A suggestion to a personalized approach to rehabilitation.

i had a stroke in 2008, in the beginning you didn't know when and where to start your rehabilitation. After a month in intensive rehab I was discharged and transferred to an outpatient setting. The outpatient setting unfortunately didn't maintain the pace obtained during the inpatient setting. I was still hoping that the lost movements will returned by themselves. It was a wrong hope, then I had to look for ways to compensate my deficits. It was marked by trials and errors. After all rehabilitation exercises were designed by healthy people for afflicted people. That was an unsurmontable barrier. I was told to get rid of my quad cane as soon as possible. The months that ensued revealed my deformed posture. Then one day a TV program on the Science channel show a girl, having half of her brain lost to an immune disease, swimming in the pool using all her arms and legs. I realized then that you still control your body despite losing half your brain. That TV program gave me the strong inspiration to regain my lost mobility. (I was right hemiplegic, a terrible situation for a right handed person). Within a year with the help of the Bioness device I began to have some movements of my right leg and arm. During that time I researched on the internet how to mobilize my paralyzed muscles. One day I was using the Kinect for my rehabilitation I saw the picture of my own body on the TV, and an idea came to my mind. Why not using the Kinect or something similar to image my body? You could map your body's muscle activity, and by doing that you could visualize the non functionning muscles and devise a program for your body to exercise the paralyzed muscles. People affected by stroke knew the dilemna of where to start your rehabilitation once you're released from the medical facilities. Some will defy the odd and resume a near normal life but for most of us we'll have to deal with our limitation.

During the last ten years we witnessed an fulgurating advance in neurological sciences. The unfortunate war in the Middle East contributed to understand the conditions experienced by some stroke people: after the stroke I could not tolerate bright light, could not see a small screen, and couldn't experience a good night sleep. Reading a book on blunt brain trauma I realized that soldiers affected by blunt trauma injury from IED had the same symptoms. Those symptoms were later called as Post brain trauma visual syndrome, and post brain trauma psychiatric syndrome. Stroke did cause additional hidden injuries not visualized by regular brain imaging techniques. The advances of miniaturization make possible to fabricate portable and affordable devices such as eeg recorder, and thermal imaging. With an adequate thermal imaging device we can take picture of our body in different positions and have an idea of what group of muscles need to be exercised in order to regain some lost movements. We may not be able to regain all movements that were lost, but at least those devices will help us know where to start our rehabilitation journey. That may eliminate some trials and errors and expedite our road to recovery.

The neuroplasticity helps us overcome the limitation caused by the stroke. I learned to use my left hand. I was able to write and draw.