then, that’s completely gone. It cannot cause another stroke. But that hasn’t stopped me from feeling like I might be having another stroke, and I go to the hospital, I’ve still been after that.

Bill Gasiamis 54:17
Because, you have to ease your mind, and then after the surgery, because the blood vessel was about four centimeters in from the ER near the cerebellum. After the surgery, you know, by the time they get through four centimeters, couple of inches of stuff, of brain matter, you know, they’ve caused a little bit of damage, and they’ve nicked a few things, and that’s left me permanent tingling, numbness, sensitive skin weakness on my left side, so that, and tightness in the muscles, like, like they’re cramped, or like, I’ve been to the gym and worked them.

Jeff Ryberg 54:55
Interesting, yeah, I read your book. I read about my third of the way through your book. I think I did read about you kind of waited for your, have your own business, right?.

Bill Gasiamis 55:10
Yeah.

Jeff Ryberg 55:12
Yeah. I think I read that part. Yeah, that’s fascinating, that’s amazing. I wonder that’s interesting on some of the stuff that’s going on with mine as well. If I had to, maybe nick something as well, but that’s fascinating.

Bill Gasiamis 55:26
Well, thrombectomies are invasive. You know, they’re pretty serious procedures, and when people come into your brain and take stuff out, there’s always stuff residual that leaves you. That’s that they leave behind in a little bit of inflammation, a little bit of damage, a little bit of whatever. And there you’re definitely experienced post stroke symptoms and conditions. 100% you definitely are. And that’s all related to the conditions that you went through, the fact that your heart is back online, and all that kind of stuff, that should be the sign for you, right?

Bill Gasiamis 56:05
That should show you what’s possible in the in recovery, like how things improve, get better, start functioning better. It might be a bit slower in the head, but there also might be some permanent damage in the head that you can’t get around, but you can create the environment around that damage to support it so that, it’s not as big, as it’s not as impactful in a negative way. And that’s kind of what I’m doing.

Bill Gasiamis 56:33
I’m trying to support everything around that damaged area to just function as optimally as possible, so that the deficit is not the most is not playing a big role, even though it is playing a significant role. I’m curious, actually, now that I thought of it, how quickly did your condition improve after you stopped the alcohol? So with the heart condition, how quickly did that settle? Then you started to see real big improvements.

Jeff Ryberg 57:08
In my, within, like, six months. So by the time, I think, when I had the stroke in June, I went back in and November-ish, for another I did another MRI and an echo, and at that time it jumped back to 50% so I was at 15% to 20% on the left side, which is really low when I went into the hospital. And then this first time I came out, first was at 50% and now the last one was at 55% so I’m back to a 100% normal, no damage, no scarring. It was pretty bad shape going in. I remember the ambulance driver looking down at me, and she goes “Oh, that doesn’t look very good.”

Jeff Ryberg 57:53
And he’s like, No, that doesn’t look very good. I’m like “Well, hey, I can still hear you guys, what doesn’t look good down what doesn’t look good up there?” But, I knew it was in bad shape. But was interesting was that I was on such heavy heparin for the for a maxed out on it could have any more and then to even throw a couple clots after that, and a large vessel on the rights on the right side, is why he had to go get it, and for him to be there is, again, is he had up to the specialist there to be able to do that.

Bill Gasiamis 58:24
I don’t know what, heparin has made a massive role in decreasing the demo, for sure.

Jeff Ryberg 58:29
I’m sure, yeah, and so I did a good job of slowly weeding myself off of the baby aspirin I’ll take on occasion.

Bill Gasiamis 58:39
Have you done that in conjunction with your medical professionals?

Jeff Ryberg 58:42
So that was just data. So I think part of the issue, Bill, was, I had three cardiologists at a couple several neurologists, and you could ask each one would give you different answers, some would say, yes, that sounds great. This one says, no. This one says, maybe, if they’d all say the same thing, I would have taken it. But one would say, yeah, maybe take a half, or maybe don’t take any. Or so they were all very inconsistent. And so eventually got to the point where I just would listen to the one that was going to kind of go with what I liked.

Jeff Ryberg 59:16
And then it worked. And so as I got better over the year, in two years, and now I’m going to three years. I don’t take knock on. We don’t take anything right now. And so against most of the doctors would some docs would say you should be on something. Other doctors say you’re fine. If it’s not causing any issues, we’re good. So I don’t know it’s it’s one of those things where, if I got way too many doctors. I think I wish I had just had one, I guess, be honest with you.

Speaker 1 59:18
Yeah, right, they say that. I think there’s an old wise saying. And if you got one, watch, you always know what the time is. If you’ve got two, you’re never quite so sure.

Jeff Ryberg 59:54
That that’s exactly it, yeah. So, and that’s what learned as we go.

Bill Gasiamis 1:00:03
It seems like you’re working it all out slowly. You’re kind of ironing out all the crinkles and making progress moving forward. So that’s great. What’s the hardest thing about stroke for you? Do you feel is there something that you can isolate and say, well, that’s definitely the hardest part of it.

Jeff Ryberg 1:00:19
I think the hardest part is probably people just not knowing that having is not okay. You know, things are not as they look and unfortunately, likely to be back to normal and be able to do the thing they used to do all the time, which I’m about 95% there, probably 90% there, but I’m not quite there, and I’d like it just that’s the hardest part, is it what it looks like is not necessarily what it is. And I think more people I talk to, and the other thing too, probably is, I think about, is there’s not a lot of support after you have a stroke, there’s no place to go.

Jeff Ryberg 1:00:53
So when I got out, I’m like “Okay, now we’re going to setting up with the docs appointment.” They don’t, they just kind of say, good luck. I hope you make it. Things are great. Join a couple clubs, that’s it. And so one of the most recent people on my stroke group as a doctor, and she said, I don’t even know where to go. I don’t know what to do next. I had this, I’m recovering, and who do I talk to? What am I supposed to do for a follow up? There isn’t that.

Bill Gasiamis 1:01:17
Wow.

Jeff Ryberg 1:01:17
Right? So there’s not you could take anti-seizure medicine, you could take this, you take that you want to, you know, which sometimes it’s you need to take it. But I don’t. I think the hardest part is not knowing what happened and why it happened. And, you know, where do you get help at and how do you do it? What’s next? So, I mean, yeah.

Bill Gasiamis 1:01:39
We’ve spoken about a lot of “Aha” moments or things that you’ve come into your awareness, etc. Is there one thing you can pinpoint that stroke taught you?

Jeff Ryberg 1:01:52
Yeah. Taught me just kind of slow down a little bit. And I think everything was always at the mock speed, right? I gotta do it faster, quicker, better. I gotta, you know, how much money can you make? How you know, how fast can you do this? And at this point, I’m like, I’m looking to ready to retire massively and do different things and slow down. And hopefully have some grandkids at some point that I’m able to do stuff with.

Jeff Ryberg 1:02:14
And so those are the kind of things that I wasn’t really thinking about as much as I do now. Now it’s, you know, definitely change, 100% change in life, or save my life for sure. That’s definitely a is a gift and not a gift, if that makes sense.

Bill Gasiamis 1:02:30
Yeah, absolutely. Is there a little bit of insight, wisdom, advice that you want to sort of give the people listening, who are like you and me being through a similar situation? You know, and tuning in for maybe some I don’t know, something that might not have contemplated or considered before.

Jeff Ryberg 1:02:58
I think biggest thing is, you know, listen to your body for sure. And listen to slow down a little bit and enjoy the little things in life that you probably didn’t. It sounds cliche, and everyone’s going to say “Yeah, yeah, for sure.” That would have been me three years ago. God, I said, sure. But in the day, I’m just like you. I’m just a normal old guy that just happened to, you know, have a stroke that loves his family, loves his kids.

Jeff Ryberg 1:03:25
And I want you know, I would say, if you want to be around to enjoy them, you know, smile a little bit and listen to your body, because your body’s going to tell you “I knew. I knew what I was doing was causing some issues, and it didn’t slow down until it’s too late.” So that’s what I would do.

Bill Gasiamis 1:03:44
Fair enough.

Jeff Ryberg 1:03:45
Don’t get a second chance like we do. I mean, this was a gift, absolute gift. So, yeah.

Bill Gasiamis 1:03:51
I couldn’t agree with you more. Jeff, I really appreciate reaching out sharing your story, mate, it is a fascinating story. I wish you well on your ongoing recovery and just thanks for being my guest.

Jeff Ryberg 1:04:07
Bill, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Good talking to you.

Bill Gasiamis 1:04:10
Well, that brings us to the end of this deeply, powerful conversation with Jeff, from living with undiagnosed AFib and alcohol dependency to suffering a stroke in his son’s arms and receiving life saving thrombectomy just in time. Jeff’s story is a striking reminder that sometimes the wake up call we never wanted is the one that gives us a second chance. Jeff’s honesty about addiction and recovery and healing, both physical and emotional, is something I think many stroke survivors and their families will connect with.

Bill Gasiamis 1:04:43
His story showed that change is possible even after decades of unhealthy habits, and it’s never too late to choose a better path. If this conversation resonated with you, I’d love for you to share your thoughts. Please comment, like and subscribe on YouTube or leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, your feedback helps others find these stories right when they need them most, and remember people are discovering this podcast from their hospital beds just days after life changing diagnosis, that kind of access to support didn’t exist for me when I had my stroke.

Bill Gasiamis 1:05:22
But it does now, thanks to your continued engagement and support, if you’d like to help these episodes keep going, head over to patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke, every contribution makes a difference. Wherever you are on your journey, know this, you’re not alone, and like Jeff, your most meaningful days may still be ahead. Thanks for being here. I’ll see you in the next episode.

Intro 1:05:48
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The post Stroke at 55: Jeff Ryberg’s Story of Surviving AFib, Alcohol & a Life-Altering Wake-Up Call appeared first on Recovery After Stroke.

When Adam Moore left work on a hot day in September 2023, he had no idea his life was about to change forever. A long-time athlete and dedicated hockey player, Adam brushed off a subtle feeling that maybe—just maybe—he shouldn’t play that night’s game. But driven by team loyalty and a lifetime of showing up for others, he laced up anyway.

That evening, a seemingly minor knock to the neck during the match would lead to a carotid artery dissection—a rare and often misunderstood condition that can result in stroke. Within hours, Adam experienced vision loss, extreme fatigue, and disorientation. By morning, he was blind in both eyes, unable to stand, and in the early stages of a life-threatening stroke.

A carotid artery dissection occurs when a tear forms in the wall of the carotid artery—the major blood vessel that supplies blood to the brain. Blood can enter the tear and split the layers of the artery wall, restricting blood flow or causing clot formation. This condition is one of the leading causes of ischemic strokes in younger adults, often triggered by trauma, even if mild.

Adam’s dissection was discovered after he arrived at the hospital. Sadly, due to delayed ambulance arrival and the rural location of his home in the New Forest, he was outside the window to receive TPA (tissue plasminogen activator)—a clot-busting drug that’s most effective within 4.5 hours of symptom onset. While doctors stabilized him, the dissection had already caused extensive neurological damage.

Diagnosis of carotid artery dissection often involves ultrasound, MRI, or CT angiography. In Adam’s case, imaging confirmed the dissection and its location on the right carotid artery. Interestingly, the artery did heal on its own—but not without complication. The scar tissue left behind created a small “bulb” that increased his risk of clot formation. To manage this, Adam was placed on long-term blood thinners, a non-invasive way to prevent recurrence.

Although stenting was considered, it was ruled out due to the complexity of the case—a decision many stroke survivors can relate to when facing difficult choices about intervention and risk.

Adam spent three months in hospital, including time in rehab at facilities in Southampton and London. He was paralyzed on his left side, experienced peripheral vision loss, and later suffered seizures as a complication of the stroke. These setbacks were accompanied by personal ones too—his marriage ended due to the strain of caregiving and trauma.

And yet, in the face of all this, Adam began to rise.

With the help of a private neuro physio, Adam has regained the ability to walk (often with a stick), and he’s even resumed activities like bowling and golf with his son. His left hand remains mostly immobile, and his fatigue is intense and lingering, but Adam is determined. He’s also embraced the power of peer support, finding encouragement in the recovery journeys of others.

“The hardest bit is not knowing whether you’re going to come out of it recovered… but I just don’t think I’ll accept that I might not. I’ll just keep being positive and working towards it.”

1. Listen to Your Gut – Adam ignored his instinct that something wasn’t right. Gut-brain communication matters, especially for people living with or recovering from chronic conditions.
2. Stroke Recovery Takes Time – There’s no fixed timeline. Healing is often nonlinear, and progress may come in unexpected ways.
3. Fatigue Is Real – Post-stroke fatigue isn’t laziness; it’s neurological. Managing energy becomes part of everyday life.
4. Community Helps – Whether it’s through online groups, rehab centers, or conversations with others who’ve been there, connecting with fellow survivors can make all the difference.
5. There Is Hope – Even when things feel stuck, small wins—like standing up unaided or seeing a familiar face clearly—can build momentum.

Carotid artery dissection survival stories like Adam’s shed light on lesser-known stroke causes, especially in active adults. It’s also a reminder that even when diagnosis is delayed, recovery is still possible, and life can still be rich and full of meaning.

As more people discover the Recovery After Stroke podcast from their hospital beds, just days after diagnosis, stories like Adam’s are reaching people when they need them most. That’s the power of shared experience, lived insight, and showing up with honesty.

You are not alone.

Support is closer than you think. Recovery may not always be fast or easy, but with community, the right professionals, and your own courage, you can move toward something better—step by step.

To hear Adam’s full interview and learn more about his path to healing, tune in to the Recovery After Stroke podcast on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

Carotid artery dissection survival story inspiring stroke survivors to keep going, seek rehab, and embrace hope even in the hardest times.

Adam’s Facebook
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Highlights:

00:00 Introduction and Purpose of the Podcast
01:01 Adam Moore’s Introduction and Initial Symptoms
03:20 Sudden Stroke, from Ice Hockey to Life-Changing Moment
11:55 Carotid Artery Dissection Survivor: Regaining Sight
19:00 From Hoist to Hope: Adam’s Long Road After Stroke and Seizures
22:17 Deep Recovery: Adam’s Carotid Artery Dissection and Healing Journey
31:07 Fighting Post-Stroke Fatigue
41:48 Exploring Hyperbaric Oxygen: A High-Tech Hope for Stroke Recovery
52:09 BEFAST: The Lifesaving Acronym Every Stroke Survivor Knows
1:00:36 Hope, Uncertainty & Resilience: Adam’s Stroke Recovery Journey

Transcript:

Bill Gasiamis 0:00
Hello everyone, and welcome to Recovery After Stroke. Before we dive into today’s inspiring conversation, I want to thank you for being a part of this incredible community, whether you’re a stroke survivor, a caregiver or somebody looking to understand the recovery journey more deeply, your presence here means a lot more and more people are now finding this podcast while they’re still in hospital, just days after being diagnosed with stroke.

Bill Gasiamis 0:27
And that is exactly what I set out to achieve when I began this podcast back in 2015 to shorten the time between stroke and finding support from others who truly understand this wasn’t possible back then for me, but now it is, and it’s happening because of every single guest who has shared their story, every listener who’s left a comment, a review or even just press play, your support makes that reach possible, and with your help, we can keep expanding it.

Bill Gasiamis 1:01
If you believe in what we’re doing here and want to help cover the cost of production so we can keep bringing these important stories to the people who need them the most. Please consider becoming a Patreon. At patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. Now, I’m honored to introduce today’s guest, Adam Moore. Adam is a stroke survivor whose life changed dramatically after a carotid artery dissection following a hockey game. What began as a normal day ended with sudden vision loss, seizures and an entirely new reality.

Bill Gasiamis 1:35
In this episode, Adam shares what it’s like navigating post stroke fatigue, dealing with uncertainty, managing his recovery and staying hopeful. As a father and former business owner, his story is raw, honest and full of insights that I know will resonate with many of you. Let’s dive in. Adam Moore. Welcome to the podcast.

Adam Moore 1:56
Thank you, Bill.

Bill Gasiamis 1:57
My pleasure. So the light is a bit of an issue for you, and hence this is going to be a little bit darker. This recording the overhead light can bother you, and it’s on at the moment, but you try to avoid lights. Tell me a little bit about that.

Adam Moore 2:18
Yeah, so after the straight after the stroke? Well, when the stroke happened, I was actually blind in one eye to start with, and then I lost that sight in both eyes. But then the following morning, I woke up and could see again, thank goodness. But after that, it just seemed I had to wear sunglasses all the time or an eye mask, because I just couldn’t look at any lights at all. It was really, really affected.

Bill Gasiamis 2:44
What kind of stroke did you have?

Adam Moore 2:48
Ischemic.

Bill Gasiamis 2:51
Ischemic, and where was it located, if it affected both your eyes?

Adam Moore 2:56
So it’s right-hand side. It was a arthroid artery dissection, right-hand side.

Bill Gasiamis 3:17
Was it the carotid artery?

Adam Moore 3:18
Carotid artery, that’s right, yes.

Bill Gasiamis 3:20
How did the dissection occurred? Do you are you aware of an injury or anything that you sustained?

Adam Moore 3:25
Yes, so it was back in September 2023 it was a normal day at work, it was the hottest day of the year. Quite busy day at work. No different to normal, but I play ice hockey and roll hockey. I have come for over bit 30 old years, and I had a hockey game scheduled for that evening, and I came home from work that night, and I had a sort of gut feeling I wasn’t sure if I should be playing that night. And I said to my wife, my son, I’m not sure if I really want to go tonight. And they both looked at me and said “Well, that’s not like you. You always want to play.” And I do, I loved playing.

Adam Moore 4:16
And they said, you can’t let your teammates down. And which is another good point, and I, you know, bit of a team player, so yeah, and I didn’t really think it was a good sort of, well, it’s not really good way of teaching your son either, is it? Today’s teammates down. So I went, and I should have listened to my gut, really, because I shouldn’t have gone. I went and, it was a very roll hockey, and ice hockey is a very physical game. It’s full contact, it’s great game, don’t get me wrong, it’s very exciting, but I took it was full on.

Adam Moore 4:57
I took a knock to the neck, which I didn’t think ended of Bill, because it wasn’t like a trauma at all. It was just a slight knock. I carried on playing the game, and I started to see some sort of, like, almost orbs in my eyesight. But I was given it my everything I could do in work and life and sports, and I carried on playing, just thought I’d over exerted myself, like you do when you exercise and you start to see, sort of starts in your eyes. Even managed to score a goal, finished the game, had a bit of banter with the lads in the change room.

Adam Moore 5:43
Got showered, changed, jumped in my van, put all my kit away, and and the kit bags are huge with all that gear in it. I was giving my friend lift home. It was about an hour and 20, an hour and 30 minutes home drive. And on the drive home again, my eyes, the street lights were sort of Halo in, and the other car lights were Halo in, and that’s the only thing that I could think. This is a bit strange, I’m not happy about this. There was no other, nothing else. You know, I showered, I could carry everything, there was nothing. Was like, none of my limbs were not working.

Adam Moore 6:25
I wasn’t falling over or anything. Drove all the way home, dropped my friend off. I must admit, by then, I was actually thinking, I’m not sure if I should drive. Perhaps I should get him to drop me home. But I did drive, I drove. I drove really, really carefully home, drove into my own driveway, pulled up, got out of the van, didn’t fall out of the van, got out of the van, locked it up, walked into my house, walked up the stairs, got to my bedroom, and my wife was awake, and she said, “You okay?” I said “No, I don’t feel very well. My eyes just don’t feel right.”

Adam Moore 7:05
And, you know, our wives are sometimes have paracetamol in a glass of water, they think, seems to sort everything. So she gave me that, and I got into bed, and I fell asleep for, well, what was literally a minute or so, and I couldn’t see out of one eye. Just lost the vision completely. And then I fell asleep again for another five minutes, and woke up, couldn’t see a thing out of both eyes. And that was really scary. Really, really scary. Managed to get to the bathroom, sat on the toilet, went to get off the toilet, and then collapsed, and that’s when she realized that I was having a stroke.

Adam Moore 7:59
I’d not known about strokes and so or she, so we were kind of a little bit sort of blase about it all, but she phoned an ambulance, and they sort of confirmed, I think I’d had a little bit of sort of slurred speech by then, but the fact I couldn’t stand up, and I was quite a strong person, and I was doing my damnedest to try and get up, and I could not get up.

Adam Moore 8:26
The ambulance took a long time to get out to me. I ended up going to Southampton General Hospital, but it because of the distance of where I was playing the game and the amount of time the ambulance took to get to me. We live quite out in the New Forest, which is quite out in the sticks. And I was well out of the TPA time, unfortunately. And I was begging them to give you the TPA shop, but they said they could do more harm than good, so we can’t, we really can’t give you it. Yeah, like they say, time, more time, more damage.

Bill Gasiamis 9:05
Yeah, your gut instinct, that’s an interesting thing. I’ve experienced that before.

Bill Gasiamis 9:05
I know, yeah, I’ve heard you talk about the brain gut, or the gut brain?

Bill Gasiamis 9:21
The gut brain, yeah.

Adam Moore 9:22
And to be honest, Bill, I’ve had it before. I had a holiday in the Maldives before, and I was poorly then, and had a fall and concussed myself. And at the airport at Heathrow before we flew out, I had the same gut feeling that I shouldn’t be going. And we had horrific time out there as well. So yeah, there’s some of the safer I think there it is.

Bill Gasiamis 9:48
Let’s take a moment here to reflect on Adam’s story so far from Carotid Artery Dissection to life altering recovery, his experience reminds us of how suddenly life can change and our strength can emerge even in the most unexpected places. If this podcast has been meaningful to you, one simple way to support it is by not skipping the ads. It may seem small, but it genuinely helps offset production costs and allows me to keep bringing you more episodes like this one, and for those of you who’d like to go further, please consider joining us on patreon at patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke.

Bill Gasiamis 10:27
Your support helps ensure these stories keep reaching those who need them most right from the very beginning of their recovery. Now, let’s get back to Adam’s story and hear how he’s continuing to push forward in the face of so many challenges it, there is definitely something to say with for it.

Bill Gasiamis 10:45
Do you think maybe, well, you can’t. It’s also you can’t really say until the thing that you thought you shouldn’t be doing turned bad, like it’s such a difficult thing to get your head around, rise your head that’s trying to make sense of this sensation, or this feeling, or this feedback that you’re getting from your gut, and then it only turns to shit when it’s turned to shit.

Adam Moore 11:14
Yes, you kind of right.

Bill Gasiamis 11:16
Yeah, and then you kind of go “I should have listened to my gut.” But like, how do you do that? How do you actually do that? And what would you have done, not played, sat on the sidelines, missed the game. You wouldn’t have had the neck injury, and then you wouldn’t have had a stroke, and then you would have known, how would you have known that it was the right decision to stay?

Adam Moore 11:41
Wouldn’t, I could have had a car question the way, crash on the way up there, they’ve never know you’re here.

Bill Gasiamis 11:45
Yeah. So it’s just bizarre and strange. How long did you spend in hospital, and then what were you dealing with?

Adam Moore 11:54
Three months.

Carotid Artery Dissection Survivor: Regaining Sight

Bill Gasiamis 11:55
Three months?

Adam Moore 11:55
Yes, three months. I was in Southampton general, and then I went to Limington. We which is a hospital in New Forest, which is very nice. And then I ended up in a rehab ward in a place called Snowden in Southampton. But then I realized I had private health care, so I ended up going to a very, very good hospital in London, where I was up there for a good three weeks, and I managed to get home before Christmas at 2023.

Bill Gasiamis 12:29
What kind of deficits were you being rehabilitated to overcome?

Adam Moore 12:34
Well, I lost all my left side, really. Luckily, my speech wasn’t lost because it’s my right side.

Adam Moore 12:43
My speech was fine. My eyesight, as I say, was affected peripheral vision, and I’ve lost a bit of normal sort of this bit my right eyes bit blurry. I can see Bill, but I can’t see as well as I used to. But, saying that, you know, I’m not blind. I was blind that night. I couldn’t see a thing. And I got a train up the other day to London to go to Queen Square up a limb, which I’m on their on their books at the moment, for treatment.

Adam Moore 13:15
And there was a chap that was, he must have been 70, 80, on the train with me, and he was completely blind with a with a cane, walk into a white cane, and I just thought, wow, you know, he’s completely blind, and he’s getting the train up on his own, you know, I can see. I can actually see. Yes, I can’t see as well, but I can see. So there’s always someone you know, worse.

Bill Gasiamis 13:38
Yeah, and but getting on with business as well. Get, you know, supposedly worse, according to you, and then getting on with business. Know what they’re going to do? Just sit in the house, and, I don’t know, wait for the years to go by. What about your left side? What’s it like now? How does it feel?

Adam Moore 13:56
Well, I see a private physio, that’s a neuro physio who’s amazing, he’s got me on my feet. I walk with a walking stick, but I can walk without it as well. Just not I’m building up a stamina, to be honest, to walk further without it. I would like to get I used to run, I loved running. I used to be very, very active. Got my own business. So yes, I really want to get back to some sort of a good recovery, and I will push myself as much as I can to do that. I’ve got an 11 year old boy, so yeah, I’ve got to recover, and I will take time, but I’m going to push and push and push.

Bill Gasiamis 14:42
What line of work have you been?

Adam Moore 14:45
So it’s car repairs, body work on cars. I don’t know if you’ve heard of a dent man, you’ve got a nice new if you’ve got a nice new car and someone opens their door and puts a ding in it, I come along and just massage there. Now, you know, you never know who’s there.

Bill Gasiamis 15:02
That’s magic, that’s magician work there, mate, I love that.

Adam Moore 15:06
Yeah, I really miss it as well. I loved my job. Absolutely loved it, it’s a real good craft.

Bill Gasiamis 15:13
So that’s been two years you’ve been.

Adam Moore 15:16
Well, almost two years in September.

Bill Gasiamis 15:19
Yeah, that you’ve been out of action, and things are progressing. You’re finding that things are improving, but it’s been a long haul.

Adam Moore 15:30
I couldn’t move my leg, I couldn’t move my arm. I can move both now. I can’t move my fingers yet, but it’s things are progressing very slowly, but they’re progressing so some people say, you know, I’ve had physio said to me, your arms not working. Now it’ll never work, which you know is wrong. And it pushes my other physio to make it work, which is great, and pushes me as well. But I’m quite a determined, positive person.

Adam Moore 16:04
So and even my eyesight, you know, I’ve had people say it’s nerve damage. It’s never going to come back once nerve damage is done, and it might not, but it also might. People have also said that people’s eyesight have improved over time.

Bill Gasiamis 16:16
So, yeah, you’re in a really early stage of recovery, and I don’t know anything about your condition. I’m not a doctor, so this is not medical advice or anything like that, but there is definitely a possibility to hold on to hope. And I’m not sure how much that moves people who hear it, you know there is hope, I don’t know. I get it, but you’re only about 18 months in, and then there’s a lot to go. Like so much, there’s areas in the brain that are still inflamed, that are getting better and healthier.

Bill Gasiamis 16:50
Inflammation is continuing to decrease more and more things will come online, and yes, with rehabilitation and you’re going after it, that’s also supporting the potential for a recovery, and then your you’ve got sounds like your neuro physio is the right guy, the right person on the side.

Adam Moore 17:15
And he said to me the other he said to me the other day, which made me feel great. He said, you’re still recovering. Yeah, he said “You’re still recovering. You’re making improvements. Still you’re not you’re not plate age, you’re still recovering. So you just got be patient.” And I’m not patient, that’s the problem. No one is these days in this world, we’re all so impatient. We just want everything now.

Bill Gasiamis 17:38
Yeah, and yet you have most likely put in the hard yards in another one of your pursuits before where you had no choice but to be patient, even though maybe psychologically your head was going, let’s get this done, or let’s get this sorted. You have to go through the motions of whatever you know the steps are to get to the particular place that you want to get, like playing the sport that you’re playing at 47 you don’t become that. You don’t have that capability without doing lots of training, lots of all these things going to get on on the field and to be there with your teammates.

Bill Gasiamis 18:17
You have to go through a process. And patience is not and patience must is inherent, like it is part of the whole business, and so is this when you look back and reflect, you’ll see that that was probably the best skill for you to learn. The patience, the less time you focus on. Why hasn’t this happened yet? And the more you time you focus on, let me do everything I can to make it happen, the more your progress will continue and improve. And it’s just about being able to then reflect back since 2023 and go “Okay, look how far I’ve already come.”

Adam Moore 19:00
Yeah, I was hoisted out of bed to the loo, and everything I felt, you know, when you see a bit of meat on a hook, you know, butchers, that’s how I felt. I felt absolutely horrendous, it really, I did just feel awful. And I remember saying to my parents, all I want to do is get to the toilet and back on my own, I just want to do that. I don’t want to be moved around on a bloody hoist, it was awful. But the stroke was quite bad, so I ended up with quite a lot of scar tissue, and I ended up having seizures after that, and that was horrendous. Anyone that has seizures after a stroke.

Adam Moore 19:41
You just got a feel for him, because it was just well, my wife left me because of it, because she couldn’t cope with looking after me through it. Because, if you know, it really was, well, my son and her family gray in bed right, had a seizure and stopped breathing, they thought they’d lost me, so it freaked them both out. But thankfully, the medication has balanced now, but that’s taken months to balance that out. It wasn’t a quick fix in that it had to be done out of over such a long period of time, taking you off one drug and getting you onto another.

Bill Gasiamis 20:22
So you’re dealing with stroke, you’re dealing with seizures, and then your wife, your relationship ending.

Adam Moore 20:32
Yep, yep.

Bill Gasiamis 20:35
It’s a lot for one person to go through a short amount of time.

Adam Moore 20:41
Yeah, it’s been horrendous, yeah.

Bill Gasiamis 20:44
Are you living on your own now?

Adam Moore 20:47
No, I live with my parents. Well, they’ve been living with me because of the seizures. I’ve not been living my own now. Now the seizures seem to have stopped, thought it will be, I’ve got the right house, and I’ve got things in things in line where I’ve got a full line and contact lines and stuff like that. Okay, so I need people, so, yeah, things are looking up, but it’s just taken so long, like everything, but stroke is just, so such a long, drawn out.

Bill Gasiamis 21:21
You know, they’ve certainly not like smashing your toe on the coffee table and then being okay a day later. It’s definitely not like that. And you’ve had heaps of injuries, I imagine, in the sport that you play. So you know, you have a sense of, Well, I’ve got to be sideline for a few weeks, and then things will heal, and then I’ll recover, and go back to it.

Adam Moore 21:43
Although played, I played full contact games for over 30 years. To be honest, I’d met until the stroke. I’d never been in hospital. I’d been very, very lucky, very fit and healthy. Yeah, no underlying health issues. So yeah, I have been quite lucky up until but I don’t consider myself lucky at all now, you know, none of it’s lucky, lucky to be alive, yeah, but that’s it.

Bill Gasiamis 22:11
Lucky to have your vision.

Adam Moore 22:13
Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis 22:17
There’s a bit of luck there. I know that it’s not the kind of situation you want to find yourself in, and then, kind of, like, it’s terrible, like, the the hit on the neck, it like it’s a such a precision hit to get the particular outcome that it got. I mean, that’s ridiculous, that’s just.

Adam Moore 22:37
Well, I didn’t realize how deep the cartoid artery is, it’s not on the surface, it’s quite deep, because I always worried about even, like, sleeping on it, or, like, I don’t know, just even leaning your head over on it, whether it would upset it, because I was told I couldn’t have any deep tissue massages this side or anything.

Bill Gasiamis 23:00
Yeah, fair enough.

Adam Moore 23:01
We’ll see a chiropractor. But they said “No, it’s quite deep. You you’d have to do something, and then you’d have to have another trauma or something like that.” Because you hear about people having, like, I don’t know.

Bill Gasiamis 23:11
Like neck manipulations and having their lottery damage.

Adam Moore 23:16
Yeah, or even that head bed thing for me.

Bill Gasiamis 23:20
Yeah, going to the hairdresser, absolutely, or experiencing whiplash even a low-speed vehicle collision.

Adam Moore 23:34
The other thing as well, is the dissected artery did heal, believe or not. It healed, but it also healed, and rather than just a straight line heal, okay, it healed with a little sort of bulb in it. So they put me on blood thinners, and they worried that if I came off blood thinners, it might catch something in the bulb. I don’t understand why they didn’t put a stent in it, but they didn’t, I don’t know why. They said it wouldn’t have helped but.

Bill Gasiamis 24:04
Yeah, I suppose the stents another level of complication that then gets added to your medical causal clot. And then also, you know, they’ve gotta get it in there, and when you’re in the position that you’re in, you know, probably the less intervention, the better, and the fact that it’s healed is great, but yes, exactly that little lump can create a change in the blood flow and create a low pressure, a little bit of low pressure in the artery, and as a result of that, cause a clot, and then send it up, so build up.

Bill Gasiamis 24:36
So blood thinners are probably the best way to manage that, because it’s a smaller intervention, and it’s something that you can do for a very long time, although it’s not ideal, it’s a really good outcome. And the fact that they didn’t have to go in and do anything to your artery, I think that’s about.

Adam Moore 24:55
I mean, I’ve met so many people. I’ve got to a lot of support groups, different strokes headway. I’ve met some great people on forums as well. Some of the people in the rehab places that had craniotomies, amazing people. And, you know, I’ve they’ve kept in contact. I’ve seen them and they don’t even know they’ve had anything done. And I saw them when they had first had it done. You know, it’s amazing what they’ve, what they can do.

Bill Gasiamis 25:30
The medical world is phenomenal. I mean, look, I don’t know, maybe 50 years ago, you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation if these things good to us, you know, like.

Adam Moore 25:42
But also the people, I mean, these people that had, it’s a dent, a dent in the head, it was, and you could see how much it was affecting their confidence. Yeah, it was almost like a bit of skin covering their brain, up, you know it was, and you could see how it was affecting them. And then I saw him, same guy that I was in rehab with him months later, and the smile on his face because he was back to normal, it was just magical to see that. So nice to see it. Yeah, I still see him now. It’s brilliant, it’s so good.

Bill Gasiamis 26:22
The head, without the skull, without half a skull, is bizarre to me that they even concocted that theory, and they made it happen and proved to be successful, and then put it back in it’s just the whole thing is just mind boggling. I can’t wrap my head around. And I love that there’s idea that that is a thing that they can do that allow the brain to expand or swell or whatever it’s doing at that time, and then give it all the space to do what it needs to do.

Bill Gasiamis 26:59
And then reattach it and protect it again. It’s great, yeah, and the people doing that work, just think about the people doing that work this, the stuff you have to be made of to be able to actually perform that procedure.

Adam Moore 27:18
Yeah, that’s the worst headache, when my brain was swelling, it was just, I remember saying, I want an ice pack. I want an ice pack. I just could not get enough of them. I had family bringing in frozen peas to put on my head, could not get enough of them.

Bill Gasiamis 27:37
It’s crazy, and have those settled down now.

Adam Moore 27:41
Don’t get them till now. It was literally the first 24 hours. First 24 hours was just, it’s when your brain’s just in shock and swollen. It’s just too big for your skull, it was just awful. And they were they were close, they were close to sort of opening mine up to release the pressure. But luckily, it did start to go down after a while.

Bill Gasiamis 28:06
Right, how do you get about your day now? What do you get up to? How does your day sort of look?

Adam Moore 28:16
Well, I struggle with fatigue. Fatigue is my biggest deficit, huge. I can sleep fine, I sleep all night, but it’s getting out. It’s getting up in the mornings, I just cannot wake up, I have to peel myself out of bed. I’ll even have a cold shower, and I still can’t wake up. I don’t this is really a problem for me, fatigue. I used to bounce out of bed. I wouldn’t even drink alcohol when I went out before the stroke, because I’d hate to wait waste a day not being being hungover and not doing anything. But, you know, I just cannot get up now. It is so annoying.

Adam Moore 28:16
Is it that you’re not waking up, or you’re still tired? You need to sleep. What is it specifically, do you know?

Adam Moore 29:11
Yeah, I just can’t seem to wake up, yeah? I just, I could just stay in bed all day, tired, not as in being lazy, just tired.

Bill Gasiamis 29:21
I know fatigue. Yeah, completely different, neurologically tired, and then what do you think they consist of? Are you still doing regular visits to rehab? How do you get through this?

Adam Moore 29:37
Yeah, I go twice a week to my private rehab.

Bill Gasiamis 29:41
For an hour each time.

Adam Moore 29:43
Yes, which can be exhausting as well, but I push myself to do that. I was in a wheelchair Bill, so I’m out of that now. And you know, tonight, I’ve been bowl tending, bowling with my son. I mean, how cool is that?

Bill Gasiamis 30:01
That’s cool, okay.

Adam Moore 30:03
And Thursday, I was down the driving range hitting golf course.

Bill Gasiamis 30:08
So okay, that’s great, man.

Adam Moore 30:11
I love that I be able to do something like that, which reminds me that I can do stuff, you know, I still could do it makes me feel normal doing stuff like that.

Bill Gasiamis 30:21
But rest and recovery is a massive part of your day, which, I know now you’re conscious about it, where before it was just kicking back, perhaps sitting on the couch, having a snooze and then being fine the next morning. But whereas now it’s like a thing that you have to actually navigate.

Adam Moore 30:39
Yeah, it annoys me that I can’t get up and even go out and wash the car or do stuff like that. Yeah, I miss work. I miss doing practical I was very practical person, and I just can’t do it at the moment. And it really gets to me.

Bill Gasiamis 31:02
So, you’re, it’s productivity, like you, you want to be more productive.

Adam Moore 31:07
Yeah, even doing stuff around the house, you know, DIY, clean, whatever, I just can’t do it at the moment. You know, lucky I’ve got my parents to do help me.

Bill Gasiamis 31:20
It will improve as your physical recovery improved, all this other recovery is also going to kick in and start helping and working with the fatigue.

Adam Moore 31:31
Improves, because that’s the biggest down up for me at the moment, is the fatigue.

Bill Gasiamis 31:35
The fatigue was a big thing for me for a good probably couple of years, and then afterwards, it was on and off, causing me a little bit of grief. Where, if I went and rode my bike on a Saturday morning, which I did then, that was only 20 kilometers, which, you know, might take, I don’t know, an hour and a half, two hours with a rest in between. And because it wasn’t like a full on ride, it was just a leisurely ride, yeah, but when I’d get back, the rest of my day would be gone.

Bill Gasiamis 32:15
Wiped out, completely wiped out, spending from the morning till probably the evening recovering from that to be ready by the end of the day to potentially go to dinner or catch up with some friends or see somebody. And that I started to notice that my time of recovery shortened, so the amount of time I needed to recuperate after that bike ride shortened and ensured and short, and then it’s at that point where, now, you know, from a 20 kilometer bike ride, which is nothing I could recover, I’d be sort of refreshed after about an hour and a half. But it took ages, it took years to get to that.

Adam Moore 32:59
The thing is, you don’t want it to stop you doing things, because you’ve got to recover after doing things. Yeah, you want to push yourself, but sometimes it bites you in the backside then.

Bill Gasiamis 33:09
Yeah, for a while. So, but then I planned my day differently, right? So I planned, well, I’m going for a bike ride today, which means I need to have nothing booked in for the rest of the day. And that was worth it, because I knew what I was I was wasn’t going to miss out on my bike ride, and I wasn’t going to have to be anywhere else and suffer through that. So it worked well. And then a few times, when we went to parties where we had, like, family events or friends birthdays or something, I knew I was going to be wrecked the next day.

Bill Gasiamis 33:38
So there’d be nothing on the next day. We’d be like, can you get to our birth? Can you get to the birthday? Saturday night, yeah, we’ll be there. We’ll probably leave a bit earlier than most other people, and that was great. But Sunday, there was just no plans, there was a write off. We’re doing nothing, and then if by some chance I felt up to it, on Sunday afternoon, I might be up and about and do some stuff. So we kind of planned the recovery as part of the event that we needed to do so that we never missed out on anything.

Adam Moore 34:10
Yeah. That’s what I try and do, almost, yeah.

Bill Gasiamis 34:14
It worked for us. Your work, did you have to let go of all your clients and tell them that you’re not available and they need to go elsewhere?

Adam Moore 34:26
It’s difficult. I’ve got a very good business partner. We had two businesses running, so he took one and I had the other, and we I’m very lucky. I’ve got an employee who’s very good, and he still works for me, so he’s ticking over the clients. At the moment, I’d love to get back to it, that’s my goal, to get back to it, whether it’s going out with him and helping him or just going out with him and seeing the clients and just, you know. I don’t know, making life bit easier for him to get more done or, you know, but I just don’t know. It’s, this is the thing.

Adam Moore 35:13
You don’t know how well you’re going to recover. No one will put their head on the block and go Adam in 10 years, you’ll be fine. No, they just won’t do it. So, if you can think as positively as possible, but I just don’t know, yeah.

Bill Gasiamis 35:29
If you put a couple of days aside, one day to do, to sit in this in the passenger seat with your employee, and just drive around, and then the next day to recover when the time’s right, that might be kind of a good way to just sort of give yourself the space to do the amount of recovery that you need to do, knowing that it might be really draining being at work for a day, even as just a accomplice.

Adam Moore 36:02
Yeah, it’s annoying, though, because without being big headed, I was bloody good at my job, and I’ve got my clients phoning me up saying “AV have you recovered? Are you coming back to work yet?” I wish I could, they’re like “Come on, get back on your tools.”

Bill Gasiamis 36:21
We had the same thing, I had look it took. We have painting companies, so it’s a little bit more physical. You know, there’s a lot more physical work for everybody that’s involved, sometimes on multiple story buildings and all sorts of different things. So I had to outsource all my work to other contractors, and then just keep the contact with my client and then manage the work. I didn’t do work for many, many years, and it took me to get back to business.

Bill Gasiamis 36:53
Took me until 2019, so seven years to properly get back to business, where I was on site every day, where I could manage being on site every day and being physical for a full day. So in that seven years leading up to that, I was intermittently in and out of that business, attending to different jobs, etc. But because of my lack of consistency in my being able to turn up and my ability to work, there was a lot of clients that kind of just fizzled off and and went elsewhere, which is completely makes sense.

Adam Moore 37:14
It’s well, it’s not you doing the job. Is you sat at your hands, but I built it up nothing, and it breaks my heart. That it could be at risk. I hope it’s not. But you work hard all your life, and then it’s almost like, I describe it to people, was like, you work your whole life, putting stuff together, getting your dream, this, dream that, and then it’s like someone chucking a grenade into it, just exploding overnight, overnight, just bang. It’s gone. That’s, how I describe it anyway.

Bill Gasiamis 38:10
Are you joining?

Adam Moore 38:12
No, because of the epilepsy, because of the seizures, I can’t I’ve got to go a year without one, which is say it seems to be under control now, but, yeah, I’d love driving. I used to drive every day.

Bill Gasiamis 38:27
And then a medical professional will give you the will sign you off? How will that work?

Adam Moore 38:37
Yeah, you have to have a year without a seizure, and then I think you apply to DVLA. I think you have to take a test, but my vision is going to be the biggest problem. I think whether my vision, my field vision, will be sufficient enough to get the license back.

Bill Gasiamis 38:56
Were you wearing glasses before the injury?

Adam Moore 39:00
Yeah, yeah.

Bill Gasiamis 39:03
For reading that those types of purposes? Was it short sightedness or It’s just from reading really. Did they adjust your script at all for the condition that you have you have now? Or does it not help?

Adam Moore 39:15
No, it’s more peripheral loss, really, than the prescription side of things. I mean, I’ve looked into, I’ve contacted a place up in London. There’s a place in Germany called Savior, or Sable. They do like they do treatment for regenerating the blood flow to your damaged nerves. So I’m looking into stuff to see if there is any way you can treat it, I don’t know.

Bill Gasiamis 39:43
Is that a hyperbaric oxygen therapy thing or something?

Adam Moore 39:45
No, it’s not to do with hyperbaric it’s sort of still blood, blood flow to the nerves, damage.

Bill Gasiamis 39:55
Yeah, there seems to be a lot of things that you can access if you cut the capable.

Adam Moore 40:00
That’s the other thing, I spoke to an optician, they said, there’s so much. They said, don’t be too damn hard, because there’s so much going on with stem cells with the eyes as well. In years to come, they could be able to do something with stem cells. So, that’s changing every year. It’s just developing and developing.

Bill Gasiamis 40:17
So, yeah, hyperbaric seems to be something that it’s doing good work or seeing good results at the moment for people, but it’s hard to access because it’s really expensive in the type of protocols that they’re saying need to be, that you need to do that seems to be really difficult to access.

Adam Moore 40:43
Is there a time? Is there a time window? Should it be done from like early, early days?

Bill Gasiamis 40:47
No, there isn’t. What seems to be the situation is, is that particular guys that I interviewed from Aviv clinics? They’ve got a clinic. They’re going in Tel Aviv, they’ve got one in Dubai, I think they’ve got one in Florida. Basically, what they do is they determine whether or not you have areas in your brain, which they call penumbras. They’re areas that are under duress, but still alive.

Bill Gasiamis 41:22
They’re perhaps not fully on board at the moment, and what they aim to do is rehabilitate those numbers of the brain, those supposed perhaps like sleepy or offline neurons, by increasing blood flow and oxygenation through hypoxic events.

Adam Moore 41:48
Am I right in thinking that that would be, they would look at you to see if they could help you before they treat you?

Bill Gasiamis 41:55
Correct, yeah, but they do the full assessment, and then once they’ve done the assessment, they’ll see on their MRIs or whether or not there’s areas worth rehabilitating. So you don’t do it blindly. You don’t just go there, hope for the best and see what. And hyperbaric oxygen theory therapy, for people like me who don’t understand the science behind it, it’s actually quite interesting situation. So what they do is they put you in the chamber, and they increase the oxygen level in the chamber so your body is getting a larger volume of oxygen, like than it would normally get.

Bill Gasiamis 42:35
I don’t know what the numbers are. And then what happens is they trick the brain into thinking that it’s going into a hypoxic state, a state where it doesn’t have enough oxygen, simply by changing the atmosphere in the chamber to normal external atmosphere. And then brain thinks that it’s losing the oxygen and then it causes a biological response that somehow stimulates a particular hormone or therapy or something.

Bill Gasiamis 43:10
It stimulates something in the brain that enables for blood flow and healing and new blood vessels to form around the penumbra and potentially, kind of reactivate it with more blood flow and more oxygen, etc.

Adam Moore 43:27
Okay, what sort of money we talking about?

Bill Gasiamis 43:31
They’re talking about 50 grand US for a two month, I think a two month protocol, which is five days a week where you’re doing you’re in a chamber, hyperbaric oxygen chamber that’s actually looks like a room, so you walk into it, you sit down, there might be a number of people in there, and then, because they’ve scanned your brain, and they know where the damage is, what they do is they try and get you to do exercises and particular tasks that will light up that part of the brain while you are in the chamber.

Bill Gasiamis 44:04
So they’re firing that part of the brain, they’re increasing the oxygen and then creating the hypo, the fake hypoxic event, and then, at the same time, what they’re hoping to do is that rewires and creates new neurons in that space, new blood vessels, increases the blood flow, the oxygenation, and it’s all happening while you’re basically just sitting in chair or standing up, or whatever they need you to do to activate that part of the brain.

Adam Moore 44:36
And is that something in this country, or is that broad look?

Bill Gasiamis 44:39
I’ve interviewed the guys that were in that part of the world. That’s not to say that they’re the only guys, but there’s two interviews that I’ve done on hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and they just they go through it in a lot of detail, in the interviews, especially in the first one, I’ll have those links in the show notes, and then I’ll send you the links to those videos. It’s really amazing, actually. While I’m on here and people are listening, I may as well just go and find it and tell people which episodes they are so they can definitely find it.

Bill Gasiamis 45:16
So it’s a really fascinating thing. And I’ve had some stroke survivors who I’ve interviewed, who have gone to their local beauty parlor and access the hyperbaric chamber the local beauty parlor and done an hour in the hyperbaric chamber. I wouldn’t recommend it in this particular scenario, because of the fact that you need to know, you need to be monitored.

Bill Gasiamis 45:50
Your medical condition is needs to be taken seriously, but, it’s starting to become more accessible. Is basically what I’m trying to say. Now, episode 334 was the most recent one with Dr. Shai Efrati. So 334 you’ll find that on YouTube, Spotify, iTunes, and all that kind of stuff. And then there was another one that I did earlier, which was episode 250 hyperbaric oxygen therapy with Dr. Amir Hadanny, both from the same organization, one from Tel Aviv, one from Florida, and then they go through in a fair amount of detail what the therapy achieves. So worth a listen.

Adam Moore 46:47
I might have listened to him already, but I will go back. I will go back definitely, yeah, because my eyesight is my biggest worry, if it can help that I would be really interested.

Bill Gasiamis 46:56
For sure, they’ll probably be able to it might give you some insights. And look, there might be a opportunity to find somebody more locally, or in a in a country closer or something. Yeah, you look like you’re starting to get tired now.

Adam Moore 47:16
It’s been long, every day is tiring.

Bill Gasiamis 47:20
What time is it there now?

Adam Moore 47:25
It’s 5mins to 11pm.

Bill Gasiamis 47:28
Are usually in bed by now?

Adam Moore 47:30
Yeah, yeah.

Bill Gasiamis 47:34
How far beyond your bedtime have you gone?

Adam Moore 47:40
I usually go to bed by about 8 o’clock, to be honest.

Bill Gasiamis 47:44
Yeah, well, I’m glad you stayed up, but at the same time, I would have been happy to make some changes to our schedule to make sure we got you in bed on time.

Adam Moore 47:54
No, I was definitely going to stay up for you, that’s for sure.

Bill Gasiamis 48:00
So it’s been 18 months, things are improving. You wish they were improving a little bit quicker? Things getting better?

Adam Moore 48:08
Yeah, it would never be quick enough.

Bill Gasiamis 48:09
I appreciate that. Sport, your teammates and that, have you gone and seen them play or hung out with them at all?

Adam Moore 48:19
I haven’t gone back, I don’t watch. I’ve always played, I hate watching. I will definitely skate again. I don’t think I’ll play hockey again, but I skating is one thing I loved, and I’ll be back on a pair of skates. Definitely, whether it be I skates or roller skates, even when I was in hospital, I felt like if, if someone put a pair of skates on me, I reckon I could skate. I know I can’t walk, but I could skate. I could skate better than I could walk when I was younger.

Bill Gasiamis 48:58
Yeah, something to look forward to your son, definitely. Was he 11 then? Or is he 11 now?

Adam Moore 49:05
He’s 11 now, he’s 10 when it happened.

Bill Gasiamis 49:09
Does he have any kind of idea of what’s going on? Or do you know if he’s have you guys chatted about it? Where’s he at with it?

Adam Moore 49:23
He’s amazing, really, he’s so resilient. Can be prouder really. There was a lot of books and stuff we got from the stroke people for him to read when it happened. Someone, I love side of stroke and stuff like that, some really good stuff. Yeah, something we will talk about later on. But, yeah, it’s been a big life changing thing for everyone. And the biggest thing, when I woke up and when I was in the rehab. I just I was more sad, not serious, sad about myself, but I just didn’t want him or my wife to miss out on their life because of me, to be honest.

Adam Moore 50:12
Because, you know, okay, I’m not going to be able to have much of a life at them at the moment, but I just didn’t want them to miss out on holidays and things and him growing up, and he won’t, I’ll make sure he won’t. But yeah, It just that was my biggest concern, to be honest.

Bill Gasiamis 50:30
And the relationship ended amicably by the sound of things.

Adam Moore 50:36
And I want to see as much as I can and my son, so we’ll keep it that way. You know, we went together, the three of us bowling tonight. So, yeah, okay, so if we can do stuff like that and I see him more, then yes, and it was great.

Bill Gasiamis 50:57
Yeah, that’s a blessing as well. Did you consider your mortality? Did you go to that place? Are you the type of guy that contemplates these types of things before the stroke, perhaps, and is it different now after the stroke?

Adam Moore 51:21
Never really thought about it before, but yeah, of course now, yeah. You always worry about having another one, but I’m definitely a more educated person in it now. I mean that that night, if I’d have thought about my vision changes, I would have driven straight to the hospital. But you know, the BE FAST. You know, everyone talks about the BE FAST, but the vision, most of the people that I speak to, the vision wasn’t one of the signs, but it is one of the signs.

Bill Gasiamis 52:03
Yeah. How big can you make the acronym? That’s the issue.

Adam Moore 52:07
It is, yeah. How big can you make it.

Bill Gasiamis 52:09
An effective I know that the BE FAST tends, I hear that the BE FAST tends to cover about 80% of the people who have a stroke, and that’s kind of why they use it in Australia, we don’t use the Be, we just use the fast, F A S T, Face, Arms, Speech, Time, and the BE is used in lot of other countries overseas, but not in Australia.

Adam Moore 52:40
I don’t think the BE was used here a while back. I think it was something sort of new. It was just, yeah.

Bill Gasiamis 52:50
Perhaps that they are expanding the acronym. Maybe, they’re expanding it.

Adam Moore 52:58
The other thing I find quite hard is the fact that if someone has a stroke in a public place and they’ve got asphasia, how can they tell someone that have having a stroke if they can’t speak? You know, that must be awful. Yeah, you know, should there be some sort of sign language?

Bill Gasiamis 53:26
Well, the thing about aphasia is you may have a form of aphasia where you can’t express yourself either way. It wouldn’t matter, it’s about having awareness in the community like and that’s the hard thing, right? It’s like trying to make people aware what a stroke looks like or might look like. Okay, well, then a stroke, according to me, looks exactly like the way I look, it didn’t look at all. My stroke wasn’t FAST at all, there was no there was no balance issues, there was no eye issues, there was no face, arm, speech issues. There was nothing.

Bill Gasiamis 54:03
It was just tingling on my left side, and it didn’t stop me from doing anything. So I went to the chiropractor. Says, like, what does a stroke even look like? You can’t really determine that, but for the majority of the people, the BE FAST will cover a lot of those conditions balance. You know, there could be a million things as well. I was sick about a week ago for a couple of days, and I was dizzy. I was like, the world was spinning. Everything was spinning, and I thought I was having another stroke, which is ridiculous, because the condition that caused the mind is not there.

Bill Gasiamis 54:44
The blood vessel that was in my head that leaked, they removed, and it’s been completely resolved. But my instinct, it wasn’t my instinct, it was my anxiety said “You might be having another stroke mate.” Like, yeah, but what is this anyhow? It settled down, and it was good. In a couple of days, I was just having, like, a stomach bug or something, some impacting me.

Bill Gasiamis 55:10
So that’s the thing. Like, I’ve also spoken to a lot of stroke survivors who say they thought it was a headache, or they have migraines all the time, and they just put it down to a migraine, took something to calm the pain, and went to bed. And then there’s people who have had a stroke in bed while sleeping in the middle of the night. Yeah, it’s just the luck of the draw. It’s like, there’s no hope in trying to, like, capture all of the versions of it with heart attack.

Bill Gasiamis 55:45
There’s some signs that are pretty obvious, that are pretty universal, pain down your left side, pain in your back, you know, heaviness in the chest, all those types of things. There’s a couple of things that are very common across the board, that you can say that might be a heart attack. Let’s get into action. Let’s do something about it. But with stroke, it’s just the luck of the draw, man and hopefully, everyone who is going to have a stroke is able to receive, access help, really, really rapidly. That’s the only thing.

Adam Moore 56:26
That is one thing I have learned is get somewhere as quick as possible.

Bill Gasiamis 56:32
But your teammates might benefit from knowing about the BE FAST message, you know. So that could be something that you could teach them. And I know one of the sports where there’s a lot of stroke is Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

Adam Moore 56:47
Well, this is what I was saying about someone grabbing me around their neck. I don’t think I’d, you know, would need that now. That could be dangerous, because if it’s still weak, ask for you then yeah. And then have heard all about that. I’ve listened to the episode.

Bill Gasiamis 57:04
Guys getting choked out, getting choked out during training to practice, getting choked out. Yeah, it’s crazy. It’s insane. And yeah, so that’s the thing. Tell me, what do you reckon has been the hardest thing about stroke for you?

Adam Moore 57:24
Fatigue and Patience, the only thing I will say as well, Bill is, if anyone’s experiencing it, it’s I would give it a good year. I spent a lot of money on gadgets, physio. Trying to fix things that you have got to give it a good year patience before there’s no quick fix. You’ve got to allow time for, do you know what I’m saying.

Bill Gasiamis 58:01
Yeah, you need kind of to get through that acute phase.

Adam Moore 58:05
yes, yes, yes.

Bill Gasiamis 58:07
And let things settle and see where you’re at.

Adam Moore 58:10
I was so desperate to try and find something to get me well quicker, tried everything. I booked into other rehab, in inpatient rehab places paid lots of money. I should have just waited for six months to a year before.

Bill Gasiamis 58:28
Yeah, that’s okay, tou worked it out. So what has stroke taught you? I mean, I know patience is on the list that, like, is there been anything? Have you had an “Aha” moment? Has there been something that, like you’ve gone, okay, I get it now.

Adam Moore 58:58
No, don’t think so.

Bill Gasiamis 58:59
There’s nothing profound. That’s basically where I’m headed, like a profound lesson?

Adam Moore 59:06
No, I can’t think of any.

Bill Gasiamis 59:07
Yeah, that’s alright. What do you want to tell people who are listening? I imagine you joined the podcast to share a story. Hopefully it helps somebody motivate somebody, has somebody relate to you? They’re probably listening. What do you want to say?

Adam Moore 59:27
Just be patient. Have positive people around you that does help and seek peer support. Peer support people, for me, have been brilliant. I’ve had a lot of people that have gone through 10 years, 13 years, of stroke recovery, and they give you so much hope when you see them come out the other side of it. I know people that playing tennis, playing football. I know one lady that’s she had a stroke on a ski slope in Switzerland.

Adam Moore 1:00:08
She’s back skiing now. You know, she sends me clips of her on ski slopes, and it’s amazing, and that’s through her hard work getting back there. And it’s so nice to see people doing stuff like that, because you can do it. You can see people do it, yeah.

Bill Gasiamis 1:00:29
It’s definitely worth aiming for, you know.

Adam Moore 1:00:36
The hardest bit is not knowing whether you’re going to come out of it recovered. You know, I hope, I really do hope, my sake and my son’s sake that I do recover so that we can enjoy each other’s company and do things that we used to do. But as I say, there’s no written fact that you’re going to recover 100% again. Yes, you can put a lot of hard work into it, but no one will say, yes, you will. No, you won’t.

Adam Moore 1:01:08
That is really tough. And I don’t think I’ll accept the fact that I might not recover. I find that really hard. I’ll just keep on being positive and just.

Bill Gasiamis 1:01:25
Working towards it.

Adam Moore 1:01:26
Yes, yes.

Bill Gasiamis 1:01:29
Hey, fair enough. I really appreciate your time. Thank you for reaching out to be on the podcast and staying up way past your bedtime.

Adam Moore 1:01:39
I appreciate you giving me your time.

Bill Gasiamis 1:01:43
Yeah, you’re welcome, and I look forward to hearing from you down the track, you know, and see how things have progressed.

Adam Moore 1:01:49
Thank you, thank you.

Bill Gasiamis 1:01:52
That brings us to the end of this heartfelt episode with Adam from a split second neck injury that led to a Carotid Artery Dissection to vision loss, seizures and the slow climb through rehabilitation, Adam’s journey is a reminder of the raw truth and resilience found in stroke recovery. If this conversation resonated with you, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please, like comment and subscribe on YouTube or leave a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and remember, even just listening through the ads is a small way you can make a big difference in keeping this podcast going.

Bill Gasiamis 1:02:27
The fact that people are now discovering Recovery After Stroke in hospital, sometimes just days after their diagnosis, is the most powerful outcome I could have hoped for. That kind of early connection and support didn’t exist for me in 2012 but it does now, and it exists because of you, the listeners, the guests, and everyone who takes a moment to engage and share this movement only continues with your support.

Bill Gasiamis 1:02:53
So if you’d like to help me keep the podcast going and growing, please visit patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke, and become part of this mission to bring hope, connection and insight to stroke survivors around the world. Thanks again for tuning in, wherever you are on your recovery journey, just know you’re not alone, and your best days may still be ahead. I’ll catch you in the next episode.

Intro 1:03:17
Importantly, we present many podcasts designed to give you an insight and understanding into the experiences of other individuals, opinions and treatment protocols discussed during any podcast are the individual’s own experience, and we do not necessarily share the same opinion, nor do we recommend any treatment protocol discussed all content on this website and any linked blog podcast or video material controlled this website or content is created and produced for informational purposes only, and is largely based on the personal experience of Bill Gasiamis.

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The post Carotid Artery Dissection Nearly Took Everything – But I’m Still Standing appeared first on Recovery After Stroke.

If you’re a stroke survivor—or someone supporting one—you’ve likely come across many therapy options and recovery strategies. From traditional physiotherapy to alternative treatments, the road to recovery can be long, overwhelming, and, at times, discouraging.

But what if there was a way to wake the brain back up, even years after your stroke?

Welcome to the world of the Helius PoNS Device—a groundbreaking neurostimulation tool designed to re-engage your brain’s natural ability to heal itself.

In this post, we’re breaking down what the PoNS device is, how it works, and whether it might be the missing link in your recovery journey.

The PoNS (Portable Neuromodulation Stimulator) is a non-invasive, FDA-authorized and Health Canada-approved medical device that delivers mild electrical stimulation to the tongue. This stimulation targets the brainstem and cerebellum, the regions of the brain involved in movement, balance, and coordination.

At first glance, it may look like a futuristic headset with a small mouthpiece—but behind this simple appearance is a powerful method of neuroplasticity activation, helping stroke survivors regain control over their body in new ways.

• Non-invasive and drug-free
• Originally developed in partnership with the U.S. military
• Backed by clinical trials and years of research
• Authorized for use in Canada for stroke, TBI, and MS, with more conditions expected to be added soon

The PoNS device is worn around the neck, with a connected mouthpiece that rests on the tongue. It sends electrical impulses through the tongue to the brainstem, stimulating the cerebellum, the area responsible for motor learning and balance.

When paired with targeted physical or cognitive therapy, this stimulation enhances the brain’s ability to reorganize and form new connections—a process known as neuroplasticity.

The result? Many stroke survivors are seeing improvements in:

• Balance and gait
• Fine motor skills
• Dexterity (e.g. handwriting, typing)
• Cognitive function
• Confidence and independence

Originally developed for improving balance and gait in those with traumatic brain injury or multiple sclerosis, the PoNS device has since been shown to benefit stroke survivors in other ways too.

In a recent episode of the Recovery After Stroke Podcast, neuro-rehabilitation expert Brody Jackson from Neuro Peak Performance in Canada explained how his team uses the device in customized programs to help clients with a wide range of neurological deficits—including fine motor skills, spasticity, and even functional movement disorders.

“We’re not just treating ‘a stroke.’ We’re treating the specific limitations that person has. The PoNS helps activate the brain’s capacity to improve, no matter how long it’s been since the injury.” — Brody Jackson

Neuroplasticity is your brain’s ability to rewire itself.

Think of it this way: your brain was once a sponge, absorbing and adapting rapidly during childhood. After a stroke, that sponge becomes rigid—but the PoNS device softens it again, giving your brain the opportunity to learn and adapt like it once did.

When paired with repetition and targeted therapy, this process leads to more efficient learning of new motor patterns and regaining lost function.

Just like learning to drive or play piano, repetition is key—but the PoNS accelerates that learning by putting your brain in an optimal state for growth.

In Canada, where access is more open, patients purchase the PoNS device through clinics like Neuro Peak Performance. The device includes a collar and a mouthpiece that’s active for 14 weeks (98 days). After that, mouthpieces can be replaced if the user wants to continue therapy.

While pricing varies, the investment reflects a comprehensive therapy program, including:

• Personalized assessments
• Intensive therapy sessions (often 2–3 hours per day)
• Weekly check-ins
• Optional continued use after the initial program

For many, this is a life-changing investment—especially for those who have plateaued or feel stuck in their current rehab.

Currently, the device is most accessible in Canada, where regulatory barriers are lower. Patients from the U.S., Australia, and Europe have traveled to Canada to begin therapy without the red tape often found in their home countries.

Conditions currently supported include:

• Stroke
• Multiple Sclerosis (MS)
• Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
• Parkinson’s (off-label use, pending approval)
• Vestibular and functional disorders

In episode 200 of the Recovery After Stroke Podcast, we spoke with Cheryl Schiltz, the very first person to use this technology. After losing her inner ear function due to a medical mishap, Cheryl struggled with constant vertigo and imbalance.

Using the early prototype of what became the PoNS device, Cheryl retrained her brain—literally learning to balance through her tongue.

Today, she’s a public speaker and advocate for neuroplastic therapy, living proof of what’s possible.

Here’s what to consider before starting PoNS therapy:

• Are you currently hitting a plateau in your stroke recovery?
• Are you committed to doing daily therapy for 14+ weeks?
• Are you open to non-traditional approaches that are evidence-based?
• Can you travel to Canada (if outside the country)?
• Are you ready to invest financially and emotionally in your next recovery chapter?

If you answered yes to any of these, then PoNS may be worth looking into further.

Visit www.neuropeak.ca to learn more about clinics using the PoNS device.

Watch Episode 200 featuring Cheryl Schiltz for a real-world story of the PoNS journey.

Talk to your doctor or neurologist about whether you may be a candidate.

Explore additional recovery tools at recoveryafterstroke.com/learn

Recovery doesn’t end after the hospital stay or outpatient rehab. Whether you’re 3 months or 3 years post-stroke, the brain can continue to grow, heal, and adapt.

The Helius PoNS Device isn’t a miracle cure—but for many, it’s the missing piece in the recovery puzzle. If you’re ready to take back your independence, regain movement, and explore what’s still possible, the PoNS might be the spark that reignites your path forward.

Helius PoNS Device brings new hope to stroke survivors by rewiring the brain with neuroplastic therapy and real-world recovery results.

Neuro Peak

Highlights:

00:00 Introduction and Overview of the Podcast
03:23 Brody Jackson’s Background and Clinic Details
05:37 Explanation of the Helius PoNS Device
13:27 Kinesiology and Its Role in Rehabilitation
18:12 Helius PoNS Device: Cost and Accessibility
26:12 Therapy Program and User Experience
34:09 Brody Jackson’s Perspective on Neuroplasticity
48:39 Client Success Stories and Testimonials
50:58 Challenges and Misconceptions About the Device
1:03:55 Final Thoughts and Contact Information

Transcript:

Bill Gasiamis 0:00
Hello again, everyone, and welcome to Recovery After Stroke. Before we jump into today’s incredible interview, I wanted to share a quick update my book, The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened, has now sold over 400 copies and continues to receive amazing feedback. If you are on your own recovery journey or supporting someone, this book offers hope, insight and encouragement for finding meaning and growth after stroke, you can find it at recoveryafterstroke.com/book, or on Amazon by typing my name, Bill Gasiamis into the search bar.

Bill Gasiamis 0:39
Now let’s talk about today’s episode. If you’ve ever wondered what is possible in stroke recovery, even years after your stroke, this is the episode for you today. I’m joined by Brody Jackson, a neuro-rehabilitation expert and a kinesiologist from Neuro Peak Performance in Canada. The clinic Brody works in is one of the world’s leading providers of the Helius PoNS device, a fascinating neurostimulation tool that’s helping stroke survivors around the world walk again, regain balance and reconnect with parts of themselves they thought were lost.

Bill Gasiamis 1:16
Brody shares what the PoNS device actually is, how it works and why it is not just about balance. It’s about rewiring the brain using targeted neuroplasticity-based therapy. We also dive into the emotional side of recovery and the small, powerful winds that fuel long-term success. And if the PoNS device sounds familiar, it might be because you’ve heard my interview with Cheryl Shiltz, the very first person to ever use a technology that led to the creation of the device. That’s episode 200 and it’s a must-listen.

Bill Gasiamis 1:53
If you’re curious about what’s possible when it comes to rewiring the brain after injury, you’re going to love this conversation. It’s packed with inspiration, real world rehab results and hope for what’s still possible no matter where you are in your journey. Let’s dive in. Brody Jackson, welcome to the podcast.

Brody Jackson 2:13
Yeah, thanks for having me, Bill.

Bill Gasiamis 2:16
Now forgive me for asking, but how did we meet? Who introduced us?

Brody Jackson 2:23
So I believe you reached out to me via a patient and his wife, who I’ve been speaking to for quite some time about entering our clinic and kind of just through conversation back and forth, of especially going to engage in our PoNS program. And from there, I guess they reached out to you, I probably presume, wanting maybe more questions or more answers, and then it just kind of organically made its way back to me.

Bill Gasiamis 2:54
Exactly, alright. Thank you for the reminder. Sometimes I struggle to fit the pieces. I get a lot of people requesting guests, I get a lot of people requesting to be on the show, so it makes a little bit challenging. Now we’re going to talk about what the PoNS is in a minute, but before we talk about what the PoNS device is, I’d love you to tell the listeners a little bit about your background, the kind of work that you do, a little bit about your organization?

Brody Jackson 3:23
Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Brody Jackson, so I am a kinesiologist. I’ll say that on paper, but really, especially in Canada, we wear a lot of different hats, but my I specifically specialize in neuro rehabilitation, rehab. So I work for a clinic. We actually just recently changed our name. We are now called Neuro Peak Performance and Physiotherapy here in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada, which is just outside of Vancouver, about half an hour out, we used to be called the Surrey Neuroplasticity clinic.

Brody Jackson 3:57
Which I believe if you start to look online, you’ll see a lot more of that name floating around. We deal with all things the brain. So our clinic is kind of a multi-sprung kind of company. We have kind of three different heads, we’ve got our clinical trials division, which is called our CNS. We’ve got the clinic which is us, and then we also have our own proprietary medical device called the Neuro Catch, which ultimately scans brain function. So from there, we kind of went into this really cool realm of assess, test and then implement.

Brody Jackson 4:34
And that’s kind of what our bleed of our company’s been, and we focused around all things brain. So everything from, you know, run-of-the-mill low-level kids playing sports concussions all the way up through traumatic brain injuries, MS, Parkinson strokes, and a lot of the off label or kind of the more or less mystery situations and everything in between. So we kind of see a little bit of everything.

Brody Jackson 4:59
Every day, but really, we try to strive towards using a lot of evidence-based and technology based product and assessment and intervention to be able to give us a much more non biased and objective way of treating the various ailments. So we’ve got a huge team on our roster of kinesiologists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists. We run with counselors a lot of our kids, and our physios do the bulk of the work. We like I said, we wear a lot of different hats, and it’s allowed us to do a lot of really cool things with a lot of special individuals.

Brody Jackson 5:37
So that’s kind of how we’ve really been we our goal is to obviously treat people mainly for the brain, and find new ways to get them better. And then one of the main things that we’ve obviously been using here is the PoNS. So the PoNS is not our product. It is a product from a company called Helius. So they are an American based company, they’ve got there’s been PoNS users all over the world. Now, it is a very cool device, I have it with me here. So I don’t know if people will see me on video or not, but this is what it looks like.

Bill Gasiamis 6:13
They will.

Brody Jackson 6:13
Okay, so I will walk people through that after.

Bill Gasiamis 6:17
Yeah, lift it up for a sec. Let’s hold it there for a little bit. I’ll make you feel uncomfortable so it looks like overgrown set of glasses from the back. And then how would you put it on your head? What would it look like when you’re wearing.

Brody Jackson 6:34
Yeah, so as I put it on, so you can see it’s got a fairly flexible collar, it’s very user friendly. It was originally designed for people with TBI, so it was ultimately supposed to be very simple to use, flexible you wear it around your neck and on with the collar itself. It will be connected to a mouthpiece, and that mouthpiece, this is our demo device. I’m not actually going to put in my mouth, but it does sit inside your mouth, on top of your tongue, and it does sense stimulation through your tongue, which will travel through into our brain stem and essentially stimulate our cerebellum.

Brody Jackson 7:10
Which our cerebellum is our movement cortex of our brain. And from what research tells us is the fastest way to get into the brain to elicit something very special called Neuroplasticity, which is the way the brain changes itself and can heal. So I’m sure many of your users have maybe read, maybe you’ve heard of Norman Deutsch, he’s very famous in the brain health world.

Brody Jackson 7:36
The way the brain changes itself is one of his more famous books. It talks very extensively on the PoNS. So a lot of that neuroplastic, and neuromodulation stimulation has been developed through that, and we get to see it firsthand here.

Bill Gasiamis 7:53
Love it so very cool. The reason I know about, the reason this all came about now, or I’m starting to put all the pieces together, is that I somebody reached out to me, wanted to know if I had interviewed somebody who had used that device, the PoNS device. And what I’ve actually done is, I’ve interviewed Cheryl Shiltz, who was number one person who used the very first device in the 1990s after her whole inner ear was destroyed by some medication due to a medical intervention that she needed.

Bill Gasiamis 8:35
And as a result of having her inner ear damaged and destroyed, she wasn’t able to walk, have any balance. All she had was a spinning room. And what do they call it? When everything is moving around you all the time.

Brody Jackson 8:53
Vertigo.

Bill Gasiamis 8:53
Vertigo all the time. And she happened to even under those really extreme conditions, sign up to a course to go to the University of Madison, Wisconsin and do a course on some topic that she was interested in, and by some stroke of absolute miracle, Paul Bachy-y-Rita and his team were working at the University of Madison, Wisconsin.

Bill Gasiamis 9:24
Developing tools for Neuroplasticity. Paul Bachy-y-Rita, for example, helped somebody who was blind, completely blind, shoot baskets into a garbage can with a device that was sort of mimicking vision on his forehead. And then Cheryl has this device that they designed, they put it in a gyroscope. They put a gyroscope on a helmet on her head. And then they attach this probe thing, she puts it on her tongue.

Bill Gasiamis 10:00
And then with training that stimulates the Neuroplasticity to in their in her words, retrain the tongue to know where Cheryl was in the world, to give her a sense of balance, back to kind of rewire her inner ear to the back of her tongue to tell her how to balance and then, long behold, she’s the first person who proves the theory. And then from there, we have the opportunity to develop the devices, and now they look like the one that you put around your neck. Now for people watching and listening, Cheryl is a must-watch episode.

Bill Gasiamis 10:41
It’s an absolutely must-watch episode. It’s episode 200 and I cannot stress how important it is that you watch that episode if you’re interested in regaining your balance after a cerebellar stroke, or you have some other inner ear problems or some other issues related to your stroke now. Do you know about Cheryl Shiltz, Brody? Let’s take a quick break here from this incredible conversation with Brody to remind you about two powerful tools you can use right now in your stroke recovery journey.

Bill Gasiamis 11:17
First, if you haven’t picked up my book yet, The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened. I encourage you to do so. It is filled with honest reflections and practical strategies from someone who’s been there me and the other people who I interviewed to help me write the book. Over 400 copies have already been sold, and it continues to help survivors navigate the physical, mental and emotional challenges of life after stroke. You can grab your copy at recoveryafterstroke.com/book.

Bill Gasiamis 11:51
Second if you’re looking for guidance in your recovery, whether you’re just starting out or hitting a plateau, visit recoveryafterstroke.com/learn. There you’ll find some self-paced video lessons and resources designed specifically for stroke survivors and caregivers. All right, let’s get back to Brody and learn more about how the Helius PoNS device is giving people a second chance at mobility, balance and confidence.

Brody Jackson 12:19
Yeah, I’ve heard kind of vague rumbles of it early on, as I was kind of getting into neuro rehab. And then as, you know, as we started to learn about the PoNS, we learned of, you know, a lot of their background stuff through their work in Russia, and then, obviously, through some of their in inter stuff through Wisconsin. And then you start to dive down into the Neuroplasticity and kind of the history of it. And I’ve read little antidotes, and I haven’t heard your podcast with her actually, so I’d be very interested myself to actually give this a whirl on that as well. So I will look into that.

Bill Gasiamis 12:53
It’s a phenomenal podcast. She’s such a lovely lady, and she takes you through the entire story of how she lost her inner ear, how she regained it, and how it changed her life, it’s just absolutely amazing. I couldn’t believe that I was interviewing her, because I reached out just by fluke, like you do with all the people that you want to have on the podcast. And she said yes, and I couldn’t believe it. And she’s still doing work in that space, still has an interest in that area, and it’s well worth looking into.

Bill Gasiamis 13:27
So your client, or your potential client, contacted me and said “Do you know anyone about who has used the PoNS? I said “No, but I know the first person who ever developed the theory and the device to get it to where it is today.” And what I suppose I wanted to do was, since we couldn’t talk about since I didn’t know anyone, I thought maybe you could talk about some people who have used the PoNS, but before we talk about them.

Bill Gasiamis 13:58
I want to know what Kinesiology is, because I’ve had the pleasure of having some kinesiology done with me, and it’s amazing, and I don’t get it, but I love it, so I’d love for you to describe in your own words what Kinesiology is and how people use it to benefit.

Brody Jackson 14:22
So being akin it’s very different across different regions, especially different countries. The core competency of it’s essentially the active approach of human movement. I would say, up in Canada, we’re very similar to physios it, but we just don’t do like, I would say, more or less a physio, but a lot bigger, more of an active component. So we’re still treating, we’re still assessing, we’re still doing hands on, we’re still doing a lot of the things that a physiotherapist would do, but we are going to be.

Brody Jackson 15:00
It with a lot more movement-based and activity and strengthening, lot more of the active, like the exercise component, and in terms of a kind of what you’ll see in our clinic, where a lot more balance and gait specialized. We do a lot more specific to the ailments. But a lot of us have, you know, vestibular specialization training, ocular training, a lot of those things that assume that a physio only could do. A lot of us will do as well and can. It’s just there’s a little bit more of an active component. In other countries, like I know, in the US, it’s a little different. It’s a little bit more exercise only driven.

Brody Jackson 15:40
And then I’m not too sure what it looks like in in your part of the world, but I would assume it’s probably very similar where it’s a lot more exercise therapy driven. But at least for us here, that’s kind of what it looks like.

Bill Gasiamis 15:53
It seems like it’s probably broad.

Brody Jackson 15:57
It is fairly broad, yes.

Bill Gasiamis 15:59
So what I have when I’ve had kinesiology, basically, my chiropractor uses it to test where he needs to work. And he does the resistance tests of my leg, of my arms and what have you. And then from there, he somehow knows how to follow that back to a particular part of the spine and then work there. Like, I completely, totally, don’t get it, but I see the result because he does a test my hand doesn’t stay up, and then he does something on my back, and then he goes back, tests the hand, and then the hand stays up and responds.

Bill Gasiamis 16:41
Do you know what I mean? Like, it’s, so interesting. And it’s like he’s working on, like, on circuits and Switching Circuits on and off. Well, on, he’s trying to switch them on, actually, not off.

Brody Jackson 16:53
Yeah, that’s all about his isolating, you know, different limitations and deficits. And from there, you can reverse kind of engineer backwards of what might be causing that or might be creating that implication, and he’s worked through it that way. And that’s kind of the the ethos of what a kinesiologist is going to do is we’re assessing what those limitations or those deficits are. And that’s why I always say every no patient is the same. Everyone gets a unique assessment.

Brody Jackson 17:20
Whether it is balance or gait or vestibular, strength or muscular, whatever that is you’re not treating the let’s say it’s a stroke. You’re not just saying, I’m treating a stroke and blanketing it as a stroke. You’re treating what that individual, specific limitations are that are very specific to that person. So it’s dystonia, or it’s increased tone, or it’s spasticity, or it’s a gate deviation, or it is a balance issue.

Brody Jackson 17:51
It’s, as we know, with, you know, there’s different kinds of strokes that elicit very different limitations, and as we know, no stroke is the same. So that’s where we approach that, and that’s the beautiful thing with physical therapy and active therapy specifically, is we’re there to treat the limitation and make those gains that way.

Bill Gasiamis 18:12
Alright, let’s talk about the PoNS a little bit. So when did you first come across it?

Brody Jackson 18:19
Yeah, so I came across it as I was actually interviewing to join this team about four and a bit years ago. And what’s pretty cool now is myself and my co clinician, Matthew Gangon, we’re actually probably the two most seasoned spawn users in the world. So a quick little side note is our clinic actually did a lot of Helios initial research and a lot of their clinical trials. So through that, we got very blessed at being one of their kind of key locations. If you actually look up our clinic, there’s a big thing on Montel Williams using it with his MS, and that was all done at our clinic.

Brody Jackson 19:01
He came and traveled through. And there’s a lot of stuff on the Neuroplasticity clinic and PoNS itself. So we got very lucky to use it a lot. And so since then, like, we’ve been Helios biggest, one of their biggest locations for PoNS usage. Like we see, there’s been times where we’ve seen almost triple digits of individuals in a year come through using it, whether it’s been through clinical trials or through private patients. So definitely a lot.

Brody Jackson 19:33
And then myself and Matthew, like I said, we’ve been here the longest, and we’ve used it with pretty much everybody, so we got a lot of experience. So even though I say, I’ve only been around it for four and a bit years, I’ve seen a very, very, very large number of PoNS patients, and I’ve been very blessed to see kind of what it’s been able to do and what it’s done for people.

Bill Gasiamis 19:56
Wow. Okay, let’s talk the nitty gritty, and then go. Get that out the way, and then we’ll talk about the therapy. What does it cost to access the PoNS, to use the PoNS? How does it all work?

Brody Jackson 20:08
Yeah, so it’s, I’ll be pretty frank, it’s not the most inexpensive thing ever, it will be in Canadian dollars. So sometimes for our American neighbors down south, with the Canadian dollar not doing too good. Sometimes it’s a bit of a deal for them, but I know with the Australian dollar and us, we’re kind of very similar right now, it ends up being about so we get it straight from Helios. So I don’t want to necessarily state too many prices publicly, just because other clinics and facilities do use it.

Bill Gasiamis 20:43
They may use points accessing the the service rather.

Brody Jackson 20:47
Yeah, absolutely. So the way it works in Canada, at least, is so usually, originally, when PoNS came out, I’ll make it kind of simpler, and I’ll spread back out when PoNS first came on board. It was originally kind of just an on label device for TB eyes and MS, so TBI doesn’t try brain injuries ms, as in multiple sclerosis. So between those two deficits, that was what all the research was done on, and that’s kind of what things were put through for whatever reason, Helius could only get the full green light completely in Canada.

Brody Jackson 21:24
So we were able to see patients very quickly and right away they yes, they’re American based company, but they could only get clearance with MS, and you had to get a doctor’s asset. It was a whole you had to jump through a lot of hoops in America to be able to utilize it. And I know it’s the same kind of deal in Australia as well, I believe, especially under the MS banner, versus here in Canada, anybody can have access to it if you essentially wanted to do it, because it’s a private a private tool usage. So from there, then expanded onto, we could start taking off label patients.

Brody Jackson 22:03
So we could if you weren’t just limited to having TBS or MS, if you had any form of a brain injury or a neuro based deficit, so Parkinson’s, strokes, functional movement disorders, and, you know, chronic, chronic migraines, vestibular concerns or vertigo, you were able to use it up here. So we got so it allowed a lot of people from out of country and across Canada, specifically coming to our facility to use it. So it was pretty easy, it’s because there were no barriers, at least for us, is if you reached out and you were like, I want to do this, or I’ve done my own research.

Brody Jackson 22:43
It could get done, versus it was a lot more of a process in Australia, in the United States, and, for sure, in Europe, which was almost impossible over there. So that’s where we’ve been able to intake a lot of people to kind of skip those barriers.

Bill Gasiamis 23:01
I don’t get why it’s so hard to access. The thing looks like, it looks like the most non invasive thing you could ever possibly do. You pop it on your neck, and you put it in your mouth, and you’re done.

Brody Jackson 23:12
Yeah, there’s a lot of contraindications, that’s why. And that’s mainly because, since you’re sending stimulation, since into your tongue, intro, like orally there’s risks of potential, you know, if you have a tumor, if you’ve got implants, if you’ve got other or histories of oral cancer, those can be significant contraindications to using the device. So there needs to be, obviously, clearance from FDA Health Canada, or, you know, your various health governing bodies, of everybody clearing it. And I think that’s where the limitations have been.

Brody Jackson 23:49
And because, you know, there haven’t been enough populations of various deficits and situations to use it, they can’t comfortably say, fully, good to go. And I think that’s been in the issue in the United States, with mainly the FDA, with with Health Canada, though, however, we’ve been able to get stroke added to the label, which was absolutely fantastic, about a year and a half ago.

Brody Jackson 24:16
And then we’re pretty close. I mean, I would be shocked if we don’t, if we see Parkinson’s added soon as well, just because we’ve been able to run enough clinical trials up here, we’ve been able to use it enough up here, so that list keeps growing of promising research, which has been fantastic.

Bill Gasiamis 24:34
Okay, so what I like about it is there’s a whole bunch of clinical trials going on in the background that is trying to determine the efficacy of this thing, and then also trying to understand it’s, what’s the word, it’s, side effects. It’s, does it have? Is that the right word.

Brody Jackson 24:54
I wouldn’t necessarily say side effects. I mean I’ve only, really only had. Yeah, one individual maybe abused the device, so to speak, where maybe their neurological system was a little bit more heightened for too long, which obviously, when we’re in a heightened state for too long, can lead to a series of neuroinflammatory reactions. Which was not permanent. It was just that individual needed to do a lot more down regulation work, and we needed to kind of coach them on how often they could use the device. But in terms of those contraindications.

Bill Gasiamis 25:31
It’s more is not necessarily better. No dosage is really important,

Brody Jackson 25:37
Yeah, because what’s happening is, because you’re stimulating your brain, you’re basically raising your nervous system. So the way I kind of describe the use of the PoNS is because we’re stimulating in duet, cerebellum, so into that movement cortex of the brain, you’re basically opening up the up again, the ability to Neuroplasticity. And what I describe to most people, want to explain what on earth is Neuroplasticity is our brain is like a sponge. So when we’re born, when we’re a baby, up until we’re definitely into our late teens or early 20s.

Brody Jackson 26:12
If we notice, and for a lot of people maybe listening, they can admit to this, or they watch their kids, their grandkids grow up. Is year over a year, kids get progressively smarter and more advanced, and you just, there’s a there’s a sponge for knowledge. Every year you see these crazy milestones. That’s that brain’s ability to intake information and morph and change and grow. It starts to slow down, or, you know, it’s usually around 25 years old.

Brody Jackson 26:40
And then that kind of, that ability to intake information at a rapid rate stays kind of stagnant up until our usually mid 50s or early 60s. And then the brain’s ability to undergo Neuroplasticity starts to slow down. Doesn’t mean your brain is degrading, it just means that it’s going to take you longer to learn something. So I always say, you know, you could take a five year old and a 70 year old who both never played piano before, and there’s a very good chance that five year old might learn faster than the 70 year old. It’s just how the brain intakes information.

Brody Jackson 27:17
What the PoNS does is, no matter who or the deficit itself is, it puts that brain back into that neuroplastic state that we might have seen when we were in, you know, a young adulthood or in our teenager phase, where that brain is able to intake content.

Brody Jackson 27:36
So we pair that with very extensive targeted physical therapy or very targeted, maybe cognitive therapy or dexterity, anything that’s going to challenge the brain to adapt or advance or tackle potential deaths or limitation. That’s what we pair that with the PoNS, and because the brain’s in a very spongy state, it’s going to learn these patterns at a more efficient rate.

Bill Gasiamis 28:01
Okay, but more is not necessarily better.

Brody Jackson 28:05
No, because again, if you’re over, you’re constantly up here. There’s a there’s risks that that brain is just not going to learn, because it’s like going to the gym every day. You’re not there’s no value at pushing hard seven days a week in the gym, your body, your brain can’t recover, so in that case, your body won’t recover, right?

Bill Gasiamis 28:24
Yeah, okay, understood. Alright, that’s really good to know, actually. So people are not buying the device. What they’re doing is they’re buying access to it or rehabilitation in your organization. So is there a program that they need to do? Is there a minimum number of doses? How does it actually work? Like, how does somebody engage in that kind of therapy?

Brody Jackson 28:57
Yeah, so super easy. So technically, they do own the device. When they buy it, they have to buy it through the clinic that all you get the collar and the mouthpiece. However, the mouthpiece itself is only active for 98 days, so 14 weeks, and then when that and I’ll get back to kind of what the program looks like. But when the mouthpiece expires, then they have the choice if they want to purchase another mouthpiece, only they can, and then we can reactivate that mouthpiece, attach the collar, they can continue use.

Brody Jackson 29:30
So I have people that have been using it non-stop for years, and they just buy new mouthpieces every 14 weeks.

Bill Gasiamis 29:36
Does it stop? Why does it stop working?

Brody Jackson 29:38
I believe that’s what Helius when they did their research, when they did the clinical trials, a lot of their trials were done over 14 week periods, and I believe I’d not entirely certain, but I assume that’s probably where, when they maybe found that the big leaps of gains would start to slow down, or around that 14 week mark, I’ve still had people using it years later that still make gains, but the gains you see usually on the device from weeks one through 14 are pretty significant, if the individual is appropriate for the use of the device. So it’s just the way they’ve set that up.

Brody Jackson 30:19
Now the other theories that they’ve talked about is that the mouthpiece itself may degrade over time with constant usage in your mouth. So these are gold electrodes and built in with copper and a bunch of other stuff. So I think they also feel that wearing this thing for two to three hours a day every day for 14 weeks would potentially wear down the mouthpiece, right? That would be, those are our two overreaching theories as to why there’s a timer built in.

Bill Gasiamis 30:49
Right, and then I would imagine that if it weighs down the mouthpiece, then it’s not as effective. But also you’re getting potentially parts of the mouthpiece entering your mouth.

Brody Jackson 31:01
Yeah, you’re not potentially not getting any efficient product, nor are you. You’re potentially also risking just stuff breaking down that you don’t want. So what they do usually, so the way the program works is you’d purchase the device, it’s active for 98 days. Usually you would come at least how we do it again, different clinics and facilities may do this differently, how we do it and how we kind of mirrored it around. What Helius and PoNS, Helius wanted to do with their PoNS device is they come to our clinic.

Brody Jackson 31:35
Obviously, we would do an assessment head-to-toe to determine what their deficit limitations are. They would then be in our clinic for usually two weeks, generally where they would do 290 minute sessions a day. So they’re doing three hours of therapy a day from there, usually, depending on where they live or kind of what they want. Most people for those weeks, kind of 3 through 14, they would do a lot of the therapy on their own at home, with the guidance of a program we’d provide.

Brody Jackson 32:09
And then they would check in with us once a week, whether it was in clinic or virtually. And then, obviously, the way we do it at our clinic is it’s very flexible, so people can stay here longer if they’re out of town, or they can come in multiple times a week during weeks 2 through 14. It’s really up to them, what they’re comfortable with and what we want to determine. Some people are more independent than others and may need a little bit more support, so they like coming in a bit more. Others, you know, they’re very comfortable with doing their program on their own.

Brody Jackson 32:42
Now in that time are they does the device gather any data? Does it have any other information that you get, that you can get out of it? How does it?

Brody Jackson 32:56
Yeah, so I would say the data that it absorbs so I can do data downloads on my computer. It’s honestly more or less an accountability tool. So it can tell me how much you’re using it, how much time it’s been sitting on your tongue, the percentage of how good the tongue contacts been as well. So I can kind of use that to check in and be like, okay, you know, tongue contact time looks or in the reverse, it doesn’t look good. You haven’t been using it. It’s hanging out of your mouth too much, we need to change this in order so you can get the out of the experience, what you need.

Brody Jackson 33:23
So it’s more or less an accountability tool that the data will it’ll collect. Because the other thing too is with the PoNS, usually we try to aim for about 120 minutes of stimulation a day. So each PoNS session is 20-minute cycles at a time. So you’re not just wearing it for three hours straight, you’re usually doing 20 minutes of gait training, possibly the 20 minutes of balance, maybe 20 minutes of a movement control or other things, and then it does technically cap out at 200 minutes in a day. So some people will do extra stuff, or in session.

Brody Jackson 34:09
If we’re ripping through, we might add in extra sessions in clinic or at home. I might give you some homework to do in the evenings, maybe some meditations, some cognitive work, or which I’ve done for a lot of my stroke patients, I’ve been really getting into doing a lot more dexterity work with, like writing tools and typing tasks and a lot of like man, like fine motor skills stuff, and so I’ll maybe give that to them at home. But that’s kind of how the device is kind of built for their time frame.

Bill Gasiamis 34:37
Okay, so I was under the impression that the pons is really mainly about regaining somebody’s balance, but you’re talking about fine motor skills and dexterity kind of results. So tell me how, it’s how it’s moved on from being just that device that helps to support the or regain the person’s balance?

Brody Jackson 34:59
Yeah. So I think a lot of the early research mainly was to do with, you know, both static and dynamic balance that eventually bled into ambulation because, as you know, if we have no balance, obviously gaits going to be impacted as well. So that’s where a lot of the research was originally done. But you know, when we think about the theory and concept of Neuroplasticity and how the brain learns, is really anything that can challenge that neurological system. Why wouldn’t there be a green light to pair that with PoNS?

Brody Jackson 35:31
So that’s, I think that might be what maybe separates our clinic a little bit differently from maybe other clinics. I’m not too sure, but we started to, you know, again, as I talked earlier, especially because we can take on a lot more off label clients, we started to do specific to them what their deficits are. We were combining it with PoNS, and from there, we were starting to see some success.

Brody Jackson 35:57
So obviously, we don’t have, like hardcore, like concrete data to, like, publish a paper and say, like, yeah, it improves hand function, necessarily. But we were just, we were putting them through their neurological rehab like we would a normal client, and we were combining it with PoNS, and we were starting to see results. And I think that was a big breakthrough for us. And what made us a lot different to to to get people to where they needed to be.

Bill Gasiamis 36:24
Man, I love that. But I thought we were just going to talk about the balance stuff, and this is way better, way more possibility for people to access it for very different reasons and in the same kind of way. Now you must get people who get results, right? What are those conversations like Brady, you’re, they’re at home, or they’re accessing the clinic, whatever they’re doing, but at some stage, they’re noticing results. How does that conversation go? Because that would be really freaky when I remember myself like I’m in rehab.

Bill Gasiamis 37:02
I didn’t use the PoNS or anything like that, but I’m in rehab and I’m noticing, you know, my leg is coming online, and I’m noticing my arm is coming online, and I’m picking things up and I’m taking steps without anybody holding me, and it’s really exciting and rewarding. So what are those conversations like with your patients?

Brody Jackson 37:25
Man, the milestones you get to do with your you get to cross and reach with your patients is kind of why we do what we do. I can’t, there’s nothing better than seeing their reaction to being able to do something in clinic, or their spouse seeing it happen, or their partner, their friend, whoever’s there. It’s such a special moment. And it’s not even, I can’t even describe it. It’s not even a conversation, it’s like a moment of celebration, right? So it’s, you know, a big thing that we talk about with our patients is we, you know, we try to temper their expectations simultaneously going into it.

Brody Jackson 38:04
Because, as you know, everybody knows whether it’s a neurological injury or a physical I carry your shoulder based injury. Everyone wants to be better yesterday, and then they’ve tried, maybe they’ve tried everything, they’ve stalled. They’re not getting better, they come across a really new, exciting program, or in this case, device or technology, and their brain jumps about 14 steps forward into what they expect is going to happen immediately. So the big thing that we always talk when in clinic is, you know, to celebrate those stepping stones.

Brody Jackson 38:44
It’s not about goals 1, 2 and 3, it’s goals 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 leading up to goal 2.0 and I think those are what’s super special. And I think especially because we do that intensive first two weeks, that’s we spend a lot of time with the individual. You develop a really cool relationship with them generally, and from there, you’re celebrating along the way, because everyday compounds. It’s really tough, it’s not easy. It’s probably, for most people, it’s one of the harder things they’ve probably ever done.

Brody Jackson 39:21
You know, a lot of individuals, most really healthy, active individuals, don’t even exercise three hours a day anyways, let alone someone who’s now suffered a neurological deficit. Maybe they’ve been struggling with it for years, and we’re not afraid to push their buttons. So it’s a really cool, active conversation as the program progresses, because there’s a lot of, as you maybe know, there can be a lot of psychosocial deficits, or limitations that come alongside major life altering deficits, right?

Brody Jackson 39:54
And so it’s a constant, organic conversation of we celebrate these little things. It’s going to be really hard. This is a really good thing. You should be proud like, and it’s just building on those pieces, right? So it’s a really fun it’s a really fun time.

Bill Gasiamis 40:12
I love that you have that idea of, you know, got a milestone one and then milestone 1.1 and then milestone 1.2 so it’s like, the same milestone, but it’s not about like, just smashing it out and getting to the the goal, whatever it is like, say, it’s I need to be able to run again. It’s like “Well, okay, let’s change your gait, let’s watch your gait. Let’s improve your gait. Let’s improve the way that you walk.” And then, once you’ve done all the other improvements, it’s like, let’s continue improving in that space, rather than, let’s just get out there and start running.

Bill Gasiamis 40:57
I love that idea. What happened to me right now was you’re describing how the PoNS works, and then how you’ve decided, how the organization has decided to start using it in for people, for different things. And it reminds me of the conversation I had with a couple of the guys from a Aviv Clinics and their hyperbaric oxygen therapy. And they have a room, a chamber, a massive chamber. It’s like a room, you walk into the chamber, you sit down, and then they take that person through a hypoxic brain episode by increasing the oxygen level and then decreasing it to normal levels.

Bill Gasiamis 41:41
The brain thinks it’s going hypoxic, and you can really positively impact the neuro regenerative part of the brain, feeling like when the brain goes hypoxic, what it does to kind of try and stay alive, and in that time, what they do is they ask patients to do different things depending on the deficits that they have. They ask them to stand up and sit down, or they might ask them to write, or use one of their affected limbs, etc. And the whole idea is to intervene right at that time in the same way when the therapy is being delivered.

Bill Gasiamis 41:43
And I love that I’m seeing this pattern now, kind of in a number of different fields of therapy, and it seems like it’s a real a real easy, well, easy I’m going to use the word is because I don’t know another word, but a real easy way to manipulate in a positive way, the brain, so that neural pathways reroute, find another way, or whatever the word is, and then wire and fire and kind of stick is, do am I describing it correctly? Is that what we’re doing?

Brody Jackson 43:09
Yeah, no, I think that’s the best, I think that’s the best description, it’s putting the brain in a new, almost stressed situation, with new pathways during repetitive movements, trying to lay down to learn a new thing, and from there, that brain is going to acquire that skill acquisition, it’s again, it’s no different. I always talk to people too, both because sometimes it’s so funny, because, like with clients, they get frustrated, because it’s like, why are we hammering this same gait pattern over and over and over and over again?

Brody Jackson 43:46
And they lose their minds about it, and I say “You know, it’s no different. If you walked up to a to a guitar, you’ve never played guitar in your life. Every day you pick up the guitar, you’re going to go try to play a different song every day. No, it may make no sense. You’re not going to learn, you can’t. If you’re going to learn something, you have to be able to repetitively do it and learn it and constantly grow and build off of that.” And I find that in therapy and even in exercise, this is even going to talks like general gym goers.

Brody Jackson 44:21
Everybody wants to be entertained, and I find that they need to do many, many, many, all kinds of things, instead of narrowing down and getting really good at certain stuff. And that’s no different than when it comes to physical therapy. In this case, neuro rehab is, it’s not circus, it’s purpose. We’re here, I’m not going to make you stand on one leg and jump up and down on a BOSU ball because it looks, because Instagram told you it looks cool. It’s, there’s no function. There’s no reason you need to be able to do that.

Brody Jackson 44:54
So we focus on the pathway itself, and it’s repetitive, and it’s, we have to stress the brain to lay down that new pathway, and from there, that’s how that brain acquires that new skill set, and then it becomes natural.

Bill Gasiamis 45:08
I’m going to test your pop culture knowledge and your age. It’s wax on, wax off. It’s paint the fence, Mr. Miyagi, he taught us in the 80s.

Brody Jackson 45:18
Karate Kid, I’m older than I look.

Bill Gasiamis 45:23
It’s Mr. Miyagi. It’s like, why am I painting the fence? Because Danielson, you have to paint the fence mate, and then once you paint the fence a million times, then you’ll have that float in the hand motion to be able to block or to deflect, or whatever he was teaching him to do with the karate kicks right and then. And if you haven’t watched karate kid and you’re listening to this podcast, go and get Karate Kid and watch it, please, and you’ll learn something about Neuroplasticity that Mr. Miyagi was telling us in the 80s that we didn’t realize was actually a lesson on Neuroplasticity.

Bill Gasiamis 46:08
Is exactly what it was. It was a amazing thinking back on that show, an amazing example of how you develop a something that appears second nature, how you develop it. You develop it from doing it a long, long time driving is a classic example. I remember being 16 and getting my learner’s permit and then trying to convince my dad for the next two years to let me drive every opportunity that I got. And I remember having this conversation vividly with somebody I used to work in. I used to work in a hardware store, and there was an older guy there.

Bill Gasiamis 46:47
He would have been 28 at the time, and I was telling him how I was struggling driving. And he goes “Yeah, you’re struggling now, because it’s all new, and it’s a big hunk of metal and all these things that you’ve never had to deal with before. But by the time you’re 28 you’ll be driving, and you won’t even think about it.” And I remember him saying, like, you’ll get somewhere, and you won’t even know how you got there, because it’s become second nature, and it’s because of the amount of hours that you’ve spent behind the wheel retraining.

Bill Gasiamis 47:16
You know that part of your hand and your leg to work together, and that part of your brain and your eyes and your ears to do all the things they need to do to drive a car and keep it on the right side of the road and make it look effortless. So I often think about that when I’m trying to get my head around how long something takes to really master it. And you know, you hear the whole other reference to the 10,000 hour rule that to get become masterful, it’s something you have to spend 10,000 hours practicing it or doing it.

Bill Gasiamis 47:56
And I don’t know if we need to spend 10,000 hours to get results in stroke recovery, but the more hours we spend, in a kind of lovely way, in a way that’s not too many hours in a short amount of time, and it’s not over stimulating the brain, and we are allowing for rest and recuperation, and we are allowing ourselves to have down days. The more time we do that, the more results we get. It’s just impossible not to get a positive result by doing something like a physical therapy, whether you’re doing it with somebody like yourself, Brody, or on your own at home.

Bill Gasiamis 48:39
That’s kind of been my whole little way, to motivate people. So anything you do to help you walk better doesn’t matter how hard it is. Is getting you a positive outcome, if you’re not doing it, you’re not getting a positive outcome. In fact, you’re rewiring the brain in a negative way, in a way that’s not supporting recovery of the thing that you want to recover. So I’m glad that we’re having this conversation and that we can possibly open people’s eyes to something else and another device and another way to think about recovery. It doesn’t have to be in the gym.

Bill Gasiamis 49:21
It doesn’t have to be necessarily in a clinical environment, it can be just by putting this thing on your tongue and standing there. You can YouTube Cheryl Shiltz and pull back your reader, and you’ll find the original video that the team took when Cheryl first puts the device on her tongue and starts to rewire her her balance, and then how it develops over time, and then how she goes from not being able to walk to being able to ride a bike.

Bill Gasiamis 50:00
And then bragging about the fact that she’s riding the bike while they’re recording her on a car next to her, or something like that, perhaps on another bike next to her. It’s just a completely it’s an amazing thing that was it, that it was even discovered, and here we are now. We’re talking about 30 years later, and the PoNS device exists. I mean, it’s phenomenal, I love this stuff.

Brody Jackson 50:25
Yeah, no, it’s been, like I said, it’s been it’s been fun. I mean, there’s been so many just incredible client success stories and just again, cool milestones, do different deficits, every day is just so neat. And I mean, every it’s cool, because every Friday we meet as a team, and we always kind of, do you know, client shout outs, and we kind of round table, and it’s really neat, because it’s people are sharing such cool stuff with their regular patients, obviously, as well. But if there’s someone in the door that’s going through our PoNS.

Brody Jackson 50:58
It feels like every week we got something cool to share, and it’s, and they become connected to you, right? Like, I still talk to a huge number of individuals who went through this program that you know, still check in with me all the time. I still talk to them, they still update me. They still come in every once in a while, still years later, and it’s really neat. And, you know, there’s always room to make improvements, and there’s always room your therapy just doesn’t stop. You know, I know it can be for a lot of individuals, it can be really tough, right?

Brody Jackson 51:34
So hold, it’s a big life change your life’s upside down. Things change, things are very difficult, and maybe you’ve tried various forms of therapy and recovery, and things have been very limited, right? But I do want to let people know that, you know, don’t be like, always be hungry. I always tell people this too is, you know, I get one of the things, it’s interesting, is a lot of my patients come in and they get frustrated. The first week is really tough, the nervous system’s on fire, they’re exhausted.

Brody Jackson 52:11
And again, they come in thinking that they should be up here three days into the PoNS program, and they’re upset, they’re emotional, and then they started apologizing me profusely, and I tell them, like “Don’t apologize. I want you to be hungry. I want you to not be satisfied with where you’re at because that’s going to keep pushing you the second and one of you know, it’s cool.” because there’s always one quote that’s always stuck in my head I tell all my patients.

Brody Jackson 52:47
This is it was an old ice hockey coach of mine when I was a child, and he coached me for years, and one of the things he told me is “If you’re not uncomfortable, you’re not growing.” He says “The second you get the second you get comfortable, whether it’s in sport, whether it’s in life, in school, at work or in a relationship, when you get too comfortable, things go sideways, and if you’re always uncomfortable or something, an event or situation is making you uncomfortable, you will grow from that, and you’re going to grow from it. And it won’t become uncomfortable again.”

Brody Jackson 53:27
And so I use that a lot with my patients. I go, you know, if this stuff was comfortable for you and easy, you wouldn’t be here. So I want this to be if you’re uncomfortable right now, and this is tough, means we’re growing, and that’s how the brain grows under stress, the body grows under stress. It’s you stress, it’s good stress.

Brody Jackson 53:46
And that’s a big thing we talk about with our patients is, you know, it’s okay to be frustrated and want more, because that’s going to drive you. If you’re always wanting more, you will get more. Yeah, so that’s all. It’s just being hungry, right?

Bill Gasiamis 54:06
I agree being uncomfortable is uncomfortable, though, and you have to wrap your head around that it’s something that you should look forward to. You should what’s where you should get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Yes, it’s hard to work it out, but once you are comfortable with being uncomfortable, then you’re going to go into uncomfortable situations. So they won’t be so traumatic, or they won’t be so hard to do. I’ve had to do that with public speaking, and you have to go into a room, you have to talk.

Bill Gasiamis 54:47
People have to, you have to get them engaged and make them not fall asleep. So you thinking about that, there’s only one way to do that, is to go and test your your particular presentation, and to see where it bombs, so that then you can refine it so that it bombs less the next time you do it, but you have to expect it to bomb a little bit, and that’s even more uncomfortable in an uncomfortable situation, when something bombs and you’re already feeling icky and uncomfortable and things are hard and it goes bad.

Bill Gasiamis 55:21
Well, you’ve got to just know that it’s actually just part of the process. It’s just part of the way that you learn and that you fine tune your skill and you do those 10,000 hours, that’s the way they are. All the 10,000 hours aren’t beautiful and lovely and perfect. There’s a lot of harsh, terrible lesson learning hours that you have to go through now, the people who got you and I together. I would describe it as a little, a few reservations as to whether or not they should take action and invest in a program of this kind, because they’ve never seen something like that before.

Bill Gasiamis 56:08
It’s really strange, what are the some of the things that people kind of have reservations about with this product, and how do you kind of try and make them feel okay about giving it a go and investing in it. I’m not trying to do the sales spiels, but I am trying to sort of tell people that, all right, this may look weird, you may not understand it, but I also am the kind of person who is the like, don’t knock something unless you’ve tried it.

Bill Gasiamis 56:08
But that’s not enough to convince somebody to use a device like this and to spend the money on it, on the whole thing. So I’m just curious about that. How do we move people from being feeling like a little bit unsure, to actually becoming somebody who’s willing to try it?

Brody Jackson 57:00
Yeah, so obviously, one of the big, I mean, I’ll be very upfront, the biggest barrier we find, at least initially is, obviously, there’s, it’s a big commitment, because there’s a big cost commitment attached to that, especially if you’re out of country, you gotta fly here. You gotta accommodations, like it’s not just a vacation, it’s now you’re committed into also a paid therapy program as well. So that’s always going to be the first and foremost.

Brody Jackson 57:31
I mean, that’s always the biggest thing, no matter what, even for people that are local here to Austin, British Columbia, or just leaving local, just within Canada is that it’s obvious, it’s always going to be cost, especially in this day and age. Economically, everybody’s always got that top of mind. But out notwithstanding, that the next kind of thing that we find is, again, it’s just that unknown. I think you know a lot of people who come to us that want to know more about PoNS. Thankfully, they’ve done all. A lot of them have done, already done their due diligence.

Brody Jackson 58:07
They already know. Like, I don’t have to not say waste, but I don’t need to explain to them for 15 or 20 minutes what it is or how it works. Most of the people come into us, they’re like, I know exactly what this is. I just need finer details. Let’s, let’s kind of get this going. But for the people that don’t know what this is, and it’s kind of a little bit more of a organic segue into it, it is, exactly that is. It’s explaining to them, because they don’t sometimes they can’t wrap their head around, you know, stimulating their tongue that’s going to make me do all these things.

Brody Jackson 58:46
Or some people, they find, if they’ve kind of exhausted their therapy, so to speak, like it’s been years and they’ve been struggling with for a long time. They say they’ve seen everybody under the sun and they can’t figure it out. They want to, well, how do I know? Again, circling back to the cost thing, they’re going to say, I’ve tried everything already. Why should I go do this? So it’s sometimes, you know, it’s what I usually do with our patients.

Brody Jackson 59:14
And so a lot of our other therapists, we just lay everything out very clearly, it’s not, we never do this as like a sales pitch. That’s not how I approach that. It’s I go look, this is what it can do, this is how it the program structured. The end of the day, it’s no different than them continuing to do therapy every once a week or twice a week for a year would most likely be the same cost to what a really intensive 14 week program is going to be anyways, when the dust settles. So I always map it out as it’s an accelerated way to kick start in a far more detailed therapy regimen.

Brody Jackson 59:58
Is that’s kind of how I supply and then I layout, no, I give people data, I give people studies, I’ve lot videos. It’s more just educating, because a lot of people just don’t know it’s a lot of it’s very foreign. And I think when people fear the unknown, and if they don’t understand it, the guards come up. And I think that’s just how the this day and age has been to as well, especially with just the rise of misinformation or the rise in stuff circling through social media is there’s a lot of content out there that is right, wrong, garbage, false, manipulated.

Brody Jackson 1:00:37
So if people don’t understand, the guard comes up immediately. So, we just try to educate them, we give them every tool and conversation that we need for it. And I would say the vast majority of the time, they end up proceeding, and we end up getting on with beginning.

Bill Gasiamis 1:00:58
Yeah, sounds like it’s just literally about making an informed decision, and absolutely everyone has a different time frame that gets them to pull the trigger or not, and that’s okay, whatever that is. I mean, we’ve done exactly what I wanted to do today, on behalf of two people who don’t know whether they should use the product or not, whether they should go down this path, and that is and what I’ve done is we’ve discussed all the ins and outs, the history, where it’s at how it works, the applications. We’ve discussed that.

Bill Gasiamis 1:01:41
So I think we’ve given people a whole bunch more information that they can consider and maybe help them make a decision about their rehab, especially the people who are early on and all the stroke recovery stuff is overwhelming. Everything is overwhelming, and then I love that idea of all so people who have perhaps been out of the system for a little bit, and thought I’ve tried everything, nothing’s worked, I’m done for now. And then they stumble across this somewhere.

Bill Gasiamis 1:02:11
And they think maybe I should give it a go, if you can manage it, I would encourage people to never, ever look at ways to continuously try to find ways to improve your life, your quality of life, your function, your independence. Go for it, I mean, what do you got to lose? So thank you so much for joining me and being so gracious and teaching us about the PoNS and what you guys do, if people wanted to find out a little more about your organization, where would they go?

Brody Jackson 1:02:50
Yeah, so they obviously the easiest place I can, also include it in. I think we got a little chat box, so I can also send you some stuff.

Bill Gasiamis 1:02:59
Yes.

Brody Jackson 1:03:00
But obviously our website, which is at neuropeak.ca, is going to be the best place to go. First, it shows all the services our clinic offers, in general. And then from there, they can also see we’ve got a whole section on our PoNS. And from there they can reach out, obviously, to us via that website.

Brody Jackson 1:03:26
So we have our info email. There’s also my email as well, that’s where all our contacts easy to find via our website. We try to keep things very clean again. Our goal is to not overwhelm people we don’t want to, especially, you know, knowing our demographic and knowing who we work with, we don’t need to make a system complicated. So obviously, also, you know, they’re more than welcome again. PoNS is a very public device.

Brody Jackson 1:03:55
Now, they can Google it, or whatever search engine they use to look through PoNS, there’s lots of cool articles and stories, lots of testimonials. You’ll see both via either link to our website or link to other news articles or lots of YouTube videos, especially with Montel, that they can follow along and learn a little bit more about it. But it’s very easy to get access information.

Bill Gasiamis 1:04:20
I’ll make sure that all the links are in the show notes. Anyway, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.

Bill Gasiamis 1:04:25
No worries. I appreciate your time, Bill. Thank you for having me.

Bill Gasiamis 1:04:29
Well, that wraps up this excellent episode with Brody Jackson, his passion for helping stroke survivors and his work with the Helius PoNS device is giving people real results and real hope, especially those who have been told they plateaued or that recovery is no longer possible. From helping clients walk again to improving fine motor skills and even handwriting, the PoNS device is truly redefining what stroke rehabilitation can look like if today’s episode. It opened your eyes or to something new, or reminded you that recovery never really ends.

Bill Gasiamis 1:05:06
I encourage you to check out Episode 200 of this podcast with Cheryl Shiltz, the first person in the world to use this kind of technology. It is so powerful, emotional and enlightening, and it shows just how far Neuroplasticity can take us. Please remember to like, subscribe and leave a review on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you’re listening, and if you’re watching on YouTube, leave a comment below and share what inspired you most about this episode.

Bill Gasiamis 1:05:37
You can learn more about the clinic that Brody is based at by going to neurospeak.ca, and I’ll include all the links in the show notes we mentioned earlier. Finally, if you’d like to support this podcast, you can visit patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. Every bit of support helps me cover the cost of the podcast and continue to bring valuable insights and stories like this to stroke survivors around the world, thanks for being here until next time. Keep going, stay hopeful and remember your recovery is still happening, one step at a time.

Intro 1:06:14
Importantly, we present many podcasts designed to give you an insight and understanding into the experiences of other individuals, opinions and treatment protocols discussed during any podcast are the individual’s own experience, and we do not necessarily share the same opinion, nor do we recommend any treatment protocol. Discussed all content on this website and any linked blog, podcast or video material controlled this website or content is created and produced for information or purposes only, and is largely based on the personal experience of Bill Gasiamis.

Intro 1:06:44
The content is intended to complement your medical treatment and support healing. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice and should not be relied on as health advice. The information is general and may not be suitable for your personal injuries, circumstances or health objectives. Do not use our content as a standalone resource to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease for therapeutic purposes or as a substitute for the advice of a health professional.

Intro 1:07:09
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Intro 1:07:35
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The post Unlocking Neuroplasticity: How the Helius PoNS Device Rewires the Brain After Stroke appeared first on Recovery After Stroke.

When I first began recovering from my three brain hemorrhages and brain surgery, I didn’t know there was such a thing as post-traumatic growth. I had never heard the term before. All I knew was that I was dealing with grief, anxiety, confusion, and the loss of the identity I once had. Like so many stroke survivors, I felt like life as I knew it had been flipped upside down.

But something else was happening, quietly, in the background. Even in the darkest times, I started noticing small shifts—signs that something deeper was unfolding. I was growing, even when I didn’t know it.

Post traumatic growth (PTG) is a concept developed by psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun in the mid-1990s. It refers to the positive psychological changes that can occur as a result of struggling with trauma. It’s not about bouncing back. It’s more about bouncing forward—finding meaning, purpose, and a new identity because of what you’ve been through.

It’s personal. Trauma looks different for everyone. For some, it’s a stroke. For others, it might be the death of a loved one, a diagnosis, or a major life upheaval. What matters is how it shakes you—how it overwhelms your ability to cope in that moment.

And what matters even more is what can come after.

It’s important to understand that post-traumatic growth is not the opposite of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). In fact, they can exist together.

PTSD often brings flashbacks, anxiety, fear, and reliving the trauma. Post-traumatic growth, on the other hand, brings meaning, strength, gratitude, and connection. It’s not that the struggle disappears—it’s that, in the middle of it, new possibilities begin to take shape.

You can grieve and grow at the same time. You can be hurting and healing. And even if no one’s ever told you this before—you can be changing for the better, even in the middle of pain.

Tedeschi and Calhoun identified five key domains where growth can occur after trauma. I didn’t know these existed when I was recovering, but I can now see how each one of them showed up in my life after stroke.

After nearly dying, I became more grateful for the smallest things. The noise my kids made. The dinners we shared. The fact that I was still alive to witness their lives unfold. Before my stroke, I took a lot for granted. Now, I take very little.

Before stroke, I wasn’t the kind of person to start a podcast, write a book, or speak publicly about my experiences. But during recovery, I said yes to new opportunities. Life opened up. I tried things I’d never done before. And in doing that, I met people, found a voice, and created a new version of myself.

Like many survivors, I once thought, “I could never get through something like that.” But when you’re backed into a corner, strength shows up. I found a part of me that could get through anything. A resilient, determined version of me I didn’t know existed.

Some relationships deepened—especially with my wife and kids. Others faded away. I created new boundaries, said sorry when I needed to, and began to connect more honestly with the people I love. Stroke helped me become a better husband and father.

I started asking big questions. Why me? And the answer came quickly: Why not me? I realized that life wasn’t guaranteed to be easy or fair. That truth woke me up. It helped me stumble into my purpose—supporting other stroke survivors—and led to the work I now do through my podcast, book, and coaching.

You don’t have to check every box, and it doesn’t all happen at once. But here are some signs that PTG might be unfolding in your life:

Here are a few things that helped me—and might help you too:

So many people say they want to get back to who they were before their stroke. I get that. But I also believe that the person you are becoming might be someone even more powerful, compassionate, aware, and purposeful.

You don’t need to go back. You’re already on your way forward.

Post-traumatic growth is more than survival—it’s transformation. Discover how stroke recovery can lead to purpose, strength, and renewed life.

Highlights:

00:00 Understanding Post-Traumatic Growth
02:22 Differences Between PTSD and Post-Traumatic Growth
04:45 The Five Domains of Post-Traumatic Growth
11:57 Spiritual or Existential Change and Finding Purpose
16:27 Signs of Post-Traumatic Growth and Practical Tips
23:18 Growing Into Somebody New

Transcript:

Bill Gasiamis 0:00
One of the topics I’ve wanted to talk about now in a little more detail for a while, is post traumatic growth. It is a topic that I touched on briefly in my book, because ultimately, that’s what my book is all about. It’s all about post traumatic growth after a serious health incident. In my case, post-traumatic growth after three brain hemorrhages and surgery. And post-traumatic growth is basically positive growth after trauma.

Bill Gasiamis 0:33
It is not bouncing back per se. It’s more like moving forward or bouncing forward, and it is based on real psychological research done by Lawrence Calhoun and Richard Tedeschi in the mid 1990s so trauma is personal. What is traumatic to me may not be traumatic for you. It’s basically anything that overwhelms your ability to cope. It can be emotional, it can be physical, or it can be mental. My story was pretty dramatic at the beginning, and what I didn’t know was that I was going through post-traumatic growth while I didn’t know about it. I didn’t know that it was happening.

Bill Gasiamis 1:20
It was occurring in my life, but I didn’t know that it was happening, and I had nobody to tell me that even though I was going through a really terrible time and things were difficult, there was definitely post traumatic growth occurring, and it would have been nice to know it so I was struggling with grief, Anxiety and identity life, just like most stroke survivors. And at some point though, I started to notice changes, like a deeper appreciation for life. The thing about it is I didn’t know that that meant anything special.

Bill Gasiamis 1:55
Although it was oddly obviously special to experiencing appreciation for life, perhaps something I hadn’t reflected on before, but it wasn’t something that was at the top of my mind. I was doing it without being mindful, without being aware of the fact that I was appreciative. I mean, I nearly died, so I was just appreciative that I was alive and that I was still going to be around my family and my children. So Tedeschi and Calhoun coined the term post-traumatic growth in the 1990s and they found that trauma can lead to transformation.

Bill Gasiamis 2:35
And they identified the five domains of post-traumatic growth now. PTSD and P, T, G, post-traumatic growth are not the same thing, and they are not opposites of each other. They are different. For example, PTSD equals fear, anxiety and flashbacks, and a lot of the people who experience PTSD describe it as being right there in the moment when the traumatic event took place. They’re reliving it on a regular basis, or in times and moments. That’s unexpected.

Bill Gasiamis 3:17
Now, post-traumatic growth equals a deeper meaning. It means gaining strength and finding deeper connections with other people that you didn’t have before. And what’s really interesting about it is that you can experience post-traumatic growth at the same time as you are experiencing PTSD. So because PTSD is not something that you’re constantly, always going through, it has moments of calmness. In those moments of calmness, people may not be aware that they are experiencing post traumatic growth, and that from time to time.

Bill Gasiamis 3:59
The post-traumatic growth is provides sort of like a buffer between the previous traumatic triggering moment to the next traumatic triggering moment, but they can coexist together. So the growth in post-traumatic growth doesn’t mean that the struggle goes away that the struggle is over. It means that in amongst the struggle, call them the dark times, or the difficult times, there are moments of light, there are moments of overcoming, there are moments of fighting back. There are moments of getting better and growing. You can breathe and grow at the same time.

Bill Gasiamis 4:42
So it’s not like you have to pause one thing and do the other thing. No, you can go through grief of losing the life you once had, but you can be very happy that you are achieving new things or overcoming challenges or seeing positive changes in. Your recovery and getting further ahead in your recovery than you were before. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about the five domains of post-traumatic growth. So the five domains of post-traumatic growth are as follows. First, it is appreciation for life.

Bill Gasiamis 5:17
So basically, the little things about them all I went through that when I started to realize how lucky I was to be at home after the first second and third blades, and to be still alive and to have access to all the tools that I had access to to help me in my recovery journey. I also appreciated the little things more, like the kids being around and making noises and complaining and whinging and being teenagers while they were in the house that I was in recovery. See, they are things that I didn’t think about I would miss if I wasn’t around.

Bill Gasiamis 5:57
And now that they have grown up in the last 10 years and moved out, I often reflect back to the time when I was grateful that they were upstairs and making the noises in the middle of the night like teenagers would, and they’re not there at home doing that anymore. So I very much am aware of those little things that I’m more appreciative about now, when they come home and we interact at dinner and we sit together as a family once more, it’s an amazing time. It’s probably the most fun time I could experience in my week, all the four of us, my wife, my two boys, being together.

Bill Gasiamis 6:39
It really is something that I appreciate more than I’ve ever appreciated it before stroke, I was just not aware that those were important things. I thought that they were silly things that kids did, and I had to make sure that they didn’t step out of line and that they didn’t do them at all, rather than being understanding and giving them an opportunity to be children while trying to express my needs for them to not be so rowdy.

Bill Gasiamis 7:12
I used to get really angry, and I used to get really upset with the fact that they were up there being teenagers like as if I wasn’t any different when I was growing up and when I was a teenager, they were just being normal, and I was seeing it through the lens of a grumpy old man. One of the other things that happened for me was that I started to see new possibilities that weren’t there for me before. The old me is not this guy. The guy before stroke is not the guy that goes around creating vlogs.

Bill Gasiamis 7:49
The guy before the stroke is not the guy that has a podcast, has written a book, taught talk publicly about stroke and stroke recovery. Had the opportunity to raise awareness about stroke, the old me wasn’t that kind of guy, and all of a sudden, during my stroke recovery, I started to see these new possibilities. I’m not sure what it was, but I made the decision to start having experiences that I’d never experienced before. Perhaps I was afraid to experience it. Perhaps I didn’t know if I would be judged if I experienced those things. I’m not sure why I never did them.

Bill Gasiamis 8:31
They weren’t in my radar. So when the opportunity came up after stroke, I thought, I’m going to experience life, all sorts of life, different versions of life, that I’ve never experienced before. And I was looking forward to be in a position where something new would come my way, and as a result, new things came my way. I was on the radio. I was on television being interviewed for the news. I was involved in a television commercial for the health insurance provider Bupa. On behalf of the Stroke Foundation.

Bill Gasiamis 9:05
I represented the Stroke Foundation at the Cancer Council, where they were talking about the risks of stroke and smoking. I just did all these things. New possibilities were coming out of everywhere. And the truth is, perhaps they were before, but before I would be most likely saying, No, that’s not for me, or I don’t do those kind of things. I didn’t have an identity that was curious and was willing to do something new, because I was afraid of judgment. I was afraid what other people would say, and I didn’t want to experience that.

Bill Gasiamis 9:44
And that probably leads to the next domain, which is personal strength that I found a way to make it through. And I experienced this resilience that I hadn’t had before. You know, when you come across somebody. That says I don’t know how I would cope if I had to go through the things that you went through with your stroke. I used to be one of those guys, oh man, you’re amazing. You can do that. I don’t think I could cope if I was going through what you were going through.

Bill Gasiamis 10:16
Well, back into a corner and with no other choice, I found personal strength that I didn’t have before I was able to grip my teeth and get tough and find a way to get through all of the difficult times. And that was an amazing thing for me to become aware that I was doing, because I never thought it was possible for me to be such a strong guy, one of the things that also came, which is the next domain, is improved relationships, so closer connections with my loved ones and people that I appreciated being in my life.

Bill Gasiamis 10:58
And then new boundaries with people that perhaps were a little difficult for me to have around in my life and weren’t really adding value. Maybe they were the relationship was all about them, and my decision to create boundaries around myself with people like that improved my recovery, my relations improved in lots of areas, firstly, with my children. I even went out of my way to apologize for all the silly things that I had done as a parent in the past before I become a stroke survivor. I The relationship between my wife and I improved and strengthened.

Bill Gasiamis 11:48
Because whatever it was that we had been through before stroke, it was nothing compared to what we were going through now, even at the time when I was in my hardest place, she was always around there. She was supporting me, and often she was supporting me by putting herself second. And that made me realize how loyal she was, and that helped to improve my connection with my wife. And it was an amazing experience. Again, I didn’t know that this was part of post traumatic growth.

Bill Gasiamis 12:25
Now, the final domain, the fifth domain, and these domains are in no particular order, was spiritual or existential change, and people who go through something traumatic will often rethink their beliefs and their life’s purpose, and I was definitely rethinking my life’s purpose. Now my beliefs didn’t change much, but I asked myself, just briefly. I asked myself, Why me? And then the quick response that I got the answer was, why not me? And that response that why not me? Response was the one that really got me moving into a different positive direction.

Bill Gasiamis 13:10
I realized that I wasn’t somebody special, that I was going to go through life without being impacted negatively by something in my life, I realized I was not the kind of person who was going to be unscathed about life, if you like. And that kind of made me grow up a little bit, and it made me realize that I need to, I need to prepare for the worst. I need to expect the best, but prepare for the worst, and that’s what I went about doing.

Bill Gasiamis 13:46
I went about preparing myself for the worst possible situation so that I would be in a better position to respond positively if I had ever found myself in a negative situation. Again, my spiritual beliefs didn’t change much. I didn’t attend church more or anything like that, but I did wonder and consider whether or not there was a God and what God had in store for me. And I did accidentally stumble into my purpose. And I didn’t realize that I was stumbling into my purpose.

Bill Gasiamis 14:21
I didn’t realize that I was going down that path at all, but all the steps I made to connect with stroke survivors. Share my story, share the things that I had learnt about stroke and stroke recovery, meet new people, start the podcast and share about the book made me realize that I was on my on my purpose, that I had found my purpose in life, and I thought that I had a purpose in life before stroke, which was my family and my children, but that was quite a shallow purpose. Is clearly very important to have that part of your life as part of your overall purpose, but it’s too narrow.

Bill Gasiamis 15:09
It’s only about me and them. It’s not about other people. And I think everybody’s purpose in life is really something that emerges by doing something for somebody that you expect nothing in return for and while you are doing these things, you might find yourself on purpose, but it’s not what you set out to do. So overthinking it and trying to come up with, why am I on this planet? What’s the point of being on this planet is not going to help you find your purpose. You’re going to find your purpose by basically just doing things to help other people that you expect nothing back in return.

Bill Gasiamis 15:52
And I found my purpose. And it was around episode 70, when I really had that aha moment, and I said, I think strokes the best thing that happened to me, because all these five domains of post-traumatic growth had become apparent to me. I had appreciation for life. I was exploring new possibilities. My personal strength was stronger and more resilient than ever before. My relationships had improved, and I had experienced spiritual growth and existential growth, I started to discover my why, and that was something that I had never stumbled across before.

Bill Gasiamis 16:33
Even though I didn’t realize that those five things make it that I even though I didn’t realize that those five things are part of post-traumatic growth, because I didn’t have the term or the word for it yet, that’s exactly what it was that I experienced. So you may have noticed in this video that you are experiencing some of the signs of post-traumatic growth. You may have noticed that your values and priorities after stroke have shifted, and so they should it really should be about you.

Bill Gasiamis 17:14
It really should be about you finding the path forward that is going to make sure that you have a fantastic recovery, that you have growth, that you make meaning, that you find a way to give meaning to this situation that you found yourself in. You may have noticed that you have new perspectives in life that you see things way differently than you had ever seen before, and you may have noticed that you are more grateful or mindful even on the tough days. You know being mindful of the tough days might be that you’re at a coffee with a friend.

Bill Gasiamis 17:59
And instead of being distracted and paying attention elsewhere and looking on your phone, what you are is your present. You’re in the moment, and your appreciation for being in conversation with that person is something that you hadn’t practiced before. You hadn’t paid attention to the fact that you were still able to attend to your friends, be at an amazing place, experiencing a deep conversation, and that that is important part of life, that that is a very important part of life, you may just be going through the motions previously.

Bill Gasiamis 18:40
And now you’re realizing that even those small moments of somebody reaching out and asking you, How can they support you or help you during those difficult days make things better, and they are signs that you are already growing. So I want you to reflect back on your life and pay attention to whether or not you’re ticking any of those boxes, so that you can be aware that you might be growing. So if you want to get some momentum in shifting between a PTSD type of experience to more post-traumatic growth.

Bill Gasiamis 19:21
These are a few things that might help you take that step a little further than where you already are in your recovery. So you might want to reflect on your experience, your daily experiencing, by having a journal or by making voice notes if you can’t write, and by having some quiet time where there are no distractions and you can just sift through your thoughts and pay attention to what’s coming in and out of your head, you may want to talk to somebody. And by that, I mean you may in. May be as simple as peer support.

Bill Gasiamis 20:01
Just get in touch with other stroke survivors and share experiences and understand what it is that they’re going through, and see where the similarities are, and maybe get some understanding of how they’re dealing with the situation that they’re in. But then also you might want to get professional support, which is something that I did a lot of I got professional support, and I spent a lot of time in therapy. Because what I found with therapy was it’s non-judgmental. I can go there as myself, and if the counselor is any good, they will allow me to be myself.

Bill Gasiamis 20:38
They won’t judge me, and they will allow me to express myself in all the weird and wonderful ways that I might and perhaps offer things for me to reflect on, and tips and tools to help me look at the way that I’m going about my life, perhaps to look at the way that I’m talking to myself, support me In changing some of the conversations that I’m having having in my head, and give me an understanding of why people behave the way that they do after stroke, and not just me, but also the people around me.

Bill Gasiamis 21:11
For some people, they didn’t really go about behaving in an appropriate way after stroke, and instead of getting annoyed and upset with them, what would have been a better thing for me to do was try and understand them and not take it personally and even forgive them, perhaps not to their face, but in my own quiet time, forgive them and let them know that I understand that their response is actually more about them than it has than it is about me. One of the other things you can do is you can celebrate the small wins. This is really, really important and super helpful.

Bill Gasiamis 21:56
By celebrating the small wins, what you are doing is you are reminding yourself that you are moving forward, and by looking for small things to celebrate, they are going to be much easier for you to find, because stroke recovery is not linear. You are going to have days that are good, days that are bad. You’re going to have up days and down days your stroke, sometimes will feel like you’re taking one step forward and two steps back. So celebrating the small wins is really important. Those little, small wins accumulate, and they become a lot of wins over a long period of time.

Bill Gasiamis 22:34
And you should focus on long term, the long term win, where you’ve come in three months, six months, 12 months, not what happened day to day. It’s too short of a time to pay attention to how your recovery is going, because you might be paying attention on a day when things were were not so good, where you weren’t feeling great, and you felt like recovery wasn’t going forward, and there’s no point on focusing on those days. Finally, I just want to say that growth is messy and worth it. You don’t have to go back to the person you were before the traumatic event.

Bill Gasiamis 23:18
In fact, I wouldn’t recommend it. That person is living a false sense of security is unaware that they need to be prepared for things that might happen in their life. They’re going around living blissfully unaware. And while that may seem like a good idea, and means that sometimes that can catch us out and being blissfully unaware gets in the way of us responding in an appropriate manner to a traumatic event. Post Traumatic Growth is about growing into somebody new. Bring the old person with you on that journey, they can help you inform the way forward.

Bill Gasiamis 24:06
And it’s important to combine the old identity with the new identity so you can grow into an enhanced version of yourself, even though you have been wounded, traumatized, injured, it doesn’t matter. It’s really important to honor your process, because everyone’s process is what gets them to the place where they can achieve amazing and wonderful things. Your process is yours. It’s unique. Allow it to unfold. Get curious about how it’s unfolding. If you like this video, please do me a favor. Leave a comment below. Let me know what you think.

Bill Gasiamis 24:55
Are you experiencing post-traumatic growth? Have you. You made some of the steps already towards post-traumatic growth. Were you unaware of whether or not you were experiencing post-traumatic growth? I’d love to hear from you. Please leave a comment below, like and share the video, see you on the next one you.

The post The Growth You Didn’t Know You Were Having – Post Traumatic Growth After Stroke appeared first on Recovery After Stroke.

For many stroke survivors, the most challenging part of recovery isn’t always physical—it’s the mental exhaustion that follows them day after day. This deep, unshakable tiredness is known as cognitive fatigue, and it affects countless people who appear “fine” on the outside but are working incredibly hard behind the scenes just to function.

Fatigue comes up in almost every conversation I have on this podcast. I spent years testing what actually moved the needle on mine, and three things did. They are in 3 Things That May Improve Fatigue After Stroke.

One stroke survivor who knows this all too well is Doug Mitchell.

Cognitive fatigue is a kind of mental exhaustion that goes far beyond being “tired.” It affects your ability to think clearly, stay focused, solve problems, and complete everyday tasks. After a stroke, the brain works harder to reroute and compensate for damaged areas. Even simple activities like holding a conversation, reading a sentence, or planning a meal can feel like climbing a mountain.

Unlike physical fatigue, cognitive fatigue is invisible. It’s not something people can see—but you feel it deeply. And unfortunately, it’s often misunderstood by others who don’t know what it’s like to live with a brain that’s trying to heal.

Doug Mitchell lived with cognitive fatigue for two years before realizing what had happened to him. He went to the hospital thinking he might be having a heart attack, only to learn he’d had three strokes—and never knew it. The strokes were caused by a hole in his heart, and they impacted three areas of his brain, leaving him with 90% cognitive and 10% physical deficits.

Doug calls his experience an “invisible stroke” because, from the outside, he looked fine. But inside, his brain was struggling with memory, attention, task initiation, and mood regulation.

One of the hardest moments for Doug was undergoing a neuropsychological assessment. He thought he had aced the test. But the results showed he had lost his executive function—a term that includes abilities like decision-making, multitasking, and emotional regulation. These are exactly the areas impacted by cognitive fatigue.

For the first two years, Doug was in denial. He couldn’t believe he’d had a stroke. In his words:

“I’m a man. There’s no way I had a stroke. I looked fine. I felt fine.”

That changed when he participated in a stroke survivor-led writing group. During one of the sessions, he wrote a story inspired by the prompt: “How did I get here?” What came from that was a powerful metaphor that he now shares with others:

Imagine yourself before stroke as a pristine piece of paper—smooth, unblemished.

Doug shared several strategies that help him manage his energy and improve his quality of life:

Doug knows that cognitive fatigue can be isolating. He understands the denial, the grief of not returning to work, and the uncertainty of how to move forward. But his message is clear:

“Don’t be in denial. Know that you can improve. Be kind to yourself. Take the bull by the horns—because there’s no end to what you can do. Bill and I are proof of that.”

If you’re struggling with cognitive fatigue after a stroke, know this: you are not alone. Recovery doesn’t always mean returning to who you were before—it means discovering who you are now.

Doug’s journey from “invisible stroke” to Doug 2.0 shows that even when life crumples you up, you can still unfold into something new. With patience, support, and self-kindness, your story isn’t over—it’s just being rewritten.

Doug’s invisible stroke left him cognitively fatigued—but his powerful story shows that healing, support, and meaning are still possible.

Support The Recovery After Stroke Podcast Through Patreon

Highlights:

00:00 Updates and Introduction to Doug Mitchell

Transcript:

Bill Gasiamis 0:32

Bill Gasiamis 0:32

Bill Gasiamis 1:44

Doug Mitchell 2:14

Bill Gasiamis 2:16

Doug Mitchell 2:21

Doug Mitchell 3:07

Doug Mitchell 3:46

Doug Mitchell 4:34

Doug Mitchell 5:22

Bill Gasiamis 6:02

Doug Mitchell 6:03

Doug Mitchell 6:37

Doug Mitchell 6:47

Doug Mitchell 7:36

Doug Mitchell 8:16

Doug Mitchell 9:17

Doug Mitchell 9:57

Doug Mitchell 10:36

Bill Gasiamis 10:57

Doug Mitchell 12:13

Bill Gasiamis 12:44

Doug Mitchell 12:46

Bill Gasiamis 13:07

Bill Gasiamis 13:49

Doug Mitchell 14:36

Doug Mitchell 15:20

Doug Mitchell 15:45

Bill Gasiamis 16:12

Doug Mitchell 16:18

Bill Gasiamis 16:28

Bill Gasiamis 17:06

Doug Mitchell 17:21

Bill Gasiamis 17:47

Doug Mitchell 17:50

Bill Gasiamis 17:53

Bill Gasiamis 18:32

Bill Gasiamis 18:49

Doug Mitchell 19:15

Doug Mitchell 19:40

Bill Gasiamis 19:57

Doug Mitchell 19:59

Bill Gasiamis 20:07

Doug Mitchell 20:26

Doug Mitchell 21:02

Bill Gasiamis 21:18

Doug Mitchell 21:29

Bill Gasiamis 21:32

Doug Mitchell 21:59

Bill Gasiamis 22:19

Doug Mitchell 22:24

Bill Gasiamis 22:58

Doug Mitchell 23:14

Bill Gasiamis 23:34

Doug Mitchell 23:36

Bill Gasiamis 23:44

Doug Mitchell 23:47

Doug Mitchell 24:27

Bill Gasiamis 24:50

Bill Gasiamis 25:28

Doug Mitchell 26:04

Bill Gasiamis 26:15

Bill Gasiamis 26:51

Bill Gasiamis 27:26

Doug Mitchell 27:54

Doug Mitchell 28:37

Bill Gasiamis 29:08

Doug Mitchell 29:15

Bill Gasiamis 29:19

Bill Gasiamis 29:52

Doug Mitchell 30:20

Doug Mitchell 31:09

Bill Gasiamis 31:49

Bill Gasiamis 32:26

Bill Gasiamis 33:03

Bill Gasiamis 33:40

Doug Mitchell 34:19

Doug Mitchell 35:05

Bill Gasiamis 35:19

Doug Mitchell 35:35

Doug Mitchell 36:12

Bill Gasiamis 36:39

Bill Gasiamis 37:16

Bill Gasiamis 37:55

Doug Mitchell 38:17

Bill Gasiamis 38:36

Bill Gasiamis 39:19

Doug Mitchell 39:26

Bill Gasiamis 39:27

Doug Mitchell 39:46

Bill Gasiamis 40:34

Doug Mitchell 41:25

Doug Mitchell 42:00

Doug Mitchell 42:30

Bill Gasiamis 42:44

Bill Gasiamis 43:15

Doug Mitchell 43:54

Doug Mitchell 44:27

Bill Gasiamis 44:53

Bill Gasiamis 45:27

Bill Gasiamis 46:03

Bill Gasiamis 46:39

Doug Mitchell 47:07

Doug Mitchell 47:40

Doug Mitchell 48:12

Bill Gasiamis 48:32

Doug Mitchell 48:35

Bill Gasiamis 48:42

Doug Mitchell 48:44

Bill Gasiamis 48:58

Doug Mitchell 49:05

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Doug Mitchell 49:27

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Doug Mitchell 49:50

Bill Gasiamis 50:15

Doug Mitchell 50:22

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Doug Mitchell 50:29

Bill Gasiamis 50:33

Bill Gasiamis 51:10

Bill Gasiamis 51:47

Doug Mitchell 52:32

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Doug Mitchell 54:13

Bill Gasiamis 54:57

Doug Mitchell 55:08

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Doug Mitchell 55:33

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Doug Mitchell 56:31

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Doug Mitchell 57:22

Bill Gasiamis 57:24

Bill Gasiamis 58:03

Doug Mitchell 58:45

Doug Mitchell 59:08

Bill Gasiamis 59:33

Doug Mitchell 59:40

Bill Gasiamis 59:42

Bill Gasiamis 1:00:25

Doug Mitchell 1:00:47

Doug Mitchell 1:01:19

Bill Gasiamis 1:01:50

Bill Gasiamis 1:02:27

Doug Mitchell 1:03:38

Doug Mitchell 1:04:23

Bill Gasiamis 1:05:02

Doug Mitchell 1:05:13

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Bill Gasiamis 1:06:37

Doug Mitchell 1:07:05

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Doug Mitchell 1:07:43

Doug Mitchell 1:08:30

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Doug Mitchell 1:09:22

Bill Gasiamis 1:09:25

Bill Gasiamis 1:10:00

Bill Gasiamis 1:10:30

Bill Gasiamis 1:10:59

Intro 1:11:25

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Intro 1:12:20

Intro 1:12:46

The post Understanding Cognitive Fatigue After Stroke: Doug’s Journey to Doug 2.0 appeared first on Recovery After Stroke.

Twelve years ago, everything changed. I was a small business owner, working long hours to keep things moving, trying to raise two teenage boys with my wife Christine, and managing all the stress that came with it. Like many people juggling life and business, I thought I had to do it all myself. I didn’t sleep enough. I smoked. I drank a little. I didn’t eat well. And I definitely didn’t ask for help.

One Friday morning in February 2012, I woke up with a numb sensation in my big left toe. It didn’t seem like a big deal, so I ignored it. Over the next few days, the numbness spread—first to my foot, then my leg, then my hip. Still, I pushed through. I had work to do, clients to manage, a team to lead. I chalked it up to a pinched nerve and visited my chiropractor.

By Friday night, I was in the emergency department. A CT scan revealed a shadow on my brain. Doctors weren’t sure what it was, but they suspected a bleed. I stayed in the hospital for seven days as they ran tests. I went home with strict orders not to work or exert myself. But I couldn’t sit still. I returned to work against medical advice and soon suffered a second brain bleed.

Six weeks later, the second hemorrhage caused increased deficits. I couldn’t think clearly, speak properly, or manage daily tasks. My cognitive fog deepened, and the world felt disorienting. I had to accept help. I had to let go of control.

In November 2014, the third bleed struck while I was driving. I felt the numbness return and drove myself to the hospital. This time, I was told surgery was necessary. My neurosurgeon, Associate Professor Kate Drummond, explained that the blood vessel had to be removed.

Amidst this crisis, my wife’s mother passed away, compounding our grief. Surgery was scheduled for November 24th—Saint Katerina’s Day in the Greek Orthodox calendar. I went in prepared, physically and emotionally.

I woke up alive but unable to walk. My left side was numb. I collapsed the first time I tried to stand. But instead of despair, I felt determined. I entered rehab, hung from a ceiling harness, and began the long journey of learning to walk again.

During rehab, I studied neuroplasticity. I learned from experts like Dr. Michael Merzenich and Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita. I discovered that visualizing movement could activate the same neurons as actual movement. When I couldn’t move, I imagined myself walking and using my arm. This mental training became part of my daily practice.

Just before Christmas 2014, I returned home. Although my mother-in-law was no longer with us, my family was relieved to have me back. I was on my feet, using my arm again, and slowly regaining independence.

Homebound and unable to work, I asked myself a big question: What now? A conversation with a friend sparked an idea. I had learned so much—could I share it with others? I remembered a hospital room called “The Transit Lounge,” where I had waited between hospital and rehab. That became the metaphor for my first podcast.

By episode 20, I realized my true audience: stroke survivors. I rebranded the show as the Recovery After Stroke Podcast, and the rest is history.

Since then, I’ve interviewed nearly 350 stroke survivors, neuroscientists, and rehabilitation experts. At episode 70, I said something unexpected: “Stroke was the best thing that happened to me.” My guest said the same.

That moment sparked the idea for my book: The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became the Best Thing That Happened. I identified 10 common traits shared by thriving survivors—those became the chapters.

Today, I am living proof that recovery is possible. I found a new identity, a new purpose, and a voice I didn’t know I had. This journey has taken me from rock bottom to global impact. I’ve spoken at conferences, appeared on radio and TV, and built a global community of stroke survivors who support each other.

If you’re recovering from a stroke, know this: you are not alone. Recovery takes time. It takes support. It takes a mindset. But it is possible.

Your story is still unfolding. Your purpose can still emerge. And your life can take on new meaning, just like mine did.

• Read the book: The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became the Best Thing That Happened
• Listen to the podcast: Recovery After Stroke Podcast
• Visit the community: recoveryafterstroke.com

Let’s keep going—together.

Bill Gasiamis
Host, Recovery After Stroke Podcast

A stroke survivor’s raw and inspiring story of healing, resilience, and discovering purpose after three brain bleeds and brain surgery.

Support The Recovery After Stroke Podcast Through Patreon
Grab A Copy Of The Book

Highlights:

00:00 Life Before the Stroke
02:18 The Progression of Numbness
05:53 The Chiropractor’s Advice and Hospital Visit
16:19 The Second Bleed and Hospital Stay
24:18 Preparation for Brain Surgery
30:30 Rehabilitation and Recovery
36:07 Discovering Neuroplasticity
43:19 Starting the Recovery After Stroke Podcast
51:55 The Unexpected Way Stroke Became the Best Thing
59:37 Final Thoughts and Community Building

Transcript:

Bill Gasiamis 0:02
12 years ago, my life changed forever. So I was working in my own business, and while doing that, my wife and I were raising two young kids, one of them was teenager. One was almost about to become a teenager. I was about seven years into my business, and I had a lot to learn, and I was doing things the hard way. There were a lot of problems. There were a lot of challenges that small business owners face, getting paid, the work, the quoting, everything that anyone who’s had a small business understands.

Bill Gasiamis 0:45
But I didn’t know that I should reach out to other people to help me out, to perhaps give me a little bit of an insight into what to do to solve all those problems that new business owners tend to have. And I tried to work it out, work it all out myself. And as a result of that, I was extremely stressed out. I wasn’t enjoying my life. I was having a lot of trouble with the amount of hours that I was working with, no downtime, with just work, work, work.

Bill Gasiamis 1:18
I was totally stressed. I probably wasn’t eating well, I was smoking, I was drinking a little, and things were just pretty terrible. And then one day in the morning, I woke up and I noticed a numb sensation on my big left toe, and that was an interesting time, because I ignored it, because it’s just my big left toe. What’s the big deal? When you wake up in the morning, your entire body feels well, your bigger left toe feels numb. I still was able to walk, put my shoes on, go to work, so it didn’t really mean anything to me. It was a Friday and then when I went to work that day.

Bill Gasiamis 2:06
Everything went well as far as work was concerned, and I got stuff done. And then at the end of the day, I went home, and we went about catching up with some friends and family, which we tend to do on a Friday night, and had a few cigarettes, a few glasses of alcohol to drink. And then the next day, I noticed the numbness had spread a little to my foot. But again, I didn’t have much to do that day, so I continued to ignore it. And the following day, which was a Sunday, I woke up in the morning to go to the gym, which I used to do every Sunday.

Bill Gasiamis 2:42
And I would go for a run on a treadmill. And this particular day, while at the gym and running on the treadmill, I noticed that I couldn’t put my foot down onto the right path in the treadmill. It was becoming really difficult to it was becoming really difficult to run in a rhythm that was conducive to safe and comfortable running on a treadmill, and I had to look down a lot and notice my foot and trying to understand what was happening. Nonetheless, I pushed on and I got the run finished, and then went home. Thought nothing of it.

Bill Gasiamis 3:28
And then the next morning, on a Monday, I had decided that I was going to go and see the chiropractor about it, because when I woke up on Monday morning, the numbers had spread to my knee roughly about my knee, and I went to my chiropractor, who was on speed dial. He was always the person who I made responsible for fixing my for fixing all my ailments with regards to my back, because sometimes I would bend over incorrectly, pick up things incorrectly, and I made him responsible for fixing me, getting me back to work.

Bill Gasiamis 4:10
So when I went to the chiropractor, he had a look at it, and he said, it doesn’t look like it’s coming from your doesn’t look like it’s coming from anywhere that’s related to your back, and what you should do is just go and grab some anti inflammatories, keep an eye on it, and if it changes, get back to me and let me know. Now by this stage, I told my wife, and another two days elapsed, and by Wednesday, it had spread. The numbers had spread all the way up to my hip, basically.

Bill Gasiamis 4:51
And my wife noticed I was walking funny, and she said, Why are you walking funny? And I said. I’m not walking funny. Leave me alone. I’ve got stuff to do. I’m fine. I’ll make another appointment to see the chiropractor. So that Wednesday, I rang the chiropractor to make another appointment so he can check me out and fix me up. And then what I realized was that they were not going to be able to see me until Friday, and the first appointment was at the beginning of the day, but on that day, I was going to be in a position where I had a lot of work to do.

Bill Gasiamis 5:32
And I didn’t want to miss out on going to work. On Friday morning, I had to set up my team at one site, and then I had to meet a client at another site, so there was no way I was going to miss that. So I told the receptionist to make an appointment for me that was going to be at the end of the day on Friday, so I could finish my day’s work and then go to the appointment. And see the chiropractor, which all seemed like a good idea at the time, except Friday morning, things had escalated, and when I tried to show the guys what to do on a particular building that we were working on.

Bill Gasiamis 6:21
I had to get up on the ladder, and my left leg wouldn’t go up on the ladder. It wouldn’t stay on the bottom rung for me to climb the ladder properly. And because it wouldn’t stay on the bottom rung, I looked down to see what was happening. And what I thought was happening was that, because there was some water on the ground, I’d stepped on the water, that made my shoe slippery, and then as I tried to climb the ladder, my shoe slipped off. Well, we know now that that wasn’t the case, but at the moment, what I did was I grabbed my leg from both my knees.

Bill Gasiamis 7:05
I beg your pardon, grab my leg with both my hands from my knee, and I began to lift my foot onto the first rung of the ladder. I know what you’re saying. Now. There should have been so many warning signs I should have done something about it, but it just didn’t cross my mind that I needed to do anything more and climb on the ladder and show the guys what I was up to. So anyway, I did that. Got down, pretty non event. You know, nothing really happened. And we went to the client and saw my other client at the other site. We had the conversation. Everything went well.

Bill Gasiamis 7:50
The day finished, and then by the time the day finished, it was time for me to go to the chiropractor. I got there, and as soon as I got there, put me on the table, and he asked me what the issue was, what was happening. And I said to him that I have numbness now down my entire side, my entire left side, and that I’m not sure what it’s about, and that he needs to sort it out for me. He put me on the table, and within a minute he said, whatever’s happening is not happening to to you because of your back. It’s something else.

Bill Gasiamis 8:26
And I think he knew what it was, but he didn’t want to alarm me, so he said I would go to the hospital. Now, when he said that, I argued with him. I said, Look, I can’t go to the hospital. I’ve got work. To do tomorrow. There’s 20 guys relying on me. I think it’s 20. There was heaps of them. I don’t think it was 20, but it may have been less. The story has changed somewhat in my memory.

Bill Gasiamis 8:56
So there was, we’ll call them, 15 guys relying on me, and that day, we had to get into this building first thing in the morning, begin the job, finish the job by the end of the day, because we had no window of opportunity to do it otherwise, and that’s what I was going to do. I was not going to miss out on work. So instead of going to the hospital like he told me to I went home. And then when I got home, my wife asked me, What did the doctor say? And I told her that he told me to go to the hospital.

Bill Gasiamis 9:37
And she said, Well, what? Why are you at home? Then? Well, I told her, Look, I’ve got to go to work. There’s potentially 15 guys relying on me to get there. It was definitely more than 10, and I can’t miss out on that particular pay day. There’s a heap of work that needs to do. It’s a great opportunity. We’re going to get it done, and we’re not going to miss it. And I can’t go because. If I go to the hospital today, you know what’s going to happen? They will see me. By the time they see me and discharge me, it’ll be the next day.

Bill Gasiamis 10:11
I’ll be really tired, and then I won’t have had the opportunity to go to work. And that can’t be my wife, being a little smarter than me, said, why don’t we do this? Why don’t I take you to the hospital and they’ll tell you there’s nothing wrong, and then you can go to work tomorrow. Now, when she said, it sounded great, and I thought that was a great idea, so it’s exactly what we did. And when we got to the hospital, she left me behind, because I told her to go mind the kids.

Bill Gasiamis 10:48
They were at home alone, and it was around dinner time, and I would update her as soon as there was some information. And then from there, what would happen was I would get the scans, they would give me the details, and then I would go update her over the phone to tell her to come and pick me up. Now what happened was, as soon as I went into emergency and gave them the details of what was happening to me, well then they gave me the red carpet treatment.

Bill Gasiamis 11:22
I was in a ward immediately, and then very quickly, I was getting scans, a CT scan, blood pressure checks, the whole lot, but it did take a little while for the doctors to turn up and actually give me the news, and it was really late. We think it was around 11:30pm on the Friday night, and when I received the call and when I received the news, I sent a message to my wife and told her not to wait up for me. They haven’t got back to me. I basically lied. They haven’t got back to me with any news yet, and come and see me tomorrow morning.

Bill Gasiamis 12:12
And the reason I said that was because the doctor had come to see me and told me that there was a shadow on my brain, and that the shadow was something that they weren’t sure what it was. They didn’t know the cause of it, and they wanted to do further tests to find out what it was. So that was a seven day stay in hospital, where they continue to do all the tests that they could possibly do to determine what the cause of the bleed was. And at the end of seven days, I went home with no definitive answer, but I was told when you go home, you are not going to work.

Bill Gasiamis 13:00
Do any physical activity, nothing strenuous whatsoever, and then you’re going to come and see us in six weeks so we can do a follow up scan and work out what’s going on. So it’s exactly what I did for the majority of the time, until just before the six week appointment, I was bored at home. After being at home just dealing with all the dramas that we had just been through and not being allowed to do anything strenuous, and not being able to walk to work, anywhere, or do anything, I was going stir crazy.

Bill Gasiamis 13:38
So I decided that what I’m going to do is ring the guys to take me to work. They were going to pick me up so I don’t drive, because I wasn’t allowed to drive, and they were going to take me to work, and I was going to go and hang out with them for a day while they worked. I was going to watch them work, not fun for the employees, but nonetheless, I wasn’t going to be critical. I was just going to go and be there, because they were managing really well. Without me for six weeks, they were doing a great job, and I needed to get out of the house.

Bill Gasiamis 14:11
So somebody did come and pick me up, and they took me to work. And they were painting this massive wall. It was the wall of a hotel. They needed to use the room very quickly, this particular client of ours gave us short notice, and then when they gave us the work, we would go in, get it done within a day, and then go home and hand it back over to them. And then this particular day, the guys were doing well, getting the work done, and I was sitting on a chair just watching them and chatting to them.

Bill Gasiamis 14:43
And I noticed the room started to spin again, and I felt like I needed to throw up, and I couldn’t orient myself. And I was on the chair that I was sitting on. I was starting to lean in one direction. I was starting to kind of like i. Just fall away. And I couldn’t write myself. In order to write myself, I started to slap my face a couple of times, which didn’t really work, but the guys hadn’t finished the job yet, so I didn’t want to rush them, and I did say to them, I’m not feeling well, hopefully you’ll finish pretty soon, and then you’ll be able to take me home.

Bill Gasiamis 15:23
And I waited for them to finish the wall, which seemed to be the most important thing to me, and that’s exactly what they did. They finished the wall, and it took about another hour or so after I started feeling strange, for them to finally pack everything up and have me in the car. And then the idea in my mind was we’re going to drive home, and when I get home, I’m going to tell Christine, my wife, to take me to the hospital. And it was a great idea. On the way home, we passed by one hospital. Nearby, there was another hospital.

Bill Gasiamis 16:03
It didn’t occur to me that we should stop at the hospital. We passed by, but I did stop outside that hospital to throw up on a tree, which was in the park across the road. So instead of going into the hospital, I jumped back into the van and told the person who was driving me home to continue taking me home. So that’s what they did. Now, for some reason, it was extremely busy that day, and it took forever for us to get home, and I think we were in the car for about another hour, hour and a half, something like that.

Bill Gasiamis 16:40
And by the time we got back home, way too many hours had elapsed after I’d started feeling the room spinning, nauseous and not being able to orient myself. Christine was warned. I called her and told her be ready to take me to the hospital. So she got me and was ready to take me to the hospital. And then when we got to the hospital, which from my house, again, is about another 15 minute drive, she dropped me off an emergency we were chatting in the car. Everything was fine, and when I got to emergency and she left to go and park the car.

Bill Gasiamis 17:26
She was just going to come back quickly and meet me in the waiting room, I remember going to the nurses station to check myself in and to let them know what was happening. And I got to the window, and that’s about all I remember. I don’t remember anything else after that. I didn’t remember my name. I couldn’t tell them what I was doing there, and that’s the last thing I remember. Then I blacked out, and I think I got my wallet out and potentially gave them my ID so that they could identify me, and so they they knew who I was.

Bill Gasiamis 18:06
And then I don’t know how much longer later I woke up in a bed with all the machines connected and all the monitors running and everything. And at that time, there was this strange lady waiting for me at the end of the bed, when I wake up, she asked me, Do you know who I am? And I didn’t know who it was. I bet you guys know who it was. And she’s never, never let me forget it that I forgot who she was. I didn’t remember her or recognize her. It was my wife, Christine. When she told the doctors that I couldn’t recognize her, that was it.

Bill Gasiamis 18:47
They went mental again, and the bed that I was in was being moved at a rapid rate of knots to get me into some area where they were going to further assist me and saved my life, I imagine, and that’s exactly what they did. That was a three day hospital stay. And when I went home, I went home with a whole bunch of deficits. I couldn’t remember how to begin and finish a sentence. I couldn’t write an email. Had a lot of cognitive issues. I had a lot of trouble just doing the daily tasks that I needed to do.

Bill Gasiamis 19:40
And I felt spaced out a lot like I was some some kind of other plane, some kind of other planet. And it was the weirdest time of my life. They’d given me some medication so there was no numbness, but there was a lot of strange sensations for. Things I couldn’t make sense of, a lot of forgetfulness and anger, personality changes the whole lot. There was so many issues that I had to live with and deal with, and so did my wife. And I did my best to manage that, but I didn’t have a lot of success.

Bill Gasiamis 20:20
What had happened was the blood vessel that they finally discovered had that had bled in my brain the first time, had bled again, and this time the size of the bleed went from being about the size of a in Australia, what we call a 10 cent piece, which is probably the size of a dime, to about the size of a golf ball. And because of the position that it was in, they weren’t going to operate and remove it. They just left it in there. And because it was impacting a lot of area, what that did was it created the situation where it was impacting a lot of my brain negatively.

Bill Gasiamis 21:08
So that whole journey started to get better. After the blood clot started to decrease in size, and things started to come back online. And as they came back online, I started to get more and more active. Now, the first bleed was in February 2012 the second one was in March 2012 and after doing really well from March 2012 to about November 2014 the blood vessel burst again, and that meant that I needed another state hospital. But let me tell you the story of what happened when it burst.

Bill Gasiamis 21:57
When it burst, I was driving my car in the city, I was going to see a client, and I felt a burning sensation down my entire left side. And I thought, Oh, that’s a bit weird. So I parked the car, I got out the car, I walked around the car to see if I could shake it off, and it went away. And then I got back in the car. And then as soon as I got in the car, I realized that the numbness was back, the burning sensation, and the numbness was back. It was like I had been in the sun, and half of my body, right down the middle, got burned by the sun, and the other half did not. And it was a very bizarre feeling.

Bill Gasiamis 22:44
Now, yes, I did realize that I was probably having another bleed. So I did what everyone would do when their blade is brain is bleeding. I drove myself to the hospital in the city this time, and when I got there, I parked my car in a no standing zone, straight outside the hospital, walked to emergency, rang Christine and told her, I’m on my way. And then when I got to emergency, I went to the nurses and said to them, I am having a bleed in the brain. You need to get me into a CT scanner right now. Now they knew that that was a bit strange.

Bill Gasiamis 23:34
Nobody who’s having a stroke normally walks in to say they’re having a stroke and that they need a CT scanner. They asked me for my details. I wouldn’t give them my details because I was saying there’s no time for that. Get me into a CT scanner. And eventually I gave them my details, because that had been the hospital that I had moved all my records to after the second bleed, they found my details and confirmed that I wasn’t a crazy man, and they admitted me into hospital, where a little while later, I was met by my neurosurgeon.

Bill Gasiamis 24:15
My neurosurgeon was the one and only back then, Associate Professor Kate Drummond, now she runs neurosurgery at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in Melbourne, and she is considered to be one of the best neurosurgeons in Australia. In my mind, she’s the best. Kate came to see me and said, the blood vessel has burst again. It is bleeding now, and what we need to do is take it out. It has got to the point where this thing is not going to stop bleeding.

Bill Gasiamis 24:51
And what you need to do is make a decision as to whether or not you want to take that risk, or whether you want to prepare for brain surgery. Do, and that’s exactly what I did. I told her, we are going to prepare for brain surgery. We’re going to get this thing out, and we’re going to somehow or another, whatever comes after that. We’re going to deal with it and move on. So that was early November 2014 and then a little while later, we went and did all the paperwork, all the pre checks, etc, for surgery.

Bill Gasiamis 25:31
And in that time, just about two weeks before surgery, was booked in, my mother in law passed away, and things got really dramatic and intense, and then we got scared, and we didn’t know what the future holds. So then we have to deal with a funeral, and all of the emotions that go along with my mother in law passing away, not to mention all the emotions associated with the fact that my blood vessel in my head is bleeding. And I’m not sure how you prepare for that kind of thing, especially when you’ve been through nothing that dramatic before, and my wife was beside herself.

Bill Gasiamis 26:25
It was a very difficult time for us, the entire family, and at the funeral, I wasn’t allowed to be a pallbearer, for obvious reasons, so we attended the funeral, we did all The things that we needed to do, and then we had about a week to prepare for brain surgery, and it was such a difficult time, and that’s what we did, though we prepared. And after we prepared, we attended the hospital where I met with my surgeon again and her team. It was first thing in the morning on the 24th of November, and it was a significant day, because in Greek Orthodox tradition.

Bill Gasiamis 27:16
That’s the name day of st Catarina. And some people had mentioned that to me, they told me that everything will go well because they’re going to pray to st Catarina for me so that she can look over me during surgery and give strength to the team and to me to make sure that we have a great outcome. And first thing in the morning on the 24th of November, went into brain surgery, woke up some hours later, and was quite relieved that I woke up and things seemed to be okay, until I noticed that my left side was numb and it felt a little bit strange.

Bill Gasiamis 28:01
But I didn’t know how serious it wasn’t or what it meant, until my family came to visit. They all came to visit me. We had a little bit of a chat at the bedside in recovery. I don’t really remember seeing them. I just remember hearing them. I was quite out of it, as you can imagine. But in that time, a nurse came in as well, and the nurse asked me if I had been to the toilet yet it’s one of the things that they want to do is make sure that every patient gets to the toilet and starts moving their bowels as soon as possible after surgery.

Bill Gasiamis 28:41
And I said I had not, and she said she would help me in the to get to the toilet. And all I had to do was step off the bed on the left side, and she was going, and I was going to put my arm around her, and she was going to help me get to the toilet, because she knew I was a little groggy from surgery, and she wanted to make sure that I didn’t have a fall. Now, what she and I didn’t know was that the numbness on my left side meant that I couldn’t feel my leg, and I actually couldn’t walk, and as I got out of the bed and put my weight on the left leg.

Bill Gasiamis 29:21
I collapsed from the bed onto the ground just hours after brain surgery with a fresh scar on my head, and I screamed my lungs out. And then you can imagine what happened after that. Then there was a massive rush to get me off the ground back onto the bed, and they quickly determined that I cannot feel my left side, and they started doing more tests to try and work out what extent of numbness I had, what that meant, and how bad was the situation. Could I, Couldn’t I walk?

Bill Gasiamis 30:01
When they determined that I couldn’t walk, it was a little while later that Kate come in and arranged to have me booked in to two months of surgery, to two months of rehab so that I could learn how to walk again and regain the use of my left side. So I was alive, but I was fairly injured. My wife was definitely relieved, but then was a lot of concern about what the future had in store for us. I remember while I was still in hospital, and they wanted to get rehabilitation started.

Bill Gasiamis 30:46
They sent a rehab team into the ward, wheeled me out in a wheelchair and took me to a room and hung me up from the ceiling in a harness to help get my walking starting again. It was so strange. Anyway, I’m hanging from the ceiling. Basically, what they’re doing is they’re putting weight on my leg with my body, but just enough so that obviously I can’t fall, and that I’m completely safe. And then they’re using their hands to move my leg for me at the beginning so that I can kind of get the movement back the way that the leg moves, the mechanical part of the movement back.

Bill Gasiamis 31:32
And that’s exactly what we did for a little while. And then that had me in hospital for about another seven days. Then they moved me to the rehab ward of the hospital, the rehab section, and I was in the rehab section for the next month. I got out a little earlier than I expected, which was really big deal for me, because it was just a few days before Christmas of 2024 and I didn’t want to be in hospital over Christmas, so I was really pleased to be able to get out and go home for Christmas.

Bill Gasiamis 32:06
Now, in rehab, things started slowly. They assessed me, and then I had to go and do small amounts of rehabilitation on a daily basis because the fatigue was killing me. We’re talking about doing half an hour of recovery exercises and Neuroplasticity training of my arm and my leg, and then I’d be wiped out for that entire rest of the day as I was in hospital, the longer I was in there, the more rehab I could do without being so fatigued, but I don’t think I ever did into rehab where the fatigue didn’t kick in and then wiped me out.

Bill Gasiamis 32:48
So because of the level of fatigue at the beginning, the sessions weren’t so frequent, but then later, the sessions started to increase, and I started doing two sessions a day. I learned how to use my left side again. I learned how to use my left leg again. I learned how to use my arm. One of the exercises I did for my arm was to have my arm in a box of rice where the task was to reach in and grab all the little duvallies and knickknacks that they had in there. There were some pen lids, there was some there was some paper clips, there were some ball bearings, there was some marbles.

Bill Gasiamis 33:32
There was whole bunch of different things that I had to find, identify them before I pulled my hand out, and then put them on the table and then go again. With regards to the walking, I remember getting to a stage where I wanted to try walking on my own without anyone coming with me. So what I did was I asked the nurse who would pick me up every morning, instead of coming with me and helping me walk back, I felt I was strong enough to walk on my own. I said to her, Can I walk to the rehab room, which would have been about maybe 100 meters away?

Bill Gasiamis 34:15
Can I walk to the rehab room on my own tomorrow? And if that’s okay, that’s what I want to do, because I had the confidence now and I felt like it was the right time for me to try my own reluctantly, she said yes, but I’m sure she would have got it authorized and ticked. And I remember that day walking back to the rehab room where we were going to do some training, off on my own, off my own steam, holding on to the rail the whole way, obviously, because I didn’t want to fall over. But nonetheless, without anybody else next to me was a big deal as a big milestone moment.

Bill Gasiamis 35:00
Yeah, it was a pretty cool time to realize that you’re back on your feet. Now, my left side didn’t feel fantastic, but I was back on my feet. My knee would buckle every so often, and it still does very rarely, but sometimes it still buckles. And I got myself home in a few days, just before Christmas in December 2012 and it was a bittersweet moment, because I was home, but my mother in law wasn’t there, and we couldn’t celebrate Christmas like we had the previous years, because there was somebody missing, and we still marked the occasion.

Bill Gasiamis 35:47
But it was different. It wasn’t the same as the years before. There was a lot of happiness to have me around, and a lot of sadness because my mother in law wasn’t around, and I think it would have been so much sadder if I wasn’t there for my family, but we worked it out I got there. I now this is really important, something I want to share. So one of the reasons I believe that I got out of hospital a month earlier was because I had prepared myself a hospital, and I had done a lot of research into Neuroplasticity and how that works.

Bill Gasiamis 36:28
And whether or not I could use that in my favor in case I needed to. And what I discovered was the work of Dr Michael Merz and the kids, the doctor who I interviewed in the podcast. I can’t remember which episode, but I will put details on this video so you can find it. And he’s considered one of the world’s first authorities in Neuroplasticity, because of the work that he did in the 90s to prove that the brain was not fixed, that it was malleable plastic, and that could be retrained in different ways. And his team was part of the first team that invented the world’s first cochlear implant.

Bill Gasiamis 37:11
The bionic ear, that restored hearing to people who had lost their hearing. I bumped into Michael one time at a Melbourne event, and I asked him if he would be on the podcast, and he agreed, and what I learned from him was that I could do some things to help me in my recovery that didn’t take any Time or any effort, especially when I am sitting down because I am so fatigued all the time because of my brain injury. And this was a game changer.

Bill Gasiamis 37:50
And that thing that I learned was that if you imagine yourself doing something that activates the same part of the brain as if you’re actually doing it. So when I couldn’t do anything in my bed at rehab, I was imagining myself using my left arm and walking again, and I was doing that for hours upon hours every day, so that when I got to rehab, not only had I done the physical part of it, of rewiring the brain, I had also done the software upgrade of rewiring the brain, if you like.Yeah, that makes sense.

Bill Gasiamis 38:40
The software upgrade, and if you just imagine yourself doing something that’s rewiring that part of the brain, and when you do that task, it fires off the same neurons that you were firing off when you were imagining it. So what that means is that you can do way more rehab than you’re doing just by imagining something. So that’s one of the things that I believe to help me get out of, get out of hospital or rehab a month early.

Bill Gasiamis 39:19
Now, one of the other people whose work I looked at was a guy called Paul Bucha reader, and Paul Bucha reader was the scientist who kind of discovered Neuroplasticity, the way that we talk about it today, kind of discovered it back in the day when his Father, I believe, had a stroke, and he and his brothers decided to rehabilitate their father based on some research that they had read from many, many years ago, way back in the 1940s I believe, or even before that, and they decided to help rehabilitate their father.

Bill Gasiamis 40:00
Rather than just let him sit in a state after the hospital after his brain injury that most patients would have sat in when they were going through stroke recovery, back in those days, they did not give into the narrative, which was that, take your father home, there’s nothing you can do for him. You need to just look after him and that be about it. So they rehabilitated their father quite successfully. And then they started looking into the research about Neuroplasticity. And what they did is they devised some tools that helped blind people see again.

Bill Gasiamis 40:58
They also devised a tool that would eventually lead to restoring the balance in a lady called Cheryl Schultz, using her tongue as the balance mechanism that replaced the inner ear of Cheryl, which was damaged due to a medical situation where they gave her some medication, and that medication damaged her inner ear, and she could not Stand up on her feet after that particular intervention, the medication damaged her inner ear so much that she was not able to restore her balance. She was always in a state of vertigo.

Bill Gasiamis 41:52
The Room The world was always spinning, and she could not participate in regular life until she came across Paul Bucha reader and his team, and with a probe, with this thing that they put on the tongue, they taught the tongue to take over the task of the inner ear and restore balance to Cheryl Schultz. Now I’m going to have the details of that episode, because I interviewed Cheryl Schultz to get a first hand account of what happened to her. And I can’t believe that these are the things that I had stumbled across to help me in my recovery. And that’s what I did. I implemented them.

Bill Gasiamis 42:38
Now there are a couple of things that I should say and that depending on the severity of the damage, that might not be possible for all people. However, I don’t want to be the person who tells you something’s not possible. I would rather you work that out on your own than me tell you it’s not possible. I’m just sharing my story and the story of some other people that helped me in my journey to get from being in a wheelchair and not being able to walk and relying on other people to drive me around and pick me up and get my things done to walking to walking.

Bill Gasiamis 43:19
So that’s why I’m sharing this. I’m sharing this for that reason, and also to update people on who I am and how I came to be in the situation that I’m in, and why I’m the host of the recovery after stroke podcast, and why I wrote the book. The unexpected way that a stroke became the best thing that happened. I mean, stroke wasn’t the best thing that happened, but it’s the thing that I learned the most from.

Bill Gasiamis 43:51
It’s the experience in my life that taught me the most and that galvanized me to find information, to help myself, to seek out other people, to make sure that I was going to be able to have some sort of a regular life after all of this stuff that I was going to go through. So I hope you’ll continue listening, because I want to share some of the rest of the story. Now check out this little Wildlife Reserve at the park I’m walking in not far from where I live. So man made lake, but it’s amazing. This used to be a tip, what we call a tip, a garbage dump.

Bill Gasiamis 44:43
For many, many years, there was a hole in the ground that was so deep because it used to be a site where they would make bricks, so they had good clay here, so they would dig out the clay. They made a massive, massive hole. And. Over, I don’t know how many years, how many decades, and then after that, they refilled it, and this is where we would come to dispose of rubbish. Over the years, all sorts of different rubbish would get disposed here. And then after the decades of filling it up, then they’ve turned it into a park for the community, and it is quite massive.

Bill Gasiamis 45:23
That’s where I’ve been walking today in the park where all of the rubbish has been laid. Okay, let’s see if I can go find a shadier spot. So when I got home in 2014 we had Christmas. It was a very chilled time for New Years. We got through New Year’s 2015 and then soon after, my wife started to return back to work, because she had taken a lot of time off work, and I found myself at home alone. And while I was at home alone, I was trying to work out what I’m going to do with myself, like, what was the point of going through all this stuff? I wasn’t working yet.

Bill Gasiamis 46:10
Didn’t have the ability to go back to work. I still wasn’t allowed to drive. I was still going to regular follow ups with my surgeon to check my condition, scan the brain, see where it’s all at. And I remember being at home one day and falling over because I got up to take a plate that I had used to hold my sandwich, to take it back to the sink, and as I took the plate back to the sink and took the first step on my left leg, my left leg collapsed, and I found myself on the ground. Before I fell on the ground, I hit my chest on the couch, on the on the end of the couch, and I bruised my ribs a little.

Bill Gasiamis 47:04
The plate fell on the ground. I smashed the plate. And it was quite a fun time, as you can imagine. And I had a few more falls after that. Anyway, I digress. So then I was catching up. Had a lot of downtime. A lot of my friends would come to visit me. I was catching up with them during different parts of the day, and while they visited me, one of my closest friends, an amazing guy, the guy who wrote the forward of my book, Michael, asked me that question, you know, what are you going to do with all this information that you’ve learned about your recovery.

Bill Gasiamis 47:45
And how are you going to put information out there? Had this big desire to share what I had learned to make a life a little easier for other people, so that they wouldn’t have to go through the kind of recovery or the kind of dramas that I went through, and so that they could also reach out to me if they needed, and I could reach out to them, and we could create a community. Because in 2014 even though I had met a lot of stroke survivors, there wasn’t a massive community in the area that I lived. And I needed to find people who were like me.

Bill Gasiamis 48:23
And he sort of suggested, how would you do that? And I told him, I could do coaching. I could support people in my local community. And he he smiled and threw out at me this idea. And he said, like, you know, there’s this thing called the internet, and if you have something to share and you reach 10 people in your local area, maybe you can reach 10 times that on the internet. And it was a little daunting. I didn’t know exactly what to do about that. I didn’t know if I was ready to put out so much information about myself online in that kind of way.

Bill Gasiamis 49:06
But in around 2015 I decided that what I was going to do was put out some episodes of some podcasts that I was going to record, and it was for the first iteration of my podcast, and that first iteration came from an idea that I had, believe it or not, when I was going from hospital to rehab and they were wheeling me out in a bed to an area where I was going to wait for transportation, and that area where I was going to wait for transportation had a sign at the door as I entered. It was just a waiting room, but it said the transit lounge.

Bill Gasiamis 49:49
And I don’t know why, but that that title of that particular room stayed in my head, and I created a little metaphor about it, like. It’s the transit lounge where you go from where you are in hospital, where you can’t walk and things are a little bit difficult to where you want to be in an area where you’re going to learn how to walk and get back on your feet again. And that was the first name of the podcast, the recover, the transit lounge podcast, and the tagline was helping you go from where you are to where you’d rather be.

Bill Gasiamis 50:27
But I didn’t know yet that my audience was meant to be stroke survivors, so I started interviewing people from all walks of life who had recovered from any kind of serious situation, and I was just sharing inspirational stories, just to see whether or not I could begin a conversation, meet people, learn from them, maybe they can learn from me. And at around about episode 20, I had the aha moment that my audience and my podcast should be called the recovery after stroke podcast, and my audience should be stroke survivors, because I have way more in common with stroke survivors.

Bill Gasiamis 51:10
They are the people that I’m looking for, after all, and that’s what I did. I renamed the podcast the recovery after stroke podcast, and that’s when the podcast really took off. I started interviewing stroke survivors exclusively, and people started to notice, and they started to tune in, and I started to get a lot of good feedback, which is not why I started, but it was very useful to get it. And I met some fascinating people who I interviewed, and they were just so amazing. I learned so much from them, all different types of stroke from all over the world.

Bill Gasiamis 52:00
And it was at around episode 70 when I said one of the strangest things I’ve ever said in my life. And I referred to that earlier. It’s the title of my book, I said to the other guest, I think that strokes the best thing that happened to me. And what was even weirder than that is that she said that back to me, and then it’s like, okay, why? Why is this the case? Why is there another person on the planet saying the stroke was the best thing that happened to them? I think that I’m the only weird one that would come up with such a phrase, and that got me curious.

Bill Gasiamis 52:40
And again, it’s something that I just sat with for a little while, and I did nothing about until I went to a course with one of my mentors, who was doing a course to teach people how to model excellence, for example, or how to model the behavior of somebody else that you want To teach to someone to another group of people. It’s modeling is something that helps you shorten the time to getting a result, similar to how using imagination helps you create Neuroplasticity, just as actually doing the task that you want to achieve creates Neuroplasticity.

Bill Gasiamis 53:25
While modeling helps you model how one person does something so that you can decrease the amount of time it takes to get to the same outcome. And in the modeling course that I was doing, I learned that I might be able to, in fact, model how. Stroke is the best thing that happened. How do people get to be able to say that I didn’t know how it was that I got there. All I knew is that I was there and I needed to unpack how.

Bill Gasiamis 54:01
And then what I did was I put out a post on Instagram to ask people if they were willing to share with me how they got to the stage in their life where they were able to say that stroke was the best thing that happened to them? Well, firstly, I wanted to know if, in fact, there were people that thought that. And to my surprise, there were heaps, and they reached out, and then I reached out to them, and I interviewed them, and they helped me unpack. How does somebody get to be able to say that stroke was the best thing that happened to them.

Bill Gasiamis 54:41
And what we discovered was we had these 10 things in common, which became the chapters of my book. And then before you know it, I’m in the process of being in lockdown in Melbourne during COVID In 2020 we had the longest lockdown in the. World, we were locked down for the best part of two years, and we didn’t come out of lockdown till the end of 2022.

Bill Gasiamis 55:11
So I thought, I’m going to put all this information that I learned at this course about modeling, all the information, the commonalities that I discovered in people about how they got to be able to say that stroke was the best thing that happened to them. I’m going to pull all of that into a book, and I’m going to call my book The unexpected way that stroke became the best thing that happened. And it’s ridiculous that I, of all people would, a, have a podcast. B, have a book and C, recording a vlog about the whole situation.

Bill Gasiamis 55:51
Not that recording a vlog is the actual C, but you know where I’m going with that. Basically, this is just unbelievable, that I’m in the situation that I am in, that I’ve achieved the things that I have meant, I really can’t explain what it means to be, to be in a position where I get to speak to almost 350 stroke survivors from around The World on my podcast, including medical professionals, rehabilitation professionals, all sorts of people from all around the world. I have presented and done public speaking on the topic.

Bill Gasiamis 56:32
I’ve been on the radio because of it. I’ve been on TV because of it. And it’s just not who I was before stroke. I wasn’t that guy. They’re not the things that I used to do. They’re not the ways that I would go about my life. So I love this journey that I’ve been on. You’ll see in my previous vlog, it’s not all roses, it’s not all amazing. I don’t feel great all day, every day, but I don’t let that get in the way of me doing the things that I need to do. I found my voice through stroke. I found an audience. I created a community, and I want to encourage you guys to become a part of that community.

Bill Gasiamis 57:18
Even if it’s just by commenting on the YouTube video, even if it’s just by hitting the like button, even if it’s just by subscribing, just see what goes on in that community. You don’t have to do it the way that I do it, but you do need to find your meaning and your purpose after a stroke and your new identity, because they’re the things that I lost, that I was missing, that I needed to find and restore. And I think that’s what I’ve done. I’ve done that really well. I’ve found a way to create purpose meaning, and to move beyond all of the terrible parts of stroke.

Bill Gasiamis 58:06
It’s cost me a lot of money to have a stroke. I haven’t earned a proper income for more than 10 years, but I’m not going to let that stop me doing this thing that I love. I found it. I’m not letting it go, and I want to record 1000 podcast episodes so that no stroke survivor has to ever find themselves in a situation like I did in 2012 where there was no information about stroke recovery. There is a story for everybody on my YouTube channel, I encourage you to go through and look at them, and if you’re still listening to this particular vlog after all that time.

Bill Gasiamis 58:51
I really want to thank you for being here and doing so, and I want To tell you that you’re not alone and the recovery is possible in some way, shape or form, and it might take years. It’s taken me 12 years after my brain surgery to get this to this point, 13, in fact, to get to this point, not after my brain surgery. It’s taken me 13 years to get to this point after my stroke. Journey started. Anyhow, that’s it for me, for now, if you want to check out my book, go to recovery after stroke.com/book, or search my name, Bill Gasiamis on Amazon.

Bill Gasiamis 59:38
And subscribe to the show on iTunes, on Spotify, leave a comment. Give me a review as well. Let me know what you think of this type of content. Every interaction helps the podcast find more stroke survivors, and it’s amazing.

Bill Gasiamis 59:57
Because today I had a stroke survivor reach out onto one of my YouTube channel videos and tell me that they are in hospital, lying in bed after they’ve just had a stroke, looking at videos on stroke recovery, and one of the first videos that came up was mine. So I really appreciate all the interactions, because that makes it easier for other people to find the content See you in the next episode.

The post This Stroke Recovery Journey Might Change How You See Everything appeared first on Recovery After Stroke.

At 47, Tyrone Brown was living life at full speed—running businesses, serving his community, and enjoying time with his family. But one day, while out with his wife, something strange happened. He dropped a bag. Then, he dropped it again. What seemed like a small moment quickly turned into a life-changing event.

Tyrone was having a diabetic stroke, a condition many don’t realize is a major risk for people with diabetes and hypertension. His story is a wake-up call for anyone living with these conditions, highlighting the warning signs, the emotional battle of recovery, and the incredible resilience needed to rebuild life after stroke.

A diabetic stroke occurs when high blood sugar damages blood vessels, increasing the risk of blood clots and poor circulation to the brain. Over time, diabetes can cause arteries to narrow, making it harder for blood to flow properly. When a clot blocks a vessel in the brain, an ischemic stroke occurs, cutting off oxygen and leading to potentially severe consequences.

Some of the most common stroke symptoms for people with diabetes include:

Recognizing these signs early and seeking immediate medical attention can make a life-changing difference.

Tyrone didn’t immediately recognize what was happening. He had no idea that diabetes, a condition he thought was somewhat controlled, was silently impacting his arteries and setting the stage for a stroke. Even after dropping his bag multiple times, he brushed it off—until his symptoms worsened.

By the time he arrived at the hospital, Tyrone had lost function in his right arm and leg. His speech was affected, and his independence was slipping away.

But instead of panicking, Tyrone made a bold decision—he had his wife record his condition. That video would become a powerful reminder of how far he would come in his recovery.

One of the most terrifying parts of Tyrone’s stroke was being fully conscious while his body slowly stopped responding. His mind was sharp, but he couldn’t communicate or move like before.

That feeling of watching yourself lose abilities is something many stroke survivors experience. Tyrone describes the fear of decline—not knowing when or if it would stop. But in those moments of uncertainty, he made a crucial mindset shift:

“This is happening, but it’s going to be alright.”

Maintaining a strong mindset during stroke recovery is just as important as physical rehabilitation. Tyrone’s ability to stay positive and focus on what was still working played a key role in his progress.

After 15 days in the hospital and 14 days in rehab, Tyrone was determined to regain his independence. But stroke recovery isn’t just about getting stronger—it’s about relearning life in new ways.

His rehabilitation process included:

In the beginning, every small task—brushing his teeth, standing up, even taking a shower—was a struggle. But Tyrone made a commitment to progress, no matter how slow it was.

One of his biggest milestones? Standing in the shower and washing himself for the first time. It may seem like a small win to some, but for stroke survivors, these moments represent the road back to independence.

Tyrone’s recovery wasn’t just about therapy—it was about faith, resilience, and mindset. He credits his ability to keep moving forward to his strong belief in God, his unwavering trust in the recovery process, and the support of his wife and family.

Even when things got tough, he set two rules:

Humor, positivity, and not dwelling on the past helped him navigate his stroke recovery with grace and determination.

Tyrone’s story is a powerful reminder that diabetes and hypertension are silent threats when it comes to stroke risk. If you have diabetes, it’s essential to:

Control blood sugar levels – Monitor your glucose regularly and adjust your diet as needed.

Tyrone has made it his mission to beat diabetes and take charge of his health. And you can too.

Recovery after a diabetic stroke isn’t easy—but it is possible. Tyrone’s journey proves that with the right mindset, support system, and determination, you can take back control of your life.

“Your comeback starts in your mind before it happens in your body.”

If you or a loved one is going through stroke recovery, know that you’re not alone. Surround yourself with support, take small steps every day, and never stop believing in your ability to heal.

For more inspiring stroke recovery stories, expert interviews, and practical advice, subscribe to the Recovery After Stroke Podcast and join our community of survivors.

A diabetic stroke at 47 changed Tyrone’s life, but his story of resilience, faith, and recovery will inspire you to keep moving forward.

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Highlights:

00:00 Ty Brown’s Introduction and Initial Stroke Experience

Transcript:

Bill Gasiamis 0:36

Bill Gasiamis 1:14

Ty Brown 1:41

Bill Gasiamis 1:43

Ty Brown 1:48

Ty Brown 2:41

Ty Brown 3:21

Ty Brown 4:11

Ty Brown 4:57

Bill Gasiamis 5:22

Ty Brown 5:25

Bill Gasiamis 6:01

Ty Brown 6:08

Ty Brown 6:38

Bill Gasiamis 6:58

Ty Brown 7:11

Bill Gasiamis 7:29

Ty Brown 7:45

Ty Brown 8:33

Ty Brown 9:17

Ty Brown 9:57

Bill Gasiamis 10:23

Bill Gasiamis 11:00

Ty Brown 11:25

Ty Brown 12:05

Ty Brown 12:44

Bill Gasiamis 13:08

Ty Brown 13:28

Ty Brown 14:17

Ty Brown 14:56

Ty Brown 15:40

Ty Brown 16:24

Ty Brown 17:12

Ty Brown 17:49

Ty Brown 18:22

Ty Brown 19:09

Ty Brown 19:50

Ty Brown 20:32

Ty Brown 21:11

Ty Brown 21:55

Ty Brown 22:40

Bill Gasiamis 23:16

Ty Brown 24:46

Ty Brown 25:43

Ty Brown 26:44

Ty Brown 27:26

Ty Brown 28:11

Ty Brown 28:38

Ty Brown 29:37

Bill Gasiamis 30:32

Ty Brown 30:35

Ty Brown 31:20

Ty Brown 32:06

Ty Brown 32:57

Ty Brown 33:52

Ty Brown 34:24

Bill Gasiamis 34:56

Bill Gasiamis 35:25

Ty Brown 35:52

Ty Brown 36:33

Ty Brown 37:10

Ty Brown 37:55

Bill Gasiamis 38:25

Ty Brown 38:35

Bill Gasiamis 39:08

Ty Brown 39:09

Ty Brown 40:00

Ty Brown 40:37

Ty Brown 41:14

Ty Brown 41:59

Ty Brown 42:28

Bill Gasiamis 43:01

Ty Brown 43:22

Bill Gasiamis 43:22

Bill Gasiamis 43:35

Bill Gasiamis 44:07

Bill Gasiamis 44:37

Bill Gasiamis 45:11

Ty Brown 46:21

Ty Brown 47:11

Ty Brown 47:59

Ty Brown 48:45

Ty Brown 49:33

Ty Brown 50:20

Ty Brown 51:05

Ty Brown 51:51

Ty Brown 52:33

Ty Brown 53:26

Ty Brown 54:06

Ty Brown 55:09

Ty Brown 56:38

Ty Brown 57:32

Ty Brown 58:15

Bill Gasiamis 58:44

Bill Gasiamis 59:24

Bill Gasiamis 59:24

Bill Gasiamis 1:00:42

Bill Gasiamis 1:01:27

Bill Gasiamis 1:01:53

Ty Brown 1:02:26

Ty Brown 1:03:04

Ty Brown 1:03:59

Ty Brown 1:04:47

Ty Brown 1:05:46

Ty Brown 1:05:47

Bill Gasiamis 1:06:49

Ty Brown 1:06:53

Ty Brown 1:08:16

Bill Gasiamis 1:08:59

Bill Gasiamis 1:09:32

Bill Gasiamis 1:10:04

Ty Brown 1:10:29

Ty Brown 1:11:19

Bill Gasiamis 1:12:07

Bill Gasiamis 1:12:50

Bill Gasiamis 1:13:25

Bill Gasiamis 1:14:00

Ty Brown 1:14:12

Ty Brown 1:15:00

Ty Brown 1:15:35

Ty Brown 1:16:22

Ty Brown 1:17:15

Ty Brown 1:18:00

Ty Brown 1:18:50

Ty Brown 1:19:32

Ty Brown 1:20:25

Ty Brown 1:21:11

Ty Brown 1:21:52

Ty Brown 1:22:29

Ty Brown 1:23:14

Ty Brown 1:23:50

Ty Brown 1:24:40

Ty Brown 1:25:24

Bill Gasiamis 1:26:03

Ty Brown 1:26:19

Bill Gasiamis 1:26:22

Bill Gasiamis 1:26:53

Intro 1:27:17

Intro 1:27:46

Intro 1:28:11

Intro 1:28:36

The post From Stroke to Strength: Tyrone Brown’s Diabetic Stroke Recovery Journey appeared first on Recovery After Stroke.

Living with Invisible Stroke Deficits: For many stroke survivors, the hardest battles aren’t the ones that people can see. They’re the invisible struggles—fatigue that knocks you down before the day even starts, sensations that are impossible to explain, and the mental weight of feeling misunderstood.

Recently, I shared a video where I opened up about these challenges in a way I hadn’t before. I simply walked, talked, and shared my unfiltered experience of life after stroke. To be honest, I wasn’t sure how it would be received. But the overwhelming response—messages from fellow survivors saying, “Yes, that’s exactly how I feel!”—has been both humbling and deeply moving.

When people see me walking “normally” or hear me speak without hesitation, they assume I’m fully recovered. And while I have come a long way in my recovery since my first stroke in 2012, the truth is that I live with persistent neurological deficits every single day.

Some of the things I deal with include:

Fatigue that isn’t just tiredness—It’s an all-encompassing exhaustion that makes even simple tasks feel impossible.

One of the biggest struggles with living with invisible stroke deficits is the feeling of not being understood. How do you explain to someone that you’re exhausted but haven’t “done” anything? Or that you need to stop walking because your brain is tired, not your legs?

It’s something I’ve learned to navigate over the years. Sometimes, I give the easy answer: “I’m doing well.” Other times, if the person is willing to listen, I share more. And when I really need to be heard, I turn to counseling or the stroke survivor community—because we get each other in a way that no one else can.

Early on, I thought recovery meant going back to the way things were before my stroke. I believed that if I worked hard enough, I could erase all traces of what happened.

Now, I see recovery differently.

I’m fully healed, but with scars. My brain has adapted, my body has adjusted, and I’ve found ways to keep moving forward. But I will always carry the impact of my stroke with me. And that’s okay.

After seeing the response to my video, I realize how important it is to continue these conversations. Many survivors feel isolated in their struggles, believing they are alone in their experiences. I want to change that.

I’ll be creating more content that sheds light on these invisible aspects of stroke recovery—so that no one feels like they have to navigate this journey alone.

If you’re a stroke survivor (or know someone who is), I’d love to hear from you.

What are some of the invisible challenges you’ve faced in your recovery? Let’s start a conversation.

Want more insights?

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The post Living with Invisible Stroke Deficits: The Challenges No One Sees appeared first on Recovery After Stroke.