In April 2013, Shani Shamah suffered a double stroke and wasn’t expected to live. But with intensive rehab and a never-quit mindset, Shamah now leads a normal life.
“I lost my speech, I lost the use of the whole of my left side, leg, arm, shoulder, hand, and through intensive physio in a special rehab unit I was re-taught to walk and to use my arm and hand,” she says.
Shamah also used the SCRIPT (Supervised Care and Rehabilitation Involving Personal Tele-robotics) robot glove in her recovery. Developed by researchers at the University of Hertfordshire and a team of European partners, SCRIPT is designed to help stroke sufferers regain movement in their hands and rebuild their muscles.
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According to SCRIPT’s developers, the robot glove “records the patient’s performance and sends this to a therapist, enabling them to tailor treatment remotely. It also frees up a therapist to treat multiple patients, while allowing recovering sufferers to rehabilitate themselves in the comfort of their own home, with the aim of increasing their time spent on rehabilitation.”
Watch the video below to learn more about SCRIPT and how it can help stroke survivors recover.
“I think it would be great, it really would be. I’m only sorry I didn’t have the advantage of having this when I was rehab,” says Shamah. “It’s very boring when you just sit at a table and take out a ball from a box and put it down on the table next to you, and playing with theraputty, rolling it backwards and forwards, whereas here you can actually see like with the fruit game you could pick up the fruit, put it in the basket, and that can be quite an achievement. So I think for general use it would be brilliant, for therapy use.”
[Video: Reuters] [Source: The Globe and Mail]
