@thephysiofix: Another behind-the-scenes day from the ICU. 🫁❤️‍🩹 Most people think stroke rehab starts after the hospital. For us, it started while he was still fighting to breathe. When you’re sedated, intubated, and stuck in a hospital bed, your lungs forget how to work. Logan didn’t just have a stroke — he had lung failure, pneumonia, a pulmonary embolism, and ARDS. Breathing wasn’t automatic anymore. It was something we had to train. We worked with respiratory tools every day. Practicing slow inhales. Long, controlled exhales. Turning breathing into a job again. Sometimes I used a silly little toy from our daughter to make it less scary — to give him a visual for “blow” and a reason to keep trying. We worked on crossing midline and hand activation too: Bringing both sides of his body back into the same conversation. Holding a spiky sensory ball in both hands so his brain could start “feeling” his left side again. I spent hours getting him upright — helping him bear weight through his arms to protect his shoulder and give him stability. People forget this part: He was in a coma for almost three weeks. On paralytics. His neck was too weak to hold his head up. And when you can’t hold your head up… you can’t clear your airway. That’s why he wasn’t getting off the vent. That’s why ICU didn’t feel safe letting him leave. So we trained it. At the edge of the bed. In the bed. With tiny mobilizations. Over and over. And maybe the most important part? We brought life into that ICU room. Our daughter sat in that hospital bed with him. Not because it was cute — but because his brain needed to remember his world. Familiar faces. Familiar touch. Love. That was therapy too. This is what early recovery really looked like for us. #icu #physicaltherapy #neurorehab #respiratorytherapist #strokesurvivor

Stacie Barber | Phoenix Physio

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Tuesday 25 November 2025 10:53:00 GMT