S10E25: GIDDY-UP 🤠 COWBOY

0:00 Good morning, beautiful survivor friends. I'm Karina, your host and creator. 26 years ago, I suffered a brain stem dissection that led me to coma in a locked in syndrome. After a long uphill battle, I made it here, right where I belong. And because you're listening to me today, this is right where you belong. My show is all about being proactive. It's more than a share of story.

0:31 It's really about being proactive and taking conducive action moving forward in your rehabilitation. It's not dwelling on the past because we know how the story ends. The stroke happened. Well, now it's time for the transformation of you to begin using your own story to fuel your future. It's about adapting, adjusting, and growing in this new reality.

0:58 Grab yourself a drink, a pen and paper. The faintus of ink is better than the best memory. Come and join me here as we are recording today's episode. I love today's episode. It's going to be all about the speed of recovery, how to return to health. You know, when people tell us speedy recovery, we often get these messages in our posts, in our private messages, in our texts. Well, that means exactly that, speedy recovery. But it does not mean hurry up.

1:34 You see, that is the miscumption misconception that stroke survivors have. It means you got to hurry up and get back to where you were. Get back on track. We'll talk a little bit more about that. Definitely getting back on track. I'm just giving you a parenthesis right here alongside of my podcast and on our episode.

2:01 I have yet to understand fully how the platform of Spotify, the new platform works. So you guys are still gonna have to bear with me. Don't give up on me. I'm still learning here, but for the time being, there will not be any music. I haven't figured out how to do this, but you know what's important?

2:22 The message, the words, the feelings, the response, what your response is, That's what's important. So thank you for sticking with me, guys. Alright, let's get back to our show today. Guys. There is no specific time limit. There is no specific time frame for you to recover and recuperate. Whether it is physically, whether it's one of your limbs, whether it is cognitively, there is no time. I wish there was a time machine where we could perhaps go back and maybe not hurt so much, but unfortunately the reality is not such.

3:07 I can also tell you and don't hate me for this, I'm just being real because I have 26 years experience. So you're gonna have to trust me on this. You're not done shedding tears, honey. You're gonna feel like giving up. You're gonna feel like saying F this. That's when you have to reach deep inside of you and figure out your why. Why do you want to come back?

3:41 You see, I've been looking. I took a little time off again. I needed, I have been feeling so, so myself lately. So I wanted to make sure when I come back to you, I'm fully, fully, fully engaged, which I am. But this, these past few weeks gave me time to get, or rather we get familiar with my Facebook community and we post in other people's community and I see that a lot of people are going up, or rather I'm sorry, are giving up just momentarily, not forever. I know that it's just a bad day, but I know also that when it happens to have a bad day, we feel like it's forever. But I promise that it's not.

4:32 This day shall pass. I know that right now. My words, you're like, yeah, yeah, whatever, Karina. I've been there. I thought that when people would tell me that and people that were not stroke survivors would tell me that, I would be so annoyed. Guys, it's like, what do you know? But the reality is that we don't have the luxury of giving up as stroke survivors. That's why finding your why finding the reason why you want to keep fighting.

5:14 What's holding you? What's holding you here? And maybe some of you are going to say no one, nothing. My life is shit. You know what? If you're listening to this podcast, you can use me as wanting to come back. You can every day. I have over 185 episodes. You can go back and listen to it if you missed a few, maybe you're not subscribed, maybe you have not subscribed to the podcast and whoops, you know what? You have a feeling of belonging.

5:51 You're here with me. But again, if you're here, there's a reason. There's a bigger purpose. You may not find it now, but you will now in regards to getting back on track guys, I made a live this week on my Facebook group, Stroke Surviving the Odds, the podcast I will be linking at the end in the description, I made a post this week and I was talking about exactly that, getting back on track. What does that mean for you?

6:32 What does that look like for you? How does it feel for you? Let me ask you this. Who you were before? Is that who you want to become again? Were you that exceptional? Were you the person you really wanted to be? Or did you just have two operative arms and you want to go back to that? Maybe you were a nasty person.

6:57 Maybe you were a bully. Is that what you want to go back to? Or you want to go back to having two arms, 2 operative arms? Because I can tell you this, in the past 26 years, I've encountered a lot of people. I have talked to a lot of people and many people before stroke were not living a, for a lack of better word, they were not living a kosher life. And after having had the stroke, they saw things differently, they felt things differently, they valued things differently, and they also devalued things that were not serving them. And they became totally, totally different people. So when I ask you if who you were beforehand is exactly the person you wanted to be, please don't be upset if I ask. I'm I'm just asking by you.

7:59 You're obviously not gonna answer. I hope you do, because Spotify has this beautiful new feature where you guys comment to me. You can talk to me and tell me just about anything, and I get a notification where I can get back to you. Now, that person you were before was that person, the generous giving.

8:22 Maybe. Maybe you wanted to volunteer all your life and you never did. But maybe now that you're a stroke survivor, then maybe you do only have one operative side, because usually when a stroke hits, it hits one side in particular, both extremities. But maybe you still have the gift of gap, like me. Aren't we lucky?

8:48 We have the gift of Gap, and you're actually going to go in a Community Center or in a hospital or a rehab center and you're going to do some volunteer work, something you've wanted to do forever and you never never really did it before. Now you're actually doing it. You see that the goal of the show is really, really to merge the prior self and the new self because we are different, whether we like it or not, we are different.

9:24 Our perception is different. Our belief system remains the same but has some differences in it. And never mind, we're different physically. So the job of stroke, surviving the odds of podcast, my job is for you to figure out those beautiful parts of you that you had before and the parts of you now, the way you are now, the reality as it is now. And you merge those two together to become who you are today, not who you were ten years ago, two years ago, who you are today. I know that I practice a lot of tough love in my lives, in my videos, in my podcast.

10:21 Again, it's only because I do that to myself. Because like the expression says, we can bullshit others, but we cannot bullshit ourselves. We can make other people think at the other end of the line, at the other end of the the people we're, if we're communicating to on in our DMS, we can make believe like we are still the person we were. But when they come to face with us, they realize that there's some differences, there's some discrepancies. I don't want there to be any discrepancies. I want you to use your story.

10:59 I want you to use your life and make it the best life you can ever, ever have. But nobody else is going to do that, only yourself. So it's OK if today you're in a crappy mood. It's OK if you are like that tomorrow too. Just don't be like that forever. And there's always somebody at the end that is worth your why.

11:32 Maybe you don't have grandchildren and family and close friends because you're an introvert and you want to stay in your own cocoon. Who am I to say for you not to be? Hey, if it works for you, but if it does not work for you, I would like you to do a little piece of something. Anything. If you're lacking ideas, we can talk together and we can find them. But I would like you to add a little piece of something that is going to slowly transform your life, transform your reality.

12:10 I know that we see a lot of things on social media. Let's transform your life and gain $10,000 a month. Start making money and think of all the things you can buy and the people you can buy and the clothes and the houses. I'm not offering that. I am not offering that. What I'm offering you guys, my listeners, my loyal listeners, 'cause I have the best listeners, actually, what I'm offering you is the possibility. The possibility that is all I want. I am giving you the opportunity right now to be accountable for your own actions.

12:52 So the speed of your recovery, huh? Did you know that stress can cause your recovery to take longer? Did you know that? Well, guess what? In the second part, we are going to go through this very quickly and you're going to see how easy this is and how we can work and make it even better. Hold on. All right, I'm back.

13:18 You know what? Like I said, stress can cause your recovery to take longer. Are you carrying old stress? Are you carrying old stresses from your past, from your childhood, from your past relationships, your past relationship with yourself? Are you carrying that? Because that is also going to be weighing you down.

13:42 We're definitely going to be having an episode about that. But right now I want to go on the positive and help you guys realize there's five minute school thing, little things you can do in order to get better and your recovery go a little bit faster. Number one, quality sleep. Gosh, you guys know when we have a stroke, we sleep all the time.

14:06 We need rest. Even if we don't sleep, we need to shut our brains. But right now I want to focus on quality sleep. That means maybe you can go to the pharmacy and buy. It's called melatonin. Our bodies produce it naturally. It is in the vitamin section and it comes in little baby pills and there's different milligrams. I suggest you only start with three, which is the minimum, and play it from here.

14:40 Play it by here. OK, But melatonin, what it does it just once you fall asleep, you stay asleep. It's going to take about a week for you to really, really start absorbing that melatonin back into your system. But the quality of your sleep is going to be uninterrupted and you're not going to have bad dreams because bad dreams are definitely, definitely not what we want to have.

15:09 The second thing, massage, massage therapy, even if you don't have the funds, even if I don't have the funds to go at the insurance, I mean, if I don't have insurance to go at the the masu de rapporte, you can easily do that yourself or have your child, your little child. I'm always talking about how you lead by example by being a stroke survivor, you are teaching your young ones to never give up and to be strong and brave because that's what mommy and daddy are doing. But meanwhile, it's OK for you to ask your little ones to participate in your recovery.

15:52 They might not give you the masootic approach massage that you want. But you know what? That human touch, that human touch is worth everything. And it comes from your loved ones. And if it's not from your loved ones, you can also massage yourself. Use your operative hand on your lower limbs or on your affected arms.

16:17 Put a lot of moisturizer and massage it. Do your own massage. Stop waiting for others because others are not coming. That's something I had to learn the hard way guys. If I want something done, I got to do it myself. Third thing you can do, and I love this one and I have tried it for my lower legs, it's using compression garments at the pharmacy in the orthopedic section, you have socks or sleeves that you can put and those are creating compressions and they might help alleviate for me, I have restless leg syndrome at night, so for me they're useful at night. They just keep the whole thing snug. And of course we have our braces, different types of braces, Afos.

17:14 And I have a big ass brace like the ones they have at the hospital when you break your foot. I have something like that. That's what they gave me 26 years ago. I still wear it when I'm lying down. Another thing you could do #4 is hot and cold therapies. Yep. So if you're in the bathtub or not in the bathtub, but if you can take a shower sitting down or standing up, either or the last 10 seconds, you can do it with really cold water.

17:48 The cold water is going to shock your nervous system, shock everything back into place and then you can go back with a little bit of hot water. Like really hotter than usual hot and cold therapy. Maybe you need to have a cold compress behind your neck, something with ice cubes or a bag of peas if you need to. Last but not least guys, in order to get the proper nutrients for you to recover faster, you need to macro eat. Macro means a lot.

18:25 You need to macro eat and hydration. First of all, macro eating is not eating processed food is not eating bags of chips and eating cookies and drinking a bottle of wine every day. You need to feed your body. You need protein. First of all, I don't care where you get it. If you're a vegan, vegetarian carnivore, I don't care. You got you got to get protein in there in order to keep your muscles OK.

18:55 Eat a lot of green Leafs, vegetable and hydration. Hydration prevents migraines, prevents headaches and prevents cramping in your limbs. Did you know that? And not only that, hydration helps you to go to the bathroom more. When you go to the bathroom more, you shed more. More bad fat, if you will.

19:23 If you look in your urine, the more water you drink. I'm not talking about drinking food, juice, Coca-Cola and Pepsi and coffee and whatnot. I am talking about a clear liquid. You don't like water? I don't like water. I put fresh mint in it. I put slices of apples, I'll put slices of oranges. I've put slices of zucchinis in it.

19:46 Psychologically, it didn't taste anything, but psychologically I felt like my water tasted something. If that's what you got to do to drink your water, drink your water. These are 5 simple steps you can take to bring your recovery to another level and maybe even recover a little bit faster. This is what I have for you guys today. I hope you enjoyed and I will be talking to you soon. I love you immensely.

20:15 Like, follow and subscribe on any and all of the platforms, Spotify, Apple podcast, iTunes, Google. And like I said, now I have subscriptions, so you can go right ahead and subscribe monthly and you'll have a lot of perks with that. I'm gonna be talking about that in a separate little, little interlude message to you guys.

20:40 Meanwhile, I'm gonna let you go. My, all my links are gonna be in my bio and make sure you come in to me or you leave me some of your informations on the comments. Thank you so much. I love you and I'll talk to you soon.