The Walk of Life

Not too sure how many care-givers see themselves as Mentors? I have to confess that I did not see that initially until I read an article “Mentoring Stroke Survivors”. Most care-givers, including myself, consider our role as someone who give care. Initially out of necessity, a care-giver will do everything for the stroke survivor. This is natural since most stroke survivors are either totally paralyzed or half-side paralyzed in the early few weeks to a few months after the stroke.

As the stroke survivor slowly recovers, the care-giver must not compromise the survivor’s return to independence. It is learning how to release and let the survivor do things for himself. This is the difficult part and especially so if the care-giver is someone close to the survivor like a spouse or children. At this juncture, the care-giver changes into the role of a mentor should occur. This is the stage where the survivor gets bored and depressed because of the enormous amount of idle time he/she has! Coping with this is stressful and very often survivors feel lost and really need someone to guide and show them how to cope with this idle time.

As mentor the care-giver must take note of the following important points :-

• Help survivor to make decisions and not decide for them.

• Suggests things to the survivor what he/she “might” do with the time.

• No pressure would ever be applied.

• Guide the survivor to establish a routine and sets goals.

• Always remember that Motivation, Encouragement and Love are the keys to success.

Ever since I started to implement the mentoring process, rock becomes less depressed, improves faster and slowly she becomes more independent. I am no expert in this but whatever I learnt from other people’s experience I share here so that other care-givers may benefit from it.