{"id":1154,"date":"2013-06-05T17:55:34","date_gmt":"2013-06-05T17:55:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brainstreams.ca\/education-sessions-around-the-province-offer-practical-advice-to-people-whove-had-strokes-and-their-loved-ones\/"},"modified":"2025-07-04T09:16:58","modified_gmt":"2025-07-04T16:16:58","slug":"education-sessions-around-the-province-offer-practical-advice-to-people-whove-had-strokes-and-their-loved-ones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/education-sessions-around-the-province-offer-practical-advice-to-people-whove-had-strokes-and-their-loved-ones\/","title":{"rendered":"Education sessions around the province offer practical advice to people who&#8217;ve had strokes &#8212; and their loved ones"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"field field-type-link field-field-link-original-article\">Ray McDonald was able to move a toe, just a tiny bit, on his immobilized left side after he awoke from emergency surgery to relieve pressure on his brain. \u201cYou know what that means?\u201d his doctor asked. \u201cThat means you\u2019ll walk again.\u201d Now, two years after a hemorrhagic stroke flooded the right side of this brain with blood, McDonald is not only walking, but also telling other stroke survivors to not lose faith in the wonders of human resilience. That\u2019s despite the fact he can\u2019t see out of the left side of each eye, a condition called\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/medicine.med.nyu.edu\/conditions-we-treat\/conditions\/hemianopsia\">hemianopsia<\/a>, a type of vision impairment that\u2019s not uncommon after a stroke. So he takes a white cane with him for walks, particularly in crowded situations when he\u2019s likely to bump into people and they\u2019re unlikely to understand because he looks perfectly normal.<\/div>\n<p>\u201cYou have to remind yourself that things are getting better,\u201d McDonald said over coffee near his home in Burnaby recently. \u201cMy wife is good at reminding me about how I\u2019ve progressed<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy physical recovery happened quite quickly,\u201d says McDonald. \u201cSome of the cognitive stuff is taking a lot longer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>McDonald \u2014 and others like him \u2014 will be speaking at a series of educational sessions on stroke recovery around B.C. this weekend and next. It\u2019s part of continued work by the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/strokerecoverybc.ca\/\">Stroke Recovery Association of B.C.<\/a>\u00a0to offer practical advice to people who have had strokes \u2014 and to their loved ones.<\/p>\n<p>An estimated 315,000 Canadians are living with the effects of stroke and more than 14,000 Canadians die from stroke each year, according to the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.heartandstroke.com\/\">Heart and Stroke Foundation<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.vancouversun.com\/health\/stroke+survivor+says+using+brain+recovery\/8478573\/story.html#ixzz2VMjRpsRd\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more&gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ray McDonald was able to move a toe, just a tiny bit, on his immobilized left side after he awoke from emergency surgery to relieve pressure on his brain. \u201cYou [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/messageinabottle.ca\/bcbia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}