After a stroke cognitive problems can be quite common. You may have problems with concentration and memory. But there are things you can do to help.

 

Andy: Memory's hopeless from my 20s to my 30s. I've lost it um completely gone. People remind me, just only the other day somebody said oh hi on Facebook and I said yeah you know who are you? She said we used to go out and say oh ok, uh, that's bad.

 

Ranj: Memory has been affected quite a bit and I'm kind of told that a lot by people around me. Um. Short term memory is a big thing and there's for me also there's whole years of my life that I can't remember and so that doesn't really cause me too many issues. I'm just conscious of it being there and it does worry me sometimes.

 

Lynne: You forget things. I mean I got my sewing machine. Um And and I thought I don't even know how to do this. I've got no idea how to do it anymore.

 

Beth: After a stroke cognitive problems can be quite common. So there can be things like problems with concentration, difficulty with memory. Finding that you just can't remember things as well as you could before. It might be problem solving has got a bit more difficult. And also you can have problems with perception. So your brain is not interpreting the information that's coming into it properly. So things you're seeing aren't making sense to your brain.

 

Ranj: Concentration is a is a big thing because because certain tasks take a lot of a lot of concentration it becomes very tiring very quickly. So I suffer a lot from extreme fatigue and headaches as well. Which which come on quite quickly. But I am able to kind of manage those majority of the time now.

 

Bob: Very confused in the brain. You get the wrong things in the wrong place and uh you can't remember.

 

Beth: My role is to try and work out exactly where the problems are coming from and then to work on those problems. So it might be we give you exercises to do, it might be a pen and paper type activities. It'll be looking at the things you're trying to do and looking at different ways of doing them.

 

Lynne: If you want to go shopping just take it out and if you can't spell that I couldn't spell. I'll just get something at the club and think right I need vinegar and I'd copy it and put it down. I have to write it all down on paper and then do it again and again and keep doing it.

 

Beth: There's different tips and tricks people used to help themselves remember things. So it might be um that you use a camera, phone to take a photo of the things you want to remember. It might be that you use your phone or a tablet to bleep and remind you when you need to do things. There's various different apps around that can help it might be that you run certain lists or you always do activities in the same order and keep the same routine. So you know where you are.