Stroke Information

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You are in: Home > Stroke Information > Your Stroke Journey > Acute Phase > Early Recovery

Early Recovery

Recovery from your stroke begins immediately and includes:

• Initial healing
• Assessing the impact of your stroke
• Initial care
• Routine monitoring
• Early mobilisation
• Family and friends

Initial healing process

A stroke causes swelling around the affected area of your brain. As this swelling gradually settles down some of the affected cells are able to recover their function.

• Unfortunately there is no way of predicting how you will be affected long term. This may feel like no–one is telling you what is going on but it is just too early to know what the outcome will be. You have to wait for time to pass and allow this initial healing process to take place.

This can take several weeks to months but during this time you may notice a lot of improvement in some of your symptoms or effects of your stroke.

When this improvement slows down it may be clearer what the long term effects of the stroke are going to be:

• Some cells will recover and regain their function
• Some cells will be damaged or die and their function will be lost
• In time other cells may take over the function of damaged cells

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Assessing the impact of your stroke

How your stroke affects you depends on:

• Which part of the brain has been affected: you will need tests to identify this
• How severe the stroke is: the extent of the damage caused
• Your age and general health before the stroke

Common effects of a stroke include:

• At this stage it is too early to determine the longer term effects of your stroke.

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Initial care

• If you have had a severe stroke and are experiencing effects such as reduced conscious level, difficulty swallowing, and loss of power in a limb(s), then you will need to be admitted to hospital.
  Research has shown that the best outcomes come from people being admitted to specialist stroke units.
• If you have had a less severe strokes you may be able to return home after tests and investigations have been carried out at a local hospital.

If you are admitted to hospital nursing staff will provide help to ensure that all your personal needs are attended to, depending on how much you are able to do for yourself.

You may need help with everyday tasks such as washing and dressing, cleaning your teeth, transferring from bed to chair, and going to the toilet.

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Routine monitoring

As part of your initial care and assessment you will be very closely monitored. This will include:

• Checking your blood pressure, temperature, pulse and respiratory rate (the number of times you breathe each minute) regularly. A higher blood pressure is likely after a stroke but it is not always actively lowered. Blood pressure usually settles back to normal reasonably quickly. Longer term monitoring of blood pressure is important to ensure a sustained high blood pressure is treated if necessary.
• Checking your blood sugar levels.
• Monitoring your blood oxygen levels.
• Recording your fluid intake.

These observations help to prevent, or promptly treat, any complications following your stroke.

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Early mobilisation

It is important to listen to the advice of the physiotherapists and nurses about what will help movement to return and about the correct positioning of affected limbs.

Early mobilisation:

• Helps prevent limbs becoming stiff and sore
• Helps recover posture, balance and movement
• Makes it easier to eat and drink
• Reduces risk of blood clots in the legs
• Reduces risk of developing chest infections

Even at this stage it is very important to avoid prolonged time in bed.

It is likely that, after your stoke, you will be overwhelmingly tired and want to sleep a lot. Activity should be paced throughout the day, allowing rest and various therapy and activity periods to take place at different times of the day, not one after the other.

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Family and friends

Your help is important to the recovery process. For example:

• The person affected by stroke will need a lot of verbal and physical reassurance.
• It is important to be aware of and sensitive to the effects of the stroke and be patient (particularly if speech has been affected). Remember that difficulty with communication is not the same as being confused.
• The person will tire easily so keep visits short but frequent.
• Try to avoid too many people visiting at one time.

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