Software to Assist in Recovering from a Stroke?

jshaw001 asks: "My mother recently suffered a stroke. She is not that old, only 55, and she is out of the hospital now but still has a long road to recovery. The doctors said she should be able to recover, but it's up to how hard she works at it. She is an accountant, so numbers and being able to memorize lots of stuff is very important. In short, her memory is very important. I'm in college right now, and my father has to work all day so we can't be there to help her out with her memory exercises all the time. I was wondering if anyone knows of good software I can get for her to help her with her memory, reasoning, and typing. Free software, shareware, commercial code -- cost is not a factor. Games are also a plus. Please note that we are limited to Windows software. Any other advice on things I can use to help her, or your experiences, are welcomed. Thank you."

Comments

Re:Whoa - drop that assumption!

[sgant]

OK...this helps him....how?

Let's say he get's both a Mac and a PC with Linux...now what? Care to answer his question now? Any software that meets his needs?

Maybe you need to look deeper into your limits here. You see a little line like "limited to Windows software" and you have to jump all over him! Talk about preconceived unneccesary limits...can't even just ask something without someone ripping apart the post itself to get in a little bashing.

If you know of some software, list it, otherwise STFU with your zealous paranoia.

Some Basic Info

[Ieshan]

Damage from a stroke is due to a lack of Oxygen to a particular part of the brain. Essentially, because of a lack of oxygen, those cells die, and all the connections they have made throughout your life become useless.

Helping someone recover from a stroke depends wholly on where the damage occured. Asking your question is a bit like asking, "I hurt my body, how can I fix it?" One would want to know what kind of injury you suffered, exactly how severe it is, and what types of resulting actions you are unable to perform.

A common side-effect / symptom of strokes is "aphasia", which is a lack of speech processing ability. It's a bit like if you went blind by injury to your brain, and not to your eyes (you could also lose speech by injury to your jaw or tongue). Other stroke defects include motor problems and other issues. Memory capacity is particularly unlikely to be affected, but it seriously depends on where the damage occured. If they think she might be able to make a full recovery, it's unlikely that she has permenant damage to any areas of her cortex involved with creating or storing new long or short-term memory.

But seriously, I would rephrase your questions much more specifically, because a stroke is a serious problem, and cannot be addressed by simply one software tool. I would look into exactly what types of damage have occured, and what types of therapy typically work. A computer can be useful for that therapy, because it can provide lots of trials and none of the embarassment associated with poor performance on a task which might result from being "good" at a task before a stroke and having difficulty performing it after the stroke occurs.

Difficult question...

[lpangelrob2]

First of all, prayin' she gets better.

Second of all... this is a difficult question to answer without knowing where she is right now. Many people that have strokes do not recover -- my grandfather died of one at 69 (or thereabouts). I get the impression that when the doctor said that it depends how hard she works towards her recovery, it's not so much what she is working on, more that it is how she works on it. So this is how both electronic and non-electronic board games came to mind.

If you're too busy with school / work to be able to do multiplayer games / activities, I have to imagine basic solitaire with cards is a good starting point. Scrabble probably falls on the far end of the spectrum. I get the impression Risk is good for recovery as well -- all these games have a different twist on the strategy required to win them. Which game really depends on where she's at right now in the eyes of your doctor and yourself.

So long as she's trying to use her mind, and working past the initial frustration of being a stroke victim, and not sitting watching TV all day not engaging her mind... I think the road to recovery might be a bit easier.

Freud Is My Cousin

[King Fuckstain]

I would imagine that when the submitter says that cost is not a factor he is assuming that that cost is not going to be greater than the typical commercial application that is sold to consumers and not for professional applications. [i.e. not Photoshop]. Probably, what he meant was that he's willing to buy software so he isn't just looking for freeware.

The original poster was not offering a valid point. For instance, since cost isn't a factor, I could say that the submitter could just hire a team of trained doctors to play memory games with the mother all day long. Is that a valid point? Sure, if you believe that cost isn't a factor means that cost really isn't a factor. But if you have the ability to reason and understand how the world works - you'd realize that cost not being a factor is a relative statement, not absolute.

Re:Freud Is My Cousin

[King Fuckstain]

I believe that a more constructive original post than simply saying, snidely I may add, that Linux or Macs exist, would have been to cite actual pieces of software that run on a Mac or under Linux. You state that a partisan attack was simply launched at the suggestion of Linux; I say that the partisan attack was launched at the suggestion of Windows and the thread merely continued from there.

God Bless.

A Linux Point and a suggestion

[HMarieY]

First, as a teacher and now homeschool mom who attempted to use Linux for over a year I must say that the comment on moving to Linux was uncalled for. I loved it for its stability, but had to give it up due to the lack of quality (appealing and intuitive interface, non-crashing, easy to install, and actually educational in nature) educational games and resources. Good design is especially important when dealing with children, espcially those with special needs (read special ed students), and with adults who need occuptaional/recreational therapy. There is, or was last year, a significant lack of quality educational games that are stable

Aside from that, there are plenty of good games out there, especially ones which are educational (which would prove especially helpful in dealing with stroke as they would help rebuild the pathways and make new ones.)

There are many good educational sites that are free to use and that are very simple to get to, especially if you were to make her homepage a custom designed web portal with links to all the sites and activities you think she will enjoy. I did this for my kids, designing a site for each that has picture links to all their favorite web sites.

Depending on the level and area of damage you should be able to make a portal of links that would suit her needs. If you need a jumping off point with a variety of educational sites you could look through the links on our site: http://www.shamusyoung.com/kidsportal/kidshome.htm l. Feel free to copy and use the source if you like. I would look through the different sites and see what is most likely to work on the areas she needs, i.e. Memory (the game), math games, logic games, etc.

http://www.popcap.com/ games, Real.com, Shockwave, and Yahoo also have some great games that help build problem solving skills, working with the logic/mathmatical part of the brain, even Tetris is good for logic developement. (if you don't mind the occasional spyware, in fact installing http://www.lavasoft.com/ Ad-aware and an anti-virus program like http://www.grisoft.com/doc/1 AVG would be wise prior to any downloads).

If you can get a hold of the old "Doctor Brain" games they are wonderful for this type of situation as they are fun to play (even for adults) and deliberately work on different parts of the brain, i.e. File Sorting to work with memory, etc. The Incredible Machine games and Lemmings are also good for logic and problem solving developement.

Re:Whoa - drop that assumption!

[coolcold]

one possibility is that he does not know how to use a Mac or Linux thus won't be able to setup/install the program as well as teach his mom to use the program