My brain is on sensory overload, trying to get Mike on the path to healing. I’m a huge fan of advocating for your health, but to be real, this process has me shaking my head in discouragement and frustration.

Long story short, when he was discharged from the hospital, they didn’t give him much direction on how to heal. Just advised him to make an appointment with a neurologist and general practitioner. It took over 3 weeks to get into see the neurologist, which was this week and that turned out a complete mess. The neurologist was frustrated they scheduled him for a 30 minute follow up, when it should have been a 60 new patient. She handled it completely wrong, came across as if she was more concerned about finding out who made the scheduling error, instead of taking care of the patient. Mike got frustrated, let her have a piece of his mind and walked out.

I hung back and nicely (well, as nice as I could) explained to her why he was so upset. Her half hearted apology was a little too late.

I don’t blame him, she was not compassionate at all and it showed. This is where I struggle with Western Medicine. They often don’t put the patient before profit. I still believe WM has a place and I am definitely thankful for the drug that quite possibly saved my husbands life, I just can not wrap my brain around a medical culture that doesn’t put the best interest of the patient first every single time.

We are in the process of getting him into Stanford and/or UCSF. Unfortunately both process takes awhile and time is of the essence, so there has been a lot of stress & worry.

Which brings me to share a few things we are doing to control what we can, and try not to stress about the things we can’t control. Which turns out, we totally suck at ha!

We may feel trapped, without answers or direction, but I’m not one to sit back and wait for someone else, so I started researching ways to help the brain & body heal after a stroke.

Here are some things I researched to help with recovery:

• Incorporating a more plant based diet for a lot of reasons, but primarily to help promote healing and blood flow to the brain. I notice a significant difference when he takes Aspirin – it helps a lot, so I’m hoping more plants can naturally help with that. (On a side note, the man loves his meat & cheese, so we’re not completely eliminating them, just crowding them out a bit at least for now.)
• Celery juice on an empty stomach first thing in the morning. (Y’all may know how much I have healed with Medical Medium approaches, so adding this addition probably won’t surprise you ha!)
• Supplements Zinc, B-12, Turmeric, D3 & a few others to lower inflammation & help in many other ways.
• A Herbalist recommended Lions Mane, but I haven’t started him on that yet. Still researching, but if anyone has thoughts about it, please let me know.
• A physical therapist sent home green putty like stuff to have him squeeze in his left hand to help with fine motor skills. We definitely saw improvements right away, so I think I’ll research right side brain exercises next.

I have no idea if this stuff will help, but it makes my brain happy to actually be doing something while we’re waiting in limbo.

If anyone has experience or advise on how to heal after a stroke, I’m all ears. We would really appreciate your thoughts.