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

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.