Recovery after Brain Hemorrhage

The damage caused by a stroke can be widespread and long-lasting. Many people need to have a long period of rehabilitation before they can recover their former independence.

The process of rehabilitation will be specific to you, and will depend on your symptoms and their severity. A team of specialists are available to help, including physiotherapists, psychologists, occupational therapists, speech therapists, and specialist nurses and doctors.

The damage that a stroke causes to your brain can impact on many aspects of your life and well-being, and depending on your individual circumstances, you may require a number of different treatment and rehabilitation methods

Psychological impact The two most common psychological conditions found in people after a stroke are:

• depression - many people find that they experience intense bouts of crying, and feel hopeless and withdrawn from social activities, and
• anxiety disorder - many people experience general feelings of fear and anxiety, often punctuated by intense, uncontrolled feelings of anxiety (anxiety attack).

What is a stroke?

The brain is split into two halves, the left and the right hemispheres. At the base of the brain is the cerebellum and leading from the brain down into the spinal cord is the brainstem. All the information that is detected by the nerve endings in the body is passed up the spinal cord and brainstem to one of the cerebral hemispheres. There the brain decides what it needs to do and sends the relevant instructions back down the same route to activate the muscles. For example, if you touch something very hot, your brain receives the message and tells your hand to move away.

The left hemisphere largely controls the right-hand side of the body, and the right hemisphere the left side. The brain has specific parts devoted to specific functions. For example, the language areas are usually in the left-hand side of the brain, except in a small proportion of left-handed people in whom the language area is on the right. The areas processing information about vision are at the back of the brain. Control of muscle and sensory function is situated near the front of the brain in the frontal and parietal lobes, and co-ordination is controlled by the cerebellum.

The blood to the brain travels from the heart through the aorta (the main artery from the heart) and then into one of four arteries that lead to the brain. At the front are the two carotid arteries that you can feel pulsating in your neck, either side of the windpipe, and at the back, running alongside the vertebral column (the spine), are the two vertebral arteries. Once the four arteries have entered the skull, they are linked together in the circle of Willis this is a very important anatomical feature, because, if one artery is blocked, sometimes there is enough blood provided from the other arteries joining the circle to prevent major damage being done. Leading off the circle of Willis are the six major cerebral arteries – anterior, middle and posterior (one of each on either side), supplying respectively the front, middle and back parts of the brain. Any of these can be blocked, causing a stroke, but the commonest to be affected is the middle cerebral artery.

Top Most Brain Surgery Institute of Pakistan

In the General Hospital in Lahore, in the top most brain surgery institute of Pakistan, people lie in verandas in unhygienic conditions. As it is – they are either about to go in for a surgery that has low chances of success even under normal circumstances or perhaps they are trying to recuperate from one. But never do they dare ask for more since they fear being thrown out into the street – they, having already exhausted all their worldly connections to gain this limited space in the first place. Or it could be that they don’t expect more. Maybe, they simply don’t know if there can be more, that such a possibility may exist – that there can after all be more to expect.

Helpless as they are, everything is God’s will – they must only somehow pass the time until the transition to the next world where there will not be any pain, no more putting them to tests, no disappointments – where there will be justice, rivers of milk and honey and tranquility and nothing less. And this alone makes them go on. It is the only light at the end of the tunnel in an otherwise joyless life, bliss in this transitory imperfect world being nothing but a fallacy.

It is not as if they are not vaguely aware that human endeavours can change life conditions – it is just that they know that it would be too much to expect in their case – that never will they ever have the opportunity. And hence, resigned to their fate, the patients thank God for what they receive.

And their visitors secretly thank God that it is not they who are lying in their place in the veranda – and yet, they nurture this secret guilt also. The lives of the visitors are nonetheless marred with fear and dread. From nowhere comes this fear of the unknown that engulfs them. They cannot understand how they have been reduced to the point where an absence of misfortune – and that alone by itself, seems as ultimate good luck, that why expecting more is greed.

And once in a while, the patients are removed from the veranda and are hidden out of sight irrespective of their condition. The walls are then whitewashed and the corridors cleaned and scrubbed. It is the day when the dictator is scheduled to pay an official visit along with his entourage in screaming cars that ply on hastily carpeted roads.

Later in the day, the dictator claims in front of the international press that Pakistan has surplus hospital rooms and one of the best doctors in the world. That, in short, Pakistan has one of the best medical facilities for the common man......