Since the beginning of Dec and Jan I’ve been taking therapies in Southern
California. I’ve been graciously offered a quarter in the Los Angeles
Temple, New Dwarka, by Svavas prabhu, the temple president. He said that as
long as it takes I am welcome to stay for the therapies. Some of the
devotees attending me are staying in the quarter and some are in the
brahmacari and brahmacarini quarters.
The therapy is basically centered from Monday thru Thursday at the High
Hopes Head Injury Rehabilitation Program. There may be around 50 to 100
students at High Hopes. They are a Charitable Trust so they charge $2500 per
month, where as other places in North America seem to charge about $1000 a
day, more or less.
For the first month, December they had me do a lot of conditioning work, and
it took time to get to know me. There is a quadrisizer which gets my left
and right side to work together with the goal of walking and there is the
Lokomat robotic walking machine which they give me two days a week for one
hour each day to walk on.
In addition they have various other machines, walkers so that I can spend
walking. There is only a few of us that have suffered strokes, many of other
students are from car accidents and various types of head injury accidents,
so along with that, they are mentally somewhat challenged whereas mentally I
am ok, but I am physically challenged.
In January they started me on a program with two mornings a week, on
Tuesdays and Thursdays, for two hours I go to the gym where I do 9 different
exercises in addition to stretching and warming up, legs, arms, chest and
abdomen.
In the afternoon I go to the swimming pool where I practice walking in a 4.5
feet of water. In addition they have increased the Lokomat sessions to 3 per
week, three of the four days and one day, on the last Friday of the month.
One hour every day I have an Occupational Therapy for my arm, on how to use
my right hand with a computer for two hours each. Also I would continue
walking either with a walker or a side walker, but as of yet I am not able
to do it alone. I have now more strength, on some days I can walk 4000 steps
or more, but am not able to walk on my own as I lack balance.
Doctor Mark, the head therapist, he said that in any week I could start to
walk. He had me stand up on my own, and I had my record of 2 minutes and 18
seconds, which yesterday was broken yesterday by 6 minutes 21 seconds. So
gradually I am planning to keep my balance on my own, but it is a gradual
slow process.
So Dr Mark said, when I asked him what he thought about me going to India
for 6 weeks or two months, and he said that if it was a week for ten days
they could adjust somehow, but to go off for so long he was afraid that I
might regress. That without keeping this strict regimen, in fact he said
that no matter what I do, that the stroke patients they either make progress
or they regress, and that I have to keep an hour or two a day of some
regimen of walking and exercising even once I get better.
We can always remember how Srila Prabhupada never failed to take his morning
walk or his daily massage, something like that I would have to do every day
for the rest of my life.
So at present I am asking your advice. This is how am doing now. In addition
I am also taking some chiropractic adjustments, which they said that will
help the blood flow to my brain stem. I am also visiting once in a week or
so, an autistic man known as Johnny, who is also known as the stroke
whisperer. He gives advice on how to overcome the challenges of a stroke,
and his wife who was bhaktin in the New Orleans Temple, do some sound
therapy, so this has been generally helpful.
On the weekends, I’ve been around in California, including Tijuana, Mexico,
which is on the California border, but I had to keep up with my homework
during these excursions which means walking everyday at least 1000 steps and
doing squads.
Dr Mark said that he will increase whatever I am doing as I get better. He
said he would like it if I stayed, he said that I could go back to India for
the Ram Navani Festival.
It also became discover when I was in the Hinduja Hospital, that I have
hepatitis C. Apparently this happened during my blood transfusion in 1989,
when I was attacked at the Madrid Airport. Because the type of hepatitis C
that I have is only visible in Europe and I didn’t have any other occasion
to do anything which would impress in this 20 or so years that could give me
hepatitis C. Normally when someone with hepatitis C would be more much
worse, but because of my Krishna Conscious holistic diet, I am just at the
sedative first stages of degeneration of the liver, very first stages.
I am also taking some treatment prescribed by a chiropractic disciple which
is supposed to reduce and hopefully cure hepatitis C. The only allopathic
system for curing it and that’s also not sure, is taking intra vitamin,
not sure how one spells that, but I have not been able to take that yet,
cause I have low blood platelets.
So this is my basic report on how things stand now. I am not talking about
all the other therapies that I’ve taken.
On the way from India to America, I went on a hoping journey through
Malaysia and Hong Kong and Hawaii and finally to LA.
In Hong Kong some of the Chinese devotees that met me, said that if I go to
China and take therapy there I could get cured. I’ve taken some Chinese
acupuncture but somehow it was not so successful, although she said that she
had cured some stroke patients before.
My type of stroke is a bit different being a stem case. so somehow it didn’t
work, but they said that if I went to China to see the grandmaster of
acupuncture, they could cure me.
Other than that, they have the robotic machine in Chennai, and they are open
for 6 days a week, so I could use the machine for six days, but Dr Mark is
quite an experience guy so my secretaries appealed and said that I should
stay for the treatment until Feb and maybe part of March so that they can
see me walk at least with a clutch.
At present my eyes have little parallel movement although I recently started
some optical therapy and I see double at a distance so we have new glasses,
which more or less bring it together to single vision. The left side of my
face are still paralyzed but I am still able to give classes. Badrinarayan
prabhu in San Diego, said that my speech was understandable. So he said that
the therapy seems to be working. The right side of the body is not paralyzed
but lacks the sensitivity of the left side. The right hand lacks some fine
movements. My shaking in my arm has reduced since in India. In India,
Malaysia and America gradually my right side is becoming stronger. So this
is the present state of my physical condition.