Sunday Stroke Survival: Warning, Will Robinson!

Past science fiction is now science fact. The title is from the old Science fiction show Lost in Space. I used to love that old robot. Now looking back, it's so corny! Robot don't resemble that robot at all. Especially where robotic devices to help stroke survivors are concerned.

There are "robotic" devices on the low end of the scale like the Bioness devices that can replace an AFO for foot drop after a stroke and the one to retrain the hand and wrist. To more elaborate robotic devices used in physical therapy departments for stroke survivors. Unfortunately, not mine. It is often stated that the more reps you do retrains the undamaged parts of your brain to take over for the damaged part. It's called by some fancy names like neuroplasticity or building new neuronal pathways. While I understand the process, to do the required number of reps will take years to recover. While the exact number of reps it takes is open to conjecture, let's just say an enormous of awake hours. But if they could be done while sleeping hours too, it would shorten the time if the damaged neurons would just stay quiets. Of course they won't. My clonus goes into overdrive with the Bioness AFO device.

Today, robotics are constantly being developed as hope for making the stroke survivor replicate what they've lost. There isn't a week that goes by that some new device whether used in therapy or in used in daily life would be a godsend to the stroke survivor. The problem with any new technology is the same everywhere cost and availability.

While my hospital therapy department may have the hoist lift on the treadmill, the robotic leg movement robot isn't cost effective. While the big cities my have an arm assist robotics, my medium city doesn't for the same reason. While the bottom robotic assisted technology (step aside, Ironman) in the bottom picture is still in research and nobody has got it.

If we all had unlimited funds to do what we wanted to, all of us would jump on the bandwagon of the robotic assist movement or go where it was available. Wouldn't we all wear something heavy or uncomfortable to make paralyzed or spastic muscles do what they should do? I know I would. The same thing goes for recovering faster from the deficits of my strokes.

Unfortunately, most robotic devices are rejected by most insurance carriers as experimental and just won't pay for it. I'm not sure what Medicare pays for or not because I ain't had to deal with those folks. But since the federal government is the biggest bureaucracy of them all, I imagine that they don't either.

So what's the answer? How do we get it? I don't have the answer unless we wait until it is as common place in use as toilet seats, but that can be a hundred year wait also. Demand that our stroke organizations put pressure on political powers that be? That doesn't work. Just ask Dean. Wait until more people are affected by stroke? There's way too many of us now in the queue. (1 or 2 out of 10 men) Revolt? Storm Washington like the 100 Man March? (What did that truly accomplish?)

I just don't have the answers, but...

Nothing is impossible.