What are common disabilities after a stroke?

1. Mobility problems are common during the acute stroke period, but a large majority of survivors are able to with with or without assistance six months to a year later.
2. Basic activities of daily self-care functions, such as dressing, bathing, feeding, tolieting, and grooming that a person must perform to be independent become impossible.
3. Communication often becomes a challenge for stroke victims. It's common to experience some spontaneous improvement though.
4. Balance and Coordination become problems that can be demonstrated by doing finger-to-nose, heel-to-shin, and alternating movement tests. Numbness, tingling, abnormal sensations, and excessive reactuions to sensory stimuli are common.
5. Visual Defecits are very common, especially homonyous hemianopsia.
6. Unilateral Neglect is when the patient lacks awareness of a specific part of the body. This usually occurs on the less dominant side, usually right hemisphere. In these patients, sensory stimuli in the left half of the enviroment are muted and ignored.
7. Speech & Language Defecits effect verbal expression, reading and writing. It becomes very difficult to name objects, and fluency and adequacy of content.
8. Pain such as headache, neck pain, or face pain can result from a stroke. (3)