Benchmarking for stroke recovery

How do you know how long it will take you to recover? How do you know how much you will recover? And how long should it take for you to achieve your goals? These are all questions that people commonly ask and there is no one-size fits all answer.

Many areas can influence your recovery. These may include: age, health and fitness prior to the stroke, area of your brain where the stroke happened, size of the stroke, time it took you to get treatment, your stage of recovery, therapy options available to you, level of support you have and how much time and energy you have to work on your goals.

For some, looking at other people’s stroke recovery can be helpful. Those who have had a similar stroke or a similar impairment may give you an idea about what to expect and remind you that you are not in it alone. Their stories can provide inspiration and hope and seeing that recovery is possible may give you the motivation you need and useful tips and tricks to assist with your journey.

While support, advice and inspiration from other stroke survivors may be useful, it can have a negative impact if you measure your progress against someone else. Comparing yourself could lead you to feel distressed about not achieving the same level, or speed of recovery that you observe in them. You may think “I’m not getting better, so why should I keep this up?” When you measure your recovery, remember, no two strokes are alike and no two people recover in exactly the same way. Your journey is unique to you! It may be similar to others but it’s never the same.

If you can’t measure your progress against other people, how do you do it? The best approach is to measure your progress against yourself. In stroke recovery it is all about setting personal bests in activities that are meaningful to you.

Once you have a goal to work towards you need to decide how to measure the improvements you are making. Like a sportsperson, musician or anyone trying to learn a new skill, you need to set benchmarks that you can measure against.. Measuring progress will highlight the small and important gains that you make along the way. This is really important because it can be hard to see the small changes that take place day to day. It is difficult to remember accurately where you were a week or a month or a year ago.

When you measure your progress, you can determine what is working and when it’s time to try something new. You can also celebrate the small wins along the way and this will help you stay motivated when the going gets tough. Make sure you write down what you are aiming for and how you are doing each day. You could also use videotaping or audiotaping to track how much you can do as well as the quality of what you do. There will be undoubtedly be ups and downs, good days and bad but with the right activities, hard work and perseverance, you will keep moving onwards and upwards.

Some ways to measure your progress are:

- How quickly you can do something. E.g. How fast you can type a sentence.

- How long you can do something for. E.g. How long you can sit upright without support.

- How far you can go. E.g. How many kilometers, metres or steps you can walk.

- How well you can do something. E.g. How confident you feel in a conversation.

- How many repetitions you can do. E.g. How many times you can do sit-to-stand exercises.

- How much you have learned. E.g. How much information you have discovered about wheelchair accessible travel.

- How you feel. E.g. How you rate your anxiety, depression or fatigue on a scale of one to 10.

- How well you can participate in an activity. E.g. How long you maintained your attention at Bingo.

But what if you’re not making progress or if progress is slower than you had hoped? Setbacks will pop up along the way. When they do, don’t give up! Setbacks are a part of the recovery process and so is adjusting your goal or your methods to achieve it. What else could you try? Do you need to do some research or ask your doctor or therapist some questions? Could your family help? What have other people tried? Do you need to give yourself some extra time? It’s okay to take a detour or make allowances for issues like fatigue. And it’s okay to change your goal completely. Make whatever changes are necessary and keep moving forward. Keep aiming for the highest level of recovery. You might not get back to where you were before the stroke but if you reach for the stars, you might just touch the moon.

Don’t forget that StrokeLine is here to help. If you have any questions about benchmarking or dealing with setbacks pick up the phone call us on 1800 787 653. You can also contact StrokeLine here on EnableMe. Visit Ask a Health Professional via the Community tab.

Kind regards, Melita, StrokeLine