Vocabulary to know
Patent Foramen Ovale (PFO)- A hole in the heart which can allow clots to bypass the lungs and therefore be passed from the heart to the brain
Arteriovenous malformation (AVM)- A tangle of blood vessels, if you have them in your brain, they can burst and cause a hemorragic stroke.
Ischemic stroke - A stroke where a blood clot blocks an artery
Hemorrhagic stroke - A stroke where a blood vessel in the brain ruptures, causing bleeding
Clonus - Involunatary shaking when fatigued or in a muscle stressing position, often caused by a neurological injury.
Spontaneous recovery - Sudden, dramatic improvement in function seemingly out of nowhere. Often seen in the first years of recovery
Aphasia - An issue with your brain where you lack access to your words. If you have aphasia and struggle with words, you know what you want to say, but you can’t access the words in your head to pull it out and say it. This disorder has nothing to do with your ability to pronounce words, it only refers to your ability to access your language. Your speech therapist will work with you to regain access to your language. Aphasia occurs when the injury is in the side of your brain where the language is stored. If you are right-handed, that’s the left side of the brain. If you are left-handed, your language is on the right side of your brain.
Dysarthria - Slurred speech, many brain injury survivors struggle with slurred speech, your speech therapist will work with you on recovering your pronunciation. Initially, this will be super frustrating because people struggle to understand you but nurses won’t immediately offer a pencil to write down what you want to say since patients with aphasia can’t write in order to express their missing language. Not knowing what language disorder you were struggling with, the nurses won’t initially offer you a pencil. Some survivors recover normal speech except for a few specific shapes their mouth has to make. If this is the case for you, your speech will be totally normal until you come across a word that contains the sounds you struggle with.
Ataxia - A speech disorder where you have difficulty coordinating the muscles in your mouth to speak properly. It goes along with having trouble with breath support for your words, your family may mention that your voice sounds weaker than before your injury. It might wear you out to talk too much, feeling more like you’re doing cardio than just speaking. Your words might not flow evenly at the cadence you had before your injury, this will improve as your vocal chords strengthen.
Functional electrical stimulation (FES) - A stroke rehab technique that uses electrical impulses to regain muscle movement
Thrombectomy - a surgery to remove a blood clot, it can be done intravaneously.
Tissue Plasminogen Activator (TPA) - A medication that dissolves clots, if your last known normal was recent enough and you are having an ischemic stroke, you may be given TPA to break up the clot, they won't try TPA if you don't know when your clot occured or it was too long ago because if the TPA fails, they will have to operate which would be more dangerous with TPA in your system.
