Recovery After Stroke

Have you ever wondered if your stroke was a punishment from God? Many stroke survivors tell me they believe it. They think the stroke came as payback for something they did in the past, or that it was sent to teach them a lesson. In this short solo episode I explain why that belief isn't true, and why hanging on to it slows your recovery. If God punished people with strokes, why do so many people...

Dr. Robert Hedaya, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University School of Medicine and a pioneer of functional medicine psychiatry, returns for his fourth and final conversation on Recovery After Stroke. He founded the Whole Psychiatry & Brain Recovery Center in New Jersey. Together, we cut through the nutrition noise and look at a passive therapy called HYLANE, including what it can'...

If you had a stroke, you probably think the thing you need most is more therapy. I asked 83 stroke survivors and carers what they'd change about their recovery. The most common answer wasn't a body part. So what was it, and why do people who are getting therapy still feel like they're doing it alone? WHAT YOU'LL LEARN • What 83 stroke survivors and carers said they'd change about their recovery, a...

Most conversations about stroke recovery stop at the first year, and this one picks up at year 32. Alan Durnwirth was 24 and five months from his wedding when an AVM in his left frontal cortex ruptured in March 1994. He woke one morning paralyzed down his right side, barely able to say his fiancée's name, and had brain surgery three days later. He is now 57, runs the design business he built aroun...

Many stroke survivors wait to feel ready before rebuilding their lives. Research on post-traumatic growth after stroke suggests readiness isn't a feeling that arrives first; it's built through small, repeated actions. This post looks at what a 2026 review and related studies show about how growth develops after stroke, and why it so often shows up alongside distress, not after it ends.

Ramandeep "Bobby" Chaggar is a veterinary surgeon originally from India, now living in Melbourne. In December 2023, he had a right ischaemic pontine stroke and had to find out, in real time, whether the belief he grew up with was actually true.

He was 16 years old. On September 22, 2017, everything changed. Benjamin Miller was a football player in Texas when a carotid artery dissection ended his career and split his sense of self in two. His brain began to recover. His identity didn't know how. What followed the substances, the silence, and the search for meaning is the story this episode is about. In this conversation with Bill Gasiamis...

Cassie Jewell is a counsellor and author who was running behavioural health programs inside a US jail when, at 42, an ischaemic stroke in her right basal ganglia arrived two days after she was demoted from the job she had built her life around. In this conversation, she and Bill talk about perfectionism, the coping habits that stop working, the strange overconfidence that can follow a right-hemisp...

At sixty-five, Tom Ballo's stroke gave no warning at all — and eighteen months later, he says he's had exactly one bad day. Tom Ballo is a retired telecoms litigator of 32 years who suffered a massive hemorrhagic stroke at 65 with no warning signs — found by his five-year-old granddaughter. In this episode, he opens up about what recovery has actually looked like eighteen months on, including what...

She survived a stroke at 34, but three years later, a new fear moved in: seizures she sometimes can't feel coming. Jonathan and Letitia Hritz join Bill to share what's happened since Letitia's ischemic stroke at 34 the diagnosis doctors almost missed on New Year's Day, the promise Jonathan made at her bedside, and the wave of new-onset seizures that's reshaped their family since January 2026. Leti...

There's a question underneath "I just want to be who I was" - and it isn't about the past. Jaemin Frazer is a coach with nearly two decades and 16,000 hours of practice behind him, and the founder of The Insecurity Project. He works with high performers on the thing almost nobody prepares for: what happens when your ordered world falls apart, and you look inside for resources you never built. In t...

Someone asked me whether citicoline actually helps the brain recover after injury. So I read the major clinical trials — including the big ones that found no benefit at all. Here's the honest picture, not the marketing version. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN • How citicoline is thought to support neuron cell membrane repair after injury  • What the ICTUS trial (2,298 patients) and COBRIT trial (1,213 patients)...

Someone in this community asked a version of a question I hear often: Is there any real research behind supplements for healing the brain after a bleed? I went looking, and one common kitchen spice compound kept showing up: curcumin, from turmeric.

You can do everything right in rehab and still hit a wall, and the reason may have nothing to do with your rehab. Dr. Robert Hedaya returns for his third conversation on Recovery After Stroke. He is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical Center, a pioneer of functional medicine psychiatry, and founder of the Whole Psychiatry and Brain Recovery Center in New Jersey. In th...

Ben Sautter spent decades living a double life: a respected city supervisor by day, involved in drug trafficking and reckless behaviour he felt no guilt over by night. In 2017, a carotid artery stroke changed that. In this episode, Ben opens up about the hidden "Hyde" side of himself, the marriage that nearly ended, and how writing his memoir finally helped him understand who he really is.

What happens when the person legally responsible for your medical decisions is your teenage daughter, thousands of kilometres from home? Kylie Ralston was 56, living and working in Bulgaria, when a haemorrhagic stroke put her in an induced coma for four days. With no next of kin in the country but her 19-year-old daughter, and a public hospital system offering almost no rehabilitation, Kylie's rec...

Documentary Watch Link: https://youtu.be/I5SEhR6X7lo What happens when a one-percenter biker who built his entire identity on physical strength loses half his body and picks up a camera instead? Shayne DeMarce is a Canadian stroke survivor and member of a one-percenter motorcycle club. A low-speed crash on a group ride triggered a bilateral carotid artery dissection and a stroke that left him para...

What if the fatigue you're blaming on your stroke is actually coming from a gland in your neck? Dr. Robert Hedaya, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical Center and a pioneer of functional medicine psychiatry, returns to the podcast to unpack the hormonal side of stroke recovery. Bill shares how a baseball-sized thyroid nodule went undetected for 18 months after his own...

What does it take to raise two teenagers alone while learning to walk again from scratch? Jeff Manuel was working two jobs and raising his son and daughter on his own when a stroke at 52 left him unable to move his left arm or leg. Four years later, he's rebuilding independence one small win at a time - from a long-term care facility, through a co-parenting relationship with his ex-wife that's gro...

What do you do when rehab ends but your brother still can't be understood - and nobody offers you a single tool to help? Robert Schmidtbauer is a care partner from Tomahawk, Wisconsin. His younger brother lives with ataxia, and a stroke six years ago made his speech so unclear that strangers understand only 60–70% of what he says. After years of being the "go-between," Robert used AI to build Larr...

A doctor ran a reflex test and told the patient they would never walk again. That same day, a physical therapist walked in, and the patient walked 70 feet. Dr. Kory Langwell is a Doctor of Physical Therapy with over 15 years of experience helping stroke survivors recover at home and online. In this episode, we break down what physical therapists know about walking after stroke that most doctors do...

What if falling after a stroke wasn't something you just had to accept? Associate Professor Kate Scrivener is a stroke rehabilitation researcher at Macquarie University whose work is rewriting what we know about falls, walking, and long-term recovery. In this episode, Bill and Kate revisit her HiWalk study, a high-dose walking program showing real results for chronic stroke survivors, and dive int...

Someone asked me recently whether there are natural compounds that can actively support brain healing, not just manage symptoms, but work on the recovery side of the equation. The answer, according to multiple clinical trials, might surprise you.

When a stroke hits one person, the whole family absorbs the impact, and in this episode, for the first time, the whole family tells that story together. Kathy Cunningham spent her career in healthcare, caring for others with skill and dedication. When stroke entered her life and her household, she was forced to become the patient. Her sons, Sean and Paul Monahan, join her in this episode to share...

Most stroke survivors are told to exercise, but almost no one explains how adding oxygen can multiply what that exercise does for your brain. In this episode, Bill speaks with Brad Pitzele, a recovering engineer who battled significant health challenges before discovering Exercise With Oxygen Therapy (EWOT). After conventional medicine ran out of answers, EWOT became the turning point in his recov...