Recovery After Stroke

CoQ10 and Stroke Recovery: What the Science Actually Shows

Your brain is the most energy-hungry organ in your body. It accounts for roughly 2% of your body weight but consumes about 20% of all the energy you produce. One of the key molecules driving that energy, CoQ10, quietly declines from your 30s onwards.

For stroke survivors navigating fatigue, cognitive changes, and the long arc of recovery, that raises an obvious question: could supplementing with CoQ10 actually help?

This mini-episode examines the peer-reviewed evidence — not marketing copy, not supplement industry claims, but what clinical research actually shows.

What Is CoQ10 and Why Does It Matter After a Stroke?

Coenzyme Q10, also known as CoQ10, or ubiquinol in its active form, is a molecule your body produces naturally. It lives primarily in the mitochondria, the energy-producing structures inside your cells, where it plays two roles: generating ATP (the cellular energy currency everything in your biology runs on) and acting as a powerful antioxidant that neutralises free radicals.

When a stroke occurs, whether ischemic or hemorrhagic, the brain undergoes what is called ischemia-reperfusion injury. Blood flow is cut off, then restored. That restoration triggers inflammation and a surge of oxidative stress. Mitochondria in neurons start failing. Cells die not just from the original event but from the metabolic fallout that follows.

CoQ10 goes directly to the site of that problem. If levels can be sustained or supplemented adequately, the theory is that it could reduce the secondary damage unfolding in the hours, days, and weeks after stroke.

What Does the Clinical Research Actually Show?

A landmark 2025 review published in the journal Nutrients analysed 12 animal studies and 8 human randomised controlled trials examining CoQ10’s effects on the brain. The findings are genuinely mixed, which is exactly what honest science looks like.

In animal models, the evidence is consistent and compelling. Across Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and epilepsy models, CoQ10 supplementation produced meaningful improvements in cognitive function via reduced oxidative stress, decreased neuroinflammation, increased ATP production in the hippocampus, and reductions in amyloid plaque burden.

In humans, the picture is more complex. Of the 8 human RCTs reviewed, 4 showed evidence of benefit in specific conditions. In Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, frontal lobe cognitive function improved significantly. In Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, 150mg daily for 8 to 12 weeks improved working memory and reduced oxidative stress markers. In one Parkinson’s trial combining CoQ10 with creatine, cognitive improvements were measured at 12 and 18 months.

However, trials in Alzheimer’s disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment showed no significant cognitive benefit, even at high doses. There is also an unresolved question: whether supplemental CoQ10 can cross the blood-brain barrier in meaningful quantities. Indirect pathways improved cerebral blood flow, reduced systemic inflammation, and may account for observed effects rather than direct brain-level action.

What This Means for Stroke Survivors

The honest assessment: the research supports a biologically plausible mechanism. CoQ10 is depleted by the conditions that cause and follow stroke. Supplementation shows real benefit in some neurological conditions. Animal evidence is consistently positive. But large-scale human RCTs specifically in stroke populations are still limited.

Two practical points worth raising with your treating team before starting CoQ10:

Form matters. Ubiquinol (the reduced form) has significantly higher bioavailability than standard ubiquinone, particularly important for older adults whose absorption is lower.

Drug interactions. CoQ10 can reduce the anticoagulant effect of warfarin, a medication many stroke survivors take. It may also amplify blood-pressure-lowering effects of antihypertensive medications.

Take the research, not the marketing, to your neurologist or GP. Ask whether it is appropriate, given your specific stroke type and current medications, what dose the evidence supports, and how long a reasonable trial period looks like.

For more evidence-based tools and conversations with people who have walked this road, Bill’s book is a good place to start: https://recoveryafterstroke.com/book

Support the community on Patreon: https://patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke

This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Please consult your doctor before making any changes to your health or recovery plan.

The post CoQ10 and Stroke Recovery: What the Science Actually Shows appeared first on Recovery After Stroke.

Stroke in Young Adults – What a World-Leading Surgeon Wants Every Family to Know

I had my first brain haemorrhage at 37. I had no idea that was even possible. Like most people, I associated stroke with age, something that happened to grandparents, not to someone in the middle of building a career and raising a family. That assumption very nearly cost me everything.

It turns out I’m not alone. The data on stroke in young adults is shifting in ways that should concern all of us — and the medical community is paying close attention.

In this episode of the Recovery After Stroke podcast, I spoke with Dr. Guilherme Dabus, President of the Society of Neuro-Interventional Surgery (SNIS) and one of the world’s leading neuro-interventional surgeons. Dr. Dabus performs thrombectomies, a procedure that physically removes blood clots from the brain and has dedicated his career to improving outcomes for stroke patients of all ages. He joined me as part of Survive Stroke Week 2026, a campaign by SNIS to raise awareness about stroke signs, symptoms, and the urgency of acting fast.

What he shared in our conversation is something every family needs to hear.

Why Stroke in Young Adults Is on the Rise

The assumption that stroke is an old person’s disease is not just wrong, it’s dangerous. Recent data shows that the number of patients under 65 experiencing stroke is increasing. Dr. Dabus is unambiguous about why.

“A lot of it has to do with our lifestyle,” he told me. “Obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, sedentarism, these are risk factors for stroke, and they’re affecting younger people more than ever.”

But lifestyle isn’t the only factor. Dr. Dabus also highlighted migraines and autoimmune diseases as stroke risk factors that are often diagnosed late, if at all. These conditions are harder to identify, harder to control, and disproportionately affect younger patients who may not yet be seeing a doctor regularly.

The takeaway is uncomfortable but important: you cannot assume you are too young, too healthy, or too active to be at risk. Stroke does not make those calculations.

The Sign You Need to Know: BEFAST

The single most important thing you can do for someone having a stroke is recognise it quickly and call emergency services immediately. In the United States, that means 911. In Australia, triple zero.

Dr. Dabus uses the acronym BEFAST as a tool for rapid recognition:

B — Balance: Sudden loss of balance or coordination

E — Eyes: Any sudden vision problem or change

F — Face: Drooping on one side of the face

A — Arms: Weakness in one arm, ask the person to raise both

S — Speech: Slurred, garbled, or absent speech

T — Time: Time is brain, call emergency services immediately

“If you feel someone may be having a stroke, just call 911. We’re going to get you checked. If in the end you’re not having a stroke, good for you. But if you are, you need to be in the hospital.” — Dr. Guilherme Dabus

One of the most honest things Dr. Dabus said in our conversation was this: a person having a stroke is often unable to call for help themselves. They may not be able to move, speak, or comprehend what is happening. That means it falls to the people around them, partners, colleagues, friends, to act. Community awareness is not optional. It is the first link in the chain of survival.

What Is Actually Happening Inside the Brain



During a stroke, a blood vessel in the brain becomes blocked or bursts. The brain, or a significant portion of it, is suddenly deprived of oxygen. Two million brain cells die every minute if this continues.

That number deserves to sit for a moment. Two million per minute.

Some of those cells are in the part of the brain that controls movement. Others control speech, comprehension, memory, or personality. The longer the blockage continues, the more of those cells are lost permanently. And while some surrounding cells remain viable, they are not yet dead, just starved. Every minute of delay narrows the window for recovery.

“The sooner you get to medical attention, the sooner your vessel gets unblocked, and the blood flow is restored, the greater the chance that you’re going to do well,” Dr. Dabus told me. Research supports this: for every ten minutes saved getting to appropriate treatment, a patient gains roughly one additional month of disability-free life.

The Procedure That Can Restore a Life in 20 Minutes

For the most severe type of ischemic stroke, where a major vessel in the brain is blocked, the treatment is a thrombectomy. Dr. Dabus performs these procedures regularly, and his description of what happens is both technical and quietly extraordinary.

Access is gained through the groin or wrist. A catheter navigates through the body’s vascular system to the neck, and a smaller device reaches the site of the clot. The clot is removed. Blood flow is restored. In some cases, a patient who arrived at the hospital paralysed and unable to speak walks out of the procedure room close to normal.

“You see the patient improvement really in front of your eyes,” he said. “That’s probably one of the most impactful things one can do in medicine nowadays.”

The outcome is not guaranteed Dr. Dabus was honest about that, too. Even with a technically successful procedure, if the brain damage was already too extensive, deficits can remain. But with early intervention, the success rate climbs significantly. Time, again, is everything.

Recovery Is a Mindset, Not a Destination

For those who do experience lasting deficits, Dr. Dabus offered something that will resonate with every stroke survivor reading this. His own mother had a stroke at 49. He has seen recovery from both sides.

“Stroke rehabilitation is truly a mindset,” he said. “You really need to work very hard, and the improvements will come.”

The research consistently shows that rehabilitation, physical, occupational, and speech therapy, continues to yield results years and even decades after a stroke. The brain retains more plasticity than medicine once believed. Progress is possible. But it requires showing up, consistently, over time.

If you are navigating recovery right now and wondering whether the effort is worth it, the answer from the science, from the surgeons, and from the 400-plus survivors I have interviewed on this podcast is yes. The work you put in today compounds over time in ways that are genuinely hard to predict.

For a deeper exploration of the tools that support recovery, you can find my book at recoveryafterstroke.com/book.

And if this kind of conversation matters to you, if you believe that stroke survivors deserve better information, better support, and better community, consider supporting the podcast on Patreon. Every contribution keeps these conversations going.

recoveryafterstroke.com/book

patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke

Stroke does not discriminate by age. But awareness, fast action, and the right treatment can change everything.

This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Please consult your doctor before making any changes to your health or recovery plan.

The transcript will be available soon…

The post Time Is Brain – Dr Guilherme Dabus on Strokes, Thrombectomy, and Why Acting Fast Saves Lives appeared first on Recovery After Stroke.

EECP Therapy and Stroke Recovery: Can a Cardiac Treatment Help Grow New Blood Vessels?

When I first heard about EECP therapy in the context of stroke recovery, I was skeptical. It’s a cardiac device approved in Australia for stable angina and congestive heart failure. Stroke is not on the label. So why are we talking about it on a stroke recovery podcast?

Because the mechanism is fascinating. And the research, while still emerging, is pointing somewhere worth paying attention to.

In this episode, I sat down with Jack Clifford, a heart disease patient who discovered EECP therapy and began exploring its potential beyond its approved indications. What started as a cardiac conversation quickly became one of the most scientifically interesting discussions I’ve had on the show.

What Is EECP Therapy?

EECP stands for Enhanced External Counterpulsation. The treatment involves a set of pneumatic cuffs fitted around the calves, thighs, and buttocks. These cuffs inflate and deflate in precise synchrony with the heartbeat, inflating during the heart’s resting phase (diastole) to push blood back toward the heart, and deflating just before the heart contracts.

The result is an increase in blood flow and a specific type of fluid shear stress on blood vessel walls. It’s that shear stress that makes things interesting.

The Biology: Arteriogenesis and Angiogenesis

To understand why EECP therapy might be relevant to stroke survivors, you need to understand two terms: angiogenesis and arteriogenesis.

Angiogenesis is the sprouting of entirely new capillary vessels — the body builds small blood channels where none existed before. Arteriogenesis is different: it’s the remodelling of pre-existing, dormant collateral vessels into functional bypass channels. Think of it like upgrading a dirt track into a highway. The track was always there; the body just wasn’t using it.

When blood flow is obstructed, whether by a blocked coronary artery or a stroke, the body can, under the right conditions, activate these collateral pathways. The shear stress produced by EECP therapy appears to be one of the triggers that stimulate arteriogenesis. By generating repeated waves of increased blood flow, the treatment creates the mechanical signal that tells blood vessel walls to grow and remodel.

This is why cardiac researchers originally developed EECP for heart patients. But it raises a legitimate scientific question: could the same mechanism support blood flow recovery in the brain after stroke?

What Does the Research Say?

A 2026 meta-analysis published in the QJM: An International Journal of Medicine examined 15 randomized controlled trials involving 506 participants, looking specifically at EECP’s effects on functional outcomes in stroke patients. The results showed statistically significant improvements, with EECP outperforming control conditions on standard functional recovery measures.

This is preliminary evidence, not a settled clinical consensus. The studies are relatively small, the methodology varies across trials, and EECP remains off-label for stroke in Australia. But for a therapy with a well-understood safety profile and an existing approval framework, 15 studies and 506 participants is not nothing. It’s enough to warrant serious discussion.

What I Discussed with Jack Clifford

Jack came to EECP as a patient, not a researcher. His experience with heart disease led him to explore the therapy, and he’s spent considerable time understanding the evidence base and connecting with practitioners. He’s not a clinician, and neither am I, but what we can do together is examine what the research actually says, what the mechanism actually is, and what questions remain unanswered.

In our conversation, we discussed:

How Jack first encountered EECP therapy and what led him to investigate it further

The difference between approved and off-label use, and why that distinction matters

What the shear stress mechanism actually looks like in practice

The existing network of EECP practitioners and how stroke survivors might access the therapy

The questions both of us still have about where the research needs to go

Important Disclaimers

  EECP therapy is approved in Australia by the TGA for stable angina pectoris and congestive heart failure (ARTG Entry 376470). Stroke is NOT an approved indication. This article and podcast episode are not medical advice. Speak with your treating physician before pursuing any treatment.

This episode is not medical advice. It is a conversation about an area of emerging research that I find scientifically credible and worth understanding. The goal is to help you ask better questions, not to tell you what treatment to pursue.

Where to Learn More

ecplocator.com a directory of EECP therapy providers

eecpbook.com is a dedicated resource on the treatment and its evidence base

recoveryafterstroke.com for stroke survivors looking for a broader community

Research cited: Zhao et al. (2026). Enhanced external counterpulsation for ischaemic stroke: a systematic review and meta-analysis. QJM: An International Journal of Medicine. DOI: 10.1093/qjmed/hcag010.

Therapy and Stroke Recovery: Can a Cardiac Treatment Help Grow New Blood Vessels?

Bill Gasiamis sits down with Jack Clifford to explore EECP therapy, a TGA-approved cardiac treatment that may stimulate the growth of new blood vessels. Together, they examine the emerging research on angiogenesis, arteriogenesis, and whether this off-label approach holds promise for stroke survivors seeking to improve blood flow to the brain.

Highlights:

00:00 Introduction – EECP Therapy
06:06 Recognizing Health Issues and Seeking Help
09:50 Hospital Experience and Heart Health
12:12 Decisions Against Medical Advice
16:28 Exploring Alternative Treatments
18:06 Understanding Enhanced External Counter Pulsation (EECP)
21:58 The Mechanism of EECP
27:03 Personal Transformation Through EECP
30:29 Lifestyle Changes and Holistic Health
34:35 The Impact of Stress on Health
38:30 The Journey of Writing a Book
43:29 The Role of EECP in Heart Health
48:21 Raising Awareness for EECP Therapy
56:05 Exploring the Future of EECP Therapy

Transcript:

Introduction – EECP Therapy

Jack Clifford (00:00)
Mine was really severe. 100 % blocked in my widow maker, the left anterior descending. I’m 95 in my left coronary artery and in my right main, I am 80%. And I’m still that way today, but I can run a sub seven mile.

Bill Gasiamis (00:16)
Welcome to the Recovery After Stroke podcast. I am your host, Bill Gassiamus. Before we get into today’s interview, I need to share something important.

The topic we’re exploring today involves a medical device called an EACP, Enhanced External Counterpulsation Machine. In Australia, EACP is registered with the Therapeutic Goods Administration for the treatment of stable angina and congestive heart failure. It is not approved for stroke. What we are discussing today is emerging off-label research, not a treatment recommendation.

Everything in this episode is for informational purposes only. This is not medical advice. Please speak with your treating physician before pursuing any treatment, therapy or intervention discussed here. With that said, let’s talk about something that genuinely fascinated me when I started reading the research. Your body has the capacity to grow new blood vessels, not just small capillaries, but to remodel dormant pre-existing channels into

functional bypass routes. Scientists call this arteriogenesis. There’s also angiogenesis, the sprouting of entirely new Both processes matter deeply for stroke because stroke is fundamentally a blood flow problem.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. A cardiac therapy developed for heart patients, not stroke patients, trigger exactly this kind of vascular remodeling. And in 2026, a meta-analysis published in the QJM across 15 randomized controlled trials and 506 participants found that EECP

produced statistically significant improvements in functional outcomes for ischemic stroke patients. Now, that’s not proof. That’s not a green light to go and get an EECP, but it is worth a serious conversation. My guest today is Jack Clifford. Jack is a heart disease patient who discovered EECP therapy while managing his own cardiac condition and who has since spent considerable time investigating its potential.

beyond cardiac care. I should tell you, I was skeptical going into this conversation, but I’ve learned that skepticism without curiosity isn’t really skepticism. It’s just closed mindedness. So I read the research and then I sat down with Jack. So if you find this episode valuable, I’d love for you to grab a copy of my book,

The unexpected way that a stroke became the best thing that happened at recoveryafterstroke.com/book. And if you want to support the show, you can join Patreon at patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. And I want to thank everyone who is supporting me on Patreon, especially the people that have been around for a long time and the people who have just recently signed up. I very much appreciate it. And now here’s my conversation with Jack Clifford.

Bill Gasiamis (03:19)
Welcome to the podcast.

Jack Clifford (03:22)
Thanks, Bill. Great to be here.

Bill Gasiamis (03:24)
Let’s give the listeners a bit of a background understanding of why you’re on the podcast. You’re not a stroke survivor, but we have something in common as ⁓ somebody who has been unwell before myself and you in the past. Tell me a little bit about your journey to the podcast So we just kind of give people an understanding as to how it is that somebody who’s not a stroke survivor.

Jack Clifford (03:34)
We do.

Bill Gasiamis (03:51)
how we ended up chatting together?

Jack Clifford (03:54)
Yeah, absolutely. So the quick version here is ⁓ I was on the brink five years ago of having ⁓ unsentable emergency triple bypass surgery. And ⁓ I chose a different path, which we’ll get to. ⁓ But you you have some level of placking if you have a stroke, typically, depends on the stroke, but that’s typically the case. And in my case, I had placking in my coronary arteries.

So it resulted in heart disease.

Mine was really severe. 100 % blocked in my widow maker, the left anterior descending. ⁓ I’m 95 in my ⁓ left coronary artery and in my right main, I am 80%. And I’m still that way today, but I can run a sub seven mile.

I can do some things that a guy that’s as blocked up as that should not theoretically be able to do. ⁓

Bill Gasiamis (04:49)
All right.

Tell me about life before the injury. What kind of work did you do? How did you go about life? What was generally a day like for you?

Jack Clifford (04:59)
Yeah. So I’m retired military guy. Um, so, you know, been in the military most of my life, um, retired about 10 years ago, a little over that. And, um, so I’ve always been a pretty fit guy. It wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t a fitness issue per se. Um, and, uh, I, I, I had kind of lost some of my self care because my wife had been going through some real significant medical issues that really required my full attention for quite a while.

And because of that, really stopped taking care of myself in the ways I had in the past for about 10 years. And when we had just moved to Florida, I started trying to take care of myself again. And that’s when I discovered all these problems.

Bill Gasiamis (05:44)
So

what does not taking care of yourself look like though?

Jack Clifford (05:47)
Gotta be in a couch potato and being on my computer way too much research and for ⁓ trying to help my wife get better and hold down a job at the same time and raise a family and all these other things that took the priority off of me in that sense that one should be taking care of themselves, meaning exercising, meaning eating the right foods, so on and

Recognizing Health Issues and Seeking Help

Bill Gasiamis (06:09)
You know, caregivers tend to die before the person they’re caring for much more often. And it’s cause of that reason, right? Because time is really taken up by especially full-time caregiving with somebody’s in the house and they need caregiving. need care. The caregiver tends to neglect themselves in every way, shape and form and tends to ⁓ make it about the other person. And then the other person.

Jack Clifford (06:14)
I’ve seen that and heard about it.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (06:39)
seems to be doing okay, but the caregiver is struggling and doesn’t ask for help and doesn’t go and doesn’t go and get looked after. And then things tend to catch up with them and they become the ⁓ sickest person in that relationship.

Jack Clifford (06:55)
It’s

like that whole put your oxygen mask on first on the airplane type thing, right? Like, you know, we can’t we can’t give what we don’t have to give

Bill Gasiamis (07:01)
Uh-huh.

Yeah.

So you, did you notice, did you notice the steady decline in your health? Did you kind of go, I’m not feeling right. I’m a feel a bit sluggish like 10 years down the track, or did it just creep up on you? then you got to this point.

Jack Clifford (07:15)
It

really crept, it really crept. I, you know, like I had initially exercise induced angina, but it wasn’t much exercise that induced the angina. And then it very quickly progressed to trying to walk and getting out of breath and, know, at very basic walking speeds, just moderately paced, you know, anything anybody would do out in your neighborhood. ⁓

Bill Gasiamis (07:39)
Did you know that you

had an angina?

Jack Clifford (07:41)
I did, yeah. I didn’t have a big heart attack episode like some people have. I’m 100 % blocked. There’s no heart attack to happen, right? Because the stuff is, I’m so blocked that it’s just a pure blood flow issue. A lot of people don’t understand that that 50 % blockage is a huge risk for a heart attack because you’re gonna burst a plaque and then go from 50 % to 100 % like that. But you know about collaterals.

And if you have collaterals in place, the blood’s not getting flowing this way, you’re gonna recruit some lead oval collaterals to be able to just get by with your activities of day living. But if you don’t push yourself, you don’t know that you don’t have enough blood flow to do these other things.

Bill Gasiamis (08:22)
Okay, so you got to the point where you were so unwell as far as the blood vessels around your heart were so unwell, they were so blocked that angina led to another escalation or something happened that got you to the point where you realized, okay, things are not good. Now, tell me what angina is exactly and what it’s like to have it. How do you experience it?

Jack Clifford (08:39)
Yeah.

yeah, yeah.

I’d love to talk about that. Bill. at its most basic, it’s a supply demand mismatch. So, you know, the blood flow that’s supplying your heart ⁓ is adequate for X, Y, or Z activities of daily living. You know, walking around the house, doing the dishes, you might have enough blood flow for that, but you don’t have enough blood flow to go run a mile or even walk potentially, you know, or

Hospital Experience and Heart Health

but it’s all about supply demand mismatch. And that’s about just the size of the pipes, you know, if they’re clogged up, how clogged up are they? And, know, ⁓ that’s, really it. So, and what it feels like is it’s scary because it feels like a heart attack. all like, what does a heart attack feel like? Well, there’s a thousand different sort of, ⁓ descriptions of it. ⁓ you know, radiating down your arm or nausea or something in your back, but.

you know, if it’s right over your heart, it’s unmistakable. And that’s at least my presentation of angina. And I think it was a pretty typical one is, you know, I have this weird kind of deep pain. initially, when I, when I started, you know, run, trying to run and got it, I thought, ⁓ you know, I just pulled a chest muscle weirdly over my heart. You know, I’ll stop and let’s see if it goes away. I come back, you know, no, same thing. Okay. Still not better. Let’s do it again. Another couple of days later, so on and so forth. I was just kidding myself, but

I didn’t know anything about the horror at that point. hadn’t had to research all this stuff and do all the deep dive.

Bill Gasiamis (10:16)
That’s the same crazy logic

that stroke survivors put to, I’m feeling weird. I’m dizzy. I’m going to go and lie down. I’m going to rest. It’ll be better later. ⁓ I’m too busy. I’ve got to go to work. ⁓ I’ve even had stroke survivors where somebody’s telling them you maybe you’re having a stroke, you know, just tongue in cheek and they’re like, yeah, no, probably not. ⁓ it’s the same crazy logic that we say about things that are unfamiliar to us that we cannot potentially.

Jack Clifford (10:25)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (10:46)
link to something so serious because we have no knowledge, we’re ignorant, right?

Jack Clifford (10:47)
Yeah.

Well, yeah, I think that’s really part of the key there is like most times with something as sudden as what you’re talking about or what I’m talking about in my instance, because it was pretty, pretty sudden, you know, weeks and months. ⁓ We went from being these, you know, healthy people that felt like we were on top of the world to all of a sudden not. you you didn’t have a frame for what not looked like. ⁓

Bill Gasiamis (11:14)
Exactly.

Yeah. That’s such an important comment. We don’t have the frame for what not healthy looks like and therefore you don’t know what you don’t know. So you don’t take any action. You just brush it off. Okay. I hear you. All right. We got to the bottom of the stupidity behind a lot of my decisions as well to avoid going to hospital for a week, et cetera, the first time. ⁓ So you end up

Jack Clifford (11:24)
Exactly.

That’s it.

Bill Gasiamis (11:43)
being really unwell on this particular date. Kind of what is that day like? Explain us.

Jack Clifford (11:46)
Yeah. Yeah.

Decisions Against Medical Advice

So I got tight. I, I, I’ve been a biohacker for a while. So that’s probably the only reason I’m here talking to you because I went off the beaten path really far off the beaten path to get to the place where I know what I know and I have to share what I have to share. ⁓ because I’ve been trying to help my wife get better for some significant issues, including a really bad traumatic brain injury.

And some other things and doctors didn’t have the answers for those so we had to we had to kind of biohack our way out of some things I was comfortable back. I’m saying that to say my wife got me a Chili pad for my bed because you know been trying to biohack sleep for a while and the colder environments to sleep are you know better to some degree at least in theory ⁓ and so Yeah, correct

Bill Gasiamis (12:32)
Chili meaning cold, not spicy.

Jack Clifford (12:37)
Yeah, correct. A chili pad as in the cold. So it’s a device that just, you know, cools your bed off. And so I crank that down to 55. She got it for me for Christmas. So Christmas day Eve, I’m like hopping into bed, like I’m going to sleep really well tonight, you know, and I woke up at four AM like, Oh, you know, I thought that was the big one because it felt that way. I a dead sleep woke me up with, with intense chest pain.

And I knew something was going on, you but I was kidding myself. I hadn’t talked to family about it. You know, I hadn’t shared anything about what was going on with anybody. So at this point I’m like, oh my goodness, you know, and I could be dying and have not had, you know, just been an idiot the whole time. So I rushed to the hospital and I didn’t have a heart attack. I just made it so cold that I made my heart work and that supply demand mismatch was happening all night long in my sleep.

Bill Gasiamis (13:15)
Mm-hmm.

Jack Clifford (13:31)
And so it got to this, you know, a giant, creeps up, you know, it’s like, can feel it. And then if you push it, you’re like, can really feel it. Well, you know, I woke up out of a dead sleep going from not feeling it when I went to sleep to, to feeling it to the extreme when I woke up. Um, but that’s when they gave me the, uh, the, uh, nuclear stress test with a treadmill test, right in the hospital. And it was, it was really bad. They can’t quantify your blockages with that, but they can tell you that, you know, you’re

You’re kind of screwed. And I was like really screwed. Like it was 47, but they said I was one of the worst I’d ever seen. ⁓ yeah. So I had all weekend to think about it, you know, cause I was a Friday, fortunately, and they could, they weren’t going to do the heart catheterization until Monday and the doc, you know, I was signing consent forms for them to do bypass surgery and it was pretty clear that the odds of it getting stented was not really good, but that’s what you hope for. Right. And most people are like, we’ll just get a step.

once then in you’re fine. And ⁓ in my case, it wasn’t looking likely. And my mother had had bypass surgery five years before that. And I watched her cognition after the bypass surgery just declined to the point where she’s in memory care now. And she had gone from being this vibrant book author of multiple books and you know, she was a hypnotherapist and she’s helped a lot of people in her life, done a lot of amazing things, but ⁓ she never.

she never really came out of the bypass surgery as her whole self and pretty quickly was just completely not herself at all. ⁓ So I wasn’t ready to come back. Now she’s 76.

Bill Gasiamis (15:03)
How old? How old’s your mom?

Yeah. I know with people that are older, ⁓ heart surgery can lead to cognitive decline and there is a link there. There is a number of it’s well researched. It’s a risk. ⁓ not one that you’re probably aware of and that they talk about much, but it definitely is a thing. so, okay. You’re, you’re you go to the hospital. They realize, ⁓ the

Jack Clifford (15:15)
Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (15:37)
charts are not looking good. ⁓ They do the tests. They suggest that what they can offer you is bypass surgery.

your, and you’ve got a weekend, think about it and you, and you go home, do they go, do you go home with medication and joining the medications to keep the blood flowing with anything? What do they do?

Jack Clifford (15:51)
Mm-hmm. Where’d you go? Yeah, such a blessing.

No, no, because I

was leaving against medical advice so they weren’t going to help me, right? And I actually said to the doc, said, you hey, I’m new here because I just moved a couple of months ago to Florida. And I said, can I come see you? And I didn’t have a cardiologist. I didn’t need one before this. And he says, if you live that long, just walks out. So I was on my own at that point. There was no resources of institutional medicine. I had to go find resources myself.

Exploring Alternative Treatments

Bill Gasiamis (16:28)
Wow. Things are pretty wild in Florida. If you live that long and he walked out.

Jack Clifford (16:30)
Yeah.

Yep. That’s exactly what we said. It’s a very sobering moment for me. Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (16:35)
And you walked out. Yeah, and you walked out.

Far out, man. So what’s the thinking behind walking out of that? Because I understand ⁓ that there are very few things that, like my situation was different, right? But I’ll give you kind of my thinking behind the, I’m gonna walk out routine. It’s like, there is a part of me that sort of says, I don’t need to subscribe to all that medical stuff, all the nonsense. I wanna try and avoid the medications. I wanna do all of that.

Jack Clifford (16:41)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (17:07)
That means I’ve got to do some work to get to that point, right? I’ve got to make sure that I’m eating well. I’m sleeping well. ⁓ I’m exercising. ⁓ I’m not overweight. I’m not smoking. I’m not drinking. Like there’s a responsibility that goes with, don’t want to take that medication. Right. And one of the other things is that, ⁓ if it wasn’t for the medical industry, I would not be here recording this, ⁓ podcast. Yeah. So there’s this big thing, which is.

Jack Clifford (17:31)
Yeah. Double-head sword, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (17:37)
They’re not fixed. My brain is not getting fixed unless they go in and take out the faulty blood vessel and potentially risk all the complications that, that I got the ones I got, but also the ones I didn’t get, which many people get, which is far worse deficits than what I visible on me. So, ⁓ I’m, you know, I’ve never met anyone in my time who hasn’t

Understanding Enhanced External Counter Pulsation (EECP)

who has been through the medical ⁓ system, who hasn’t benefited from it in a way that’s sort of sustained their life, supported their life, lengthened their life. Like everyone that I’ve interviewed has always gone through the medical system and has saved them, supported them, helped them, right? And you’re going to, the first place to get help you’re going to is a hospital, right? You ring up and you go, I’ve got to go.

Jack Clifford (18:22)
Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (18:31)
to the hospital because I’m feeling like I’m having heart attack. You get there, they confirm it, and then the place that you go to for help is the place you walk out of. What’s the thinking? Yeah, yeah. You have the angina, the blockages. Yeah, you got all of that.

Jack Clifford (18:41)
Well, I didn’t have a heart attack. That’s a really important nuance point. you know, I’m sitting in the hospital all weekend.

there was nothing at risk in an emergent moment for me. My heart wasn’t, you know, I wasn’t going to lose heart muscle if they didn’t do something. Like my mother’s instance was different. She had a heart attack. She probably needed the bypass surgery. It was really hard on her, obviously, like we talked about, but in my case, I had time, but they didn’t treat it like I had time, right?

Bill Gasiamis (18:54)
Okay.

Okay.

Jack Clifford (19:10)
They treated

it like, we’re gonna go in and take care of this thing for you rather than you have time to explore other options when I knew in fact I did. So it might be that getting bypass surgery is the right move for some folks, but it also might be the right move for you and me. We’ve already discussed that you take care of yourself so you never get in that situation. And yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (19:32)
Yeah.

And this is not a interview about do as I say, this is not that interview, right? What this interview is like one person’s experience and what they did. That’s it. We’re not giving medical advice here. We’re not telling you what decisions to make. We’re not telling you any of that stuff. This has got nothing to do with advising anyone to do anything, but what it has got to do with is what either you discovered

Jack Clifford (19:45)
Yeah. Right.

Bill Gasiamis (19:58)
or you knew before and put into action or what you discovered after you left the hospital that weekend. So take us through the next sort of phase of I’m taking responsibility for this and I’m going to take advantage of something that is documented scientifically and proven.

Jack Clifford (20:03)
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah. And you know, like, so I’ll go into that phase, but, but I just want to share this thing because, know, you, you pretty much already told me when you first heard EECP, you like EECP what? Right. And most doctors are EECP what? Basically every patient is EECP what? And it’s, it’s just, it’s really not going to lie. really bothers me because this, this, this therapy is, is so well-documented. It’s, it’s, it’s FDA approved. It’s not controversial.

Bill Gasiamis (20:25)
Mm-hmm.

Jack Clifford (20:43)
⁓ it just anyways, okay. So, so, so yeah, so I leave the hospital and the only reason I knew about a EECP was because when my mom had her heart attack, I listened to a podcast by Ben Greenfield. He’s a pretty, you know, pretty high-level guy, right? And that had been, that was like 2015. And I just heard mention of it. was like, it was maybe like two minutes of the, of a 60-minute podcast at most, but I was like noted. So I looked into it from my mom. The closest provider was two hours away and you got to go 35 times and my mom isn’t going to drive.

35 times, you four hours round trip. It wasn’t gonna happen, so we moved on, but I just sort of knew about it. And when I say knew about it, I didn’t know, Bill, like what it actually did or how it worked. I didn’t look into it at that level. just, you know, like assessed the situation. I was like, okay, there’s something out there. That’s it. Okay, yeah. It stands for enhanced external counter pulsation. And you want me to go into a little bit about how it works? Yeah, okay, so.

Bill Gasiamis (21:27)
Hmm. And what is a ⁓ CP stamp? What does it stand for?

Yeah, yeah, let’s do that, yeah.

Jack Clifford (21:42)
So EECP involves lying on a bed. From the patient experience, you’re lying on a bed. You have ⁓ cuffs wrapped around your calves, your thighs, and your hips. And inside those cuffs, there are little air bladders.

Bill Gasiamis (21:55)
those cuffs,

are they like blood pressure cuffs?

The Mechanism of EECP

Jack Clifford (21:58)
Yeah, like big giant Velcro blood pressure cuffs. Yes.

Bill Gasiamis (22:02)
Okay, so like they’re much bigger than a regular cuff, which is just over the bicep. Okay. All right.

Jack Clifford (22:04)
Yes.

Yes. Correct. yeah,

just that’s the right way to think about it. you you cinch them up, you’re getting really snug in this thing, but it looks like a giant pantsuit, you know? ⁓ And you lie on the bed and then you get a three lead EKG on you. It’s here, here, in here. And then in between heartbeats, the machine…

inflates compressed air into those bladders at 1.3 psi to start with, which feels like kind of a gentle massage. And then the pressure can be increased in increments of 0.1 psi all the way up to six, which feels like the exact opposite of a gentle massage. However, if you go slowly, your body accommodates to that pressure and that pressure feels different, both over one session and over multiple sessions, meaning

you might not get to six your first session, that’s unlikely, but as you do repeated sessions, you’ll increasingly get closer to six earlier in the treatment and be cumulatively more hours at those higher pressures. And what’s happening is all the blood, not all the blood, a significant amount of blood from your lower body is being pushed up in between heartbeats and it’s causing this phenomenon called sheer stress in your vascular systemically.

And wherever there’s pressure differentials in the body, it’s giving a stimulus to grow. It’s saying the pipes are not big enough, you gotta grow. We’re trying to put through more than is gonna fit. The body’s like, wait a second, it’s not big enough. But growing things in the body takes time. And so you need those repeated sessions. Like I mentioned, T.R., before we started recording, it works just like cardiovascular exercise, but at levels humans can’t do on their own. ⁓ And so, yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (23:52)
That’s important to talk about. so

just for a moment, we’ll talk about that. Like it works like cardiovascular exercise. So the idea with cardiovascular exercise is that what, does cardiovascular exercise do that’s similar to EECP?

Jack Clifford (24:04)
Sure.

If you’re out running, when you hit that stride on your feet, you’re doing that same thing, right? You’re ⁓ sending blood up, right? And then your circulation, your heart’s beating twice as fast maybe than it normally is, or substantially more than you’re just sitting here heartbeat is. And that’s because the heart is responding to the environment around it and saying, I gotta get…

a lot more blood, a lot more places. So I gotta work a lot harder. you know, is maintenance. So collateral blood flow. have alternate routes that we can use that lie dormant throughout our body. And those collaterals, if they never get used, they honestly, they get weaker and they close off, but they also can be reopened, you know? And then you can grow more of them. And…

Bill Gasiamis (24:38)
And what’s the result of that?

Uh-huh.

Okay, so there’s blood vessels that get

less ⁓ blood flow because people are sedentary or people aren’t doing the type of exercise that would activate those blood vessels, for example. And then what in theory, not in theory, and then what happens in cardiovascular exercise, the body goes, we need more blood flow, let’s open up.

Jack Clifford (25:12)
Exactly.

Bill Gasiamis (25:26)
other areas where normally blood flow wouldn’t be required or doesn’t go. And EECP kind of mimics that mechanism.

Jack Clifford (25:27)
Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah, but not kind

of, it’s really important just to note, cause I don’t want, I don’t want any of your listeners thinking, well I’m just going to go run more. Right? I mean, by all means do that safely. You know, the dose always makes the poison with everything, but, but don’t think that you can, you can just go do this. You can do it to a limited degree with exercise, but you’re not going to grow, you know.

that I didn’t have that before. And I like it because it shows you like the world of the possibly or it might be a little unsightly, but it’s feeding my brain. EECP has changed my cognition in addition to my heart, you know, my pelvis and my kidneys and my liver. you know, like it’s, it’s optimized blood flow systemically. Um, yeah. Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (26:19)
Okay, so let’s go back to the cuff, the cuff

that we put on and then what happens.

Jack Clifford (26:24)
Yeah.

Yeah. So, so you just lie on the machine. Typically you do 35 hours on a machine for a course of treatment and one hour a day is a typical, you know, five days a week. That’s just typically you’re going to the doctor. There’s lots of other variations of that, but that’s the typical course. And that’s the most well-researched course. And, ⁓ you know, over time, usually about halfway through those 35 sessions, if you had angina, you’re going to notice a difference, but

Personal Transformation Through EECP

you know, they use this to treat dementia. It’s a well studied in dementia. There’s a recent study in the US that was profound, a year-long study, a hundred demented patients, roughly a hundred non-demented or a hundred treated patients. Everybody had dementia and a hundred CHAM patients, placebo. The demented patients that got an EECP, they all got better when we know dementia, people get worse in a year, right? They all got better, all of them. And yeah, so that’s like, you know,

similar phenomenon erectile dysfunction, similar phenomenon kidney disease, similar phenomenon stroke recovery. So, you know, these are studies. I’m not making it up. It’s just literally like really well documented. It’s not.

Bill Gasiamis (27:33)
studies

that we can get a hold of and put in the show notes, link to the show notes.

Jack Clifford (27:36)
Yeah, go

to to EECPLocator.com and all these studies are there. ⁓ Yeah. So what I did is in the U.S., I, you know, it’s really hard to find. so I couldn’t find it. I had to, I had to call around and like, I could find a few doctors, none of them near me, but a few of them that would had machines, but they would only use them after everyone had failed stints and failed bypass and they had nothing else to offer them, which makes no sense. But that’s how the insurance reimbursements work.

Bill Gasiamis (27:41)
Okay.

Jack Clifford (28:04)
That’s the only time they’ll actually pay for it. So that’s what they say it’s good for, but that’s not what it’s good for. That’s just what they can get money for, I guess. but, so I had to drive three hours and take a chance on a doctor and stay in a hotel to get my treatments. And it was really difficult. I mean, I ended up buying one of these machines and got it at my house and I’ve just been using it for the last five years. So, you know, 35 hours was great, but I was pretty bad off. Now I got about 700 hours and, uh, you know,

more hours is just greater stimulus to the body to grow vasculature, right? And I mean, I…

Bill Gasiamis (28:38)
how do you know that you’ve grown? I know there’s this ⁓ feeling or this change that happens in the person. ⁓ Like you said, dementia, ⁓ people who experienced dementia have a better outcome later or a change in the way that they’re brain working, et cetera. can you see the, is there a way to see the difference between the blood vessels and

Jack Clifford (29:02)
You can’t, you can’t image, could image

on a, on a cardiac pet would be like the only imaging or I guess, you know, if I went back and did a stress test again, you would, you would be able to see, cause it’s not quantifying specific arteries. It’s, quantifying the total volume, but I tried that they were, actually wouldn’t let me, they said it’s not safe because you have it at a stent or a bypass. So I went back to the same place that I got it, you know, and I was like, literally they put me through the imaging machine. gave me the dye and then they got

Lifestyle Changes and Holistic Health

I went to go on the stress test and the same doctor was there and he refused to tell me to go. So I like, wanted to say, hey doc, let’s go for a run. Cause like, you’re not going to keep up with me, but you know, so I, I didn’t bother with that, but I’ve got my own, you know, I did my own little stress, stress test with a treadmill, right? I started, I was getting chest pain. I found out where I can induce angina and I try and say just below it, you know, so I know where it is, right? I was 2.2 miles an hour. That’s not a fast walk.

And then after the first 19 sessions where I was staying in the hotel, I got up to 2.7. That’s a really big difference even if it doesn’t sound like a lot. And then I got my machine and I kept going. And then within a couple of months, I was starting to do a running stride. And I could keep that up, no angina. I know where angina would come in. I had time calculations and everything. And then eventually, now I can run.

comfortably 6.5 mile an hour pace for quite a while, know, push it up to 14 miles an hour for 30 second sprints and you know, like all kinds of stuff. So, ⁓

Bill Gasiamis (30:38)
How long before

you break the two hour barrier for the marathon? Like was recently done. Maybe, maybe the more blood vessels, the more blood flow. Maybe you can get there.

Jack Clifford (30:42)
⁓ I got zero interest in that. Yeah.

I think so

though, I think those Kenyans should be ⁓ hopping on these EECP machines and they’re I mean, they’re already amazing but.

Bill Gasiamis (30:58)
Well, you want the Kenyans to just completely own marathon running for the rest of eternity. It’s unbelievable what they did. Right. Like I imagine that there is something else going on there, but I imagine blood flow, oxygenation, more blood vessels. Like it’s got to potentially be a thing. reckon if you do a check between the last guy, me, who’s going to like 50 hours before you get to the other side and those dudes, there would

Jack Clifford (31:03)
Yeah, yeah, it’ll just be a Kenyan

Yeah. ⁓

Bill Gasiamis (31:27)
definitely be a difference because they’re exercising all the time, right?

Jack Clifford (31:31)
Sure, yeah, they’re pushing the collaterals as wide open as, know, whatever, whatever a human can do on their own, they’re doing it to the max to, know, the same phenomenon that EECP is doing for folks lying down. You know, they’re doing it to whatever the max you can without the machine, I would say.

Bill Gasiamis (31:48)
So this is a bog standard human body task. Like it just does that all the time. I have heard the blood vessels can reroute in the brain when somebody experiences a blockage and then, and it’s not useful at the time of the blockage, obviously, and it causes potential cell death when somebody has a stroke. But then later on.

Jack Clifford (32:11)
If there’s too much blood,

the revascularization, yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (32:14)
Yeah, so

EECP can kind of occur naturally and then it can support as much of the surrounding tissue as possible so that it doesn’t all die off. ⁓ So what you’re talking about is just encouraging EECP ⁓ to happen more than it would normally happen by ⁓ inducing it through this device where people ⁓ get sort of strapped in and then

Jack Clifford (32:23)
Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (32:43)
the machine runs, what does it run like a program? Explain how that works.

Jack Clifford (32:47)
Literally,

it’s just air pressure. got different pumps to pump the calves, the thighs and the hips up. And then it’s really just about the timing, right? It’s got to hit it at the right interval of your heartbeat. So it’s at the right place in diastole where your heart is at rest. that timing is very, crucial. And that’s really…

Yeah, it’s not, it’s very old technology. The machine I have was built in 2009. You know, they have new machines that are portable now that I’m working with some of the manufacturers to actually, you know, make these available in the U S because there aren’t any in the U S but they do have portable machines that don’t require a bed. You could get treated on your couch. You could get treated, you know, on your own bed, uh, lying on the floor, I suppose. Um, so, you know, we’ve, we’ve really like technology hasn’t

Bill Gasiamis (33:19)
Wow.

Jack Clifford (33:42)
slowed down. just China’s like taking this thing and you know, have a basically every Chinese hospital has several of these machines and they treat patients in the, in the room with us. It’s, part of their standard of care for all kinds of different, different diseases that they’re treating. You know, and it’s adjunctive to just about everything. There’s nothing that you couldn’t do EECP with, right? ⁓ yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (34:03)
Okay, okay, so.

How do you experience your body differently now? And actually, let’s go back actually, how long has it been since you came across this, decided to get the first treatment, implemented yourself ⁓ at home and then how do you feel different now?

Jack Clifford (34:08)
Oof.

Yeah, it’s been five years

and four months now. And every since like, this is this is a little hard part to quantify, because there’s been a lot of brain changes to from this, right? So so I don’t even like feel like my 47 year old self who was in the hospital, that feels really like somebody else to me. You know, it’s a version of me, I suppose, but I can’t really relate to that person. Because I like a small example.

The Impact of Stress on Health

I used to sleep eight to nine hours a night. That was my normal, my whole life. I was generally like the guy that would come in the latest. You could come to work. was the guy that came in the latest. You And now I get up at two 30 most mornings and I’m like, like rare to go with energy. I’m, you know, I’m working out doing resistance training. I’m reading, you know, I wrote a book, I’m writing another book. I’m writing a book on rectal dysfunction as it relates to this phenomenon, because that’s a whole other, you know, case study.

and I work a full-time job and I just have an incredible amount of energy basically all the time. My mood is way better. My sense of touch is really different now. I give a lot more hugs because it feels really good. ⁓ My sense of smell and taste and…

You know, hearing, you know, I used to like have to go to the bathroom at night sometimes, you know, wake me up to go to the bathroom. Long gone.

Bill Gasiamis (35:47)
So at the same time though, it sounds like also you might have changed other things as well though, right? So what else have you changed in the meantime?

Jack Clifford (35:55)
sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It hasn’t just been EECP. Absolutely. you know, really good supplement routine. ⁓ Pretty extensive, but, you know, managing my lipids, for example, I take a thousand milligrams of niacin twice a day. I’ve been able to bring my triglyceride to HDL ratio to kind of an optimal one-to-one, using fish oil and some other things. ⁓ And, you know, I…

I really stay away from carbs for the most part. I like to eat keto, but I like it to be what I call clean keto. So I’m not like pounding keto ice cream or all these things that are, you know, they taste good and yeah, they’re keto, but they got all kinds of oils in them that aren’t really good for your body. ⁓ And, ⁓ you know, I’m big into moving and being active and, you know,

having an engaged social life as much as possible as well. I mean, I think that’s a very underrated thing. That’s actually an area I struggle in because I’m working so much, but you even this helps just, you know, getting to know people even online. But, ⁓

Bill Gasiamis (37:04)
It sounds like you haven’t re it doesn’t sound like you’ve reinvented the wheel. Like everything that you say is things that people take for granted that if they implemented would improve their life before EECP. We’re talking about EECP today, right? But just those things alone would make a massive difference to somebody’s experience. And that’s kind of the message that I’m trying to kind of get into the

Jack Clifford (37:17)
Totally agree.

I thought it a good

Sure.

Bill Gasiamis (37:30)
⁓ minds and hearts of the stroke survivors who I interview and who listened to the podcast. My book, I’m going to, we’re going to talk about your book in a sec, but I’m going to talk about my book. My book, when I wrote it, I thought I discovered all these things that people, should know about that no one knows about, but it’s not true in here is mindset. ⁓ there’s a chapter about emotional intelligence. There’s a chapter about nutrition. There’s a chapter about sleep. There’s a chapter about community.

Jack Clifford (37:32)
Yeah.

Yeah. No, please.

Bill Gasiamis (38:00)
⁓ that’s just the five that I can just rattle off the top of my head right now. And you’ve already mentioned that in the last few minutes, that’s exactly the things that you mentioned. And people take it for granted how much that improves your overall health. Right.

The Journey of Writing a Book

Jack Clifford (38:13)
That’s so true. And also

what’s wrapped up in the wrapper of all of those things that are threaded together is stress, right? ⁓ If you do all of those things, right, you’re lowering stress. How did I get heart disease at 47 when it happened to my grandfather in his late 60s and my mom in her mid 60s and it happened to me at 47? And we know it didn’t happen at 47. It was years earlier and I realized it at 47. Stress, you know? Like I was the guy that took on a lot.

Bill Gasiamis (38:38)
Hiding earlier.

Jack Clifford (38:44)
and had some traumatic things happen in my life and whatever, and I don’t need to go into that. But I always felt like it was all rolling off my back. Like, you know, I’m fine. know, like I didn’t, and there are reasons why I felt that way. ⁓ However, at the end of the day, I know that I wasn’t processing. There was so much I did not process. And I didn’t learn how to like have really good boundaries and that, you know, begot more stress because of those lack of boundaries and, but stress, right? You know, like, but if you have good

good social life and healthy people in your lives, that takes stress off. Eating the right food takes oxidative stress off your body. You could go on and on, but I think stress is gonna kill you before anything else.

Bill Gasiamis (39:17)
you

Yeah. I love

that you said that. I love what I love that. That was the answer that you gave when I said, what else did you do? Because it’s not just, you know, it’s like, I’m going to eat well, but smoke, you know, I’m going to eat well, but drink excessive amounts of alcohol. Like, no, it doesn’t work. You know, you can’t do that. Yeah. can’t do. Yeah. Small.

Jack Clifford (39:42)
No, you gotta do it all in concert. It’s the layers, right? Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (39:49)
numbers, know, the percentages they add up, you know, 1 % here, 1 % there all adds up and you get a result at the end of it. Okay. So, so you’re you’ve gone, I’m going to see if I can grow new blood vessels to support my heart. And what you’re found between the time that you went to hospital around five years ago to now is that the angina has

Jack Clifford (39:55)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (40:17)
⁓ improved, they’ve gone away. The heart has improved, I beg your pardon, the blood flow. And have you had a medical examination since then to do other comparison?

Jack Clifford (40:28)
Yeah, I have.

Yeah, I’ve got a cardiologist. I haven’t seen him and I’ve talked to him the other day because I talked about the book, but I haven’t gone to see him because he’s a plane flight away. But I’ve been worked up for the crowded intermediate thickness. You might be familiar with that as it relates to stroke. okay, well, they just measure your crowded arteries and look at the placking in your crowded arteries as a proxy for your systemic plaque burden. And flow mediated deletation, is they totally occlude the…

the arm with a blood pressure cuff and then see how quickly you can refill it after, you know, like, it’s like five minutes of this, your hand is completely numb. And those all, you know, workups were good and that was after a couple of years of treatment. You know, I tried to have that stress test, like I mentioned, but you know, now I just see my primary care, you know, he’s a good guy and he runs on my lipid panels and, ⁓ you know, so I’m definitely monitored, but.

What I haven’t done is gotten re-imaged because I don’t want to put extra dye in my system. Sure, somebody wants the images because they don’t believe me, but I’m not trying to sell anybody anything here. I’m just trying to spread the word on something. If somebody doubts my honesty, they can, it’s fine.

Bill Gasiamis (41:38)
I know what you mean, Jack. I know what you mean. I and I asked you because yeah, I would love to see that before and after. would love to see the blood flow. What’s happening, watch change. would be amazing. story to tell, but I also went out of my way if I could to avoid having more dyes and all that kind of stuff injected into my body. I totally get it. It’s okay. Yeah. ⁓

Jack Clifford (41:49)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (42:01)
Okay. So you wrote a book about it. Like, what was the idea behind the book? What were you thinking? Show us the one that you got there with the old book cover. And then I’ll include the new book cover in this image as we chat.

Jack Clifford (42:06)
yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Thanks. Yeah. So I started writing this book, in, know, ⁓ November timeframe, ⁓ after I mentioned to you, so my, my friend came down, ⁓ and stayed with me for 13 days and he had had some stroke damage five years before that was, you know, his whole right side, he just had like numbness and then pain. And then, you know, it this weird cascade of symptoms so bad, you know, sometimes he couldn’t sleep from it. And so

All the time he took off work he could he came and he used the machine three times a day and then he left pain free and like nothing else had worked and then this worked and I didn’t per se expect that I but I was like, you I know it does stuff. It’s helpful. But anyways, when I saw that, you know, I really started digging even more because before that I was like, well, Jesus is amazing. But maybe it’s just me, you know, and and anyways, so, ⁓ so then I, you know, I just started writing the book one day and

The Role of EECP in Heart Health

You know, my mom was a book author and I always wanted to write a book. didn’t really have anything particular to write about and all of sudden I do. So I’m like, you know, let’s see what happens. And, uh, and you dig into the research more and more, and you’re just like, increasingly frustrated by how everyone has known about this. And yet, you know, they don’t promote it. They don’t talk about it because it’s inconvenient. You know, and I’m going to get a little, try not to get like soapboxy here, but

Bill Gasiamis (43:36)
Do

it, do it, go for it man.

Jack Clifford (43:37)
Okay,

okay, because, you know, cardiologists will say it, some of them, the ones that are honest, they’ll be like, like mine. He says, I was making obscene amounts of money, giving people bypass surgeries instance. And then I was given the same people bypass surgeries instance, a couple years later. And, you know, and then he stumbled upon some answers and EECP is one of them that helps his patients stay well. And, you know, he makes a lot less money.

because of it, because he doesn’t go in and do these interventional approaches. And, you know, EECP, the most you could pay somebody is like $100 an hour, and you’re going to tie up a patient room for 35 hours with a tech, it doesn’t make any sense. I go pop a stint and you make 10 grand in two hours and never see you again. You know, like it just, I get it from, you know, I want to own a portion of Ferrari and have a lake house and a winter house, but

You know, like, I don’t know how you live with yourself. You said go for it, man. I’m going to go for it. you know, and my son’s about to graduate. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. I’m good with it. Yeah. Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (44:38)
But come on, come on, Jack. Yeah, you go for it. I’m going to push back. I’m going to push back as well. You go for it. I’ll push back. There’s yeah. Which is cool. Right? That’s what I want. I want to have a conversation and

I don’t want to control the narrative, but the guy that goes in needs a stint today has a blockage. Like that’s life saving. That does work. What I am afraid of that happens sometimes when people go in and they’ve got a blockage and then they get ⁓ even even a stroke blockage. Right.

in carotid or a vertebral artery. What happens is sometimes people go in and they get told you need a stent. Fair enough. You’re about to have a heart attack. You’re about to have a major stroke. If we don’t put one in, you’ll have a, that’s necessary. The challenge is, that that person sometimes doesn’t learn the lesson of what got them into the situation where they need a stent.

Jack Clifford (45:22)
Good.

Exactly. sure.

Yeah, by all means. Like emergency medicine is great. And we’ll put that in the emergency medicine category of cardiology, right? Why aren’t they offering you, why aren’t they saying, Hey, you’re at risk for a whole lot of other things just by this happening. Why don’t you come 35 times to this EECP machine and you know, like, or why don’t we have centers

Bill Gasiamis (45:36)
Yeah.

Yes, and then later…

Jack Clifford (45:55)
all over. I found exactly one place in Australia so far that I’m not focusing on Australia right now. I do plan to take EECP Locator International, but right now the access points in the US are abysmal. 70, 80 % of the people in the United States could not get to a center. There’s no access point that’s at all realistic for them to get to. And yet these machines are not that expensive. They’re the price of a

Decent not that great car. ⁓

Bill Gasiamis (46:24)
we’re starting to

see them in, I don’t know, health spas or something like that, where people will go, they’ll get yoga, they’ll get this, they’ll get that, they’ll get infusions perhaps and all sorts of other things. And there’ll be a machine or there’ll be a suit that people can put on and they can go through one hour.

Jack Clifford (46:29)
Yeah, that’s good.

That’s great.

Yeah, although

I do want to say that the Normatech, like the compression boots that they have and some of those things, when they don’t use the pressures that EECP uses up to 6 PSI and they’re not sinking it in between heartbeats, it’s helpful, but we’re not talking about things that can do the same thing in the body. It’s on the right path and I’m not digging it as being worthless because it’s not, but it’s just not the right thing.

Bill Gasiamis (46:47)
Yes. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s kind of what we’re seeing. And to go back to your point is because the medical profession does medical profession stuff. this is not, it’s not that it’s not medically kind of aligned. It definitely is. But when you’re told that the way you solve a problem is through putting a stent in and then never talking to that patient again, to tell them how to avoid to get a stent in that’s

Jack Clifford (47:31)
Yeah, that’s your job.

Bill Gasiamis (47:34)
what they do, like they’ve been trained to do that forever. And that’s what they do. And that works and it saves the life. But what it doesn’t do, which I also have a challenge with this, it doesn’t teach the lesson. What it reinforces is that if I have something wrong with me and I go to a doctor, they’ll fix it. So next time it goes wrong, I’ll just go to the doctor and they’ll fix it again. And I didn’t have to change my life. Like this even bloody advertisements that do that. They

Jack Clifford (47:51)
just I’ll go and he’ll fix it.

Yeah. Yes. Yes.

Bill Gasiamis (48:03)
They hijack that part of the person’s brain and they say, you know, have you got reflux, heartburn, that kind of stuff? Don’t let reflux and heartburn get in the way of eating the foods that you love. Just take a tablet. You know, that’s the same kind of thing, right? And that’s why the medical profession doesn’t do that because they’re not trained to do anything other than sell their thing. And their thing is what they went to work, to school for.

Raising Awareness for EECP Therapy

Jack Clifford (48:17)
Yes.

Bill Gasiamis (48:30)
20 years to be able to administer. But every so often you come across an amazing doctor, surgeon, et cetera, who says, I can’t do anything more for you, but maybe somebody else can. Those guys are better than the doctor who says, we can’t do anything else for you and then send you off their way. That next sentence, but maybe somebody else can, I don’t know who they are. That is.

Jack Clifford (48:43)
Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (48:57)
I think a great thing to say this is where I think EACP kind of fits in that now that I’m here and things are not good.

Jack Clifford (49:05)
I totally agree. I totally agree. And

yeah. And you, so you, you mentioned like the wellness spas and whatnot. And here’s the thing in 2015. So, you know, somewhat recently the FDA approved EECP for a brand new indication, general circulation, right? In healthy people. Like it’s right on the FDA indication. And also in one case in increase in VO2 max, but rough, that’s roughly saying the same thing. ⁓ yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (49:32)
for healthy people, was that part

of it?

Jack Clifford (49:35)
Yeah, it said unhealthy patients and healthy people didn’t call patients. So, so, ⁓ but, but, know, the litmus test for that is, is your doctor say you’re healthy enough to undergo circulation enhancement? If the answer is yes, you know, it doesn’t matter if you got all that other stuff or not, you know, we’re just not treating you for it. We’re not saying ECPs is fix for this, your erectile dysfunction. It might help it. You know, what’s not saying it’s, it’s the fix for your stroke, but it might really help your stroke, recovery, but.

Bill Gasiamis (49:47)
which

Jack Clifford (50:03)
Anyhow, so like you can, you know, I don’t know about in Australia, but in the United States, you could get an EECP machine and create a viable business model off of helping people as soon as people actually know about it and what it does, right? I’m trying to solve the access issue in the United States by aggregating demand, right, as one of the solutions. So I have a website, eecplocator.com. And if people… ⁓

tell me that they like EECP to be available in their area, when I get like five to 10 patients in one area, we’re gonna find a way to get it to them. ⁓ The how is, you there’s a bunch of different possible ways we can get EECP to them, but at the end of the day, you know, like people need this treatment. They really, really do.

Bill Gasiamis (50:50)
Yeah. We’re

not talking about anything ⁓ out there. Like this is not an out there thing. This is definitely common. Now I, I don’t know how I haven’t come across it. I’ve all these years after all these years now I’ve just because of our conversation right now, I just did a Google search and I typed in EECP machine Australia. And the first thing that came up was an Australian government department of health, disability and aging.

Jack Clifford (50:57)
No, it’s that.

Bill Gasiamis (51:20)
document from the Therapeutic Goods Administration, which

talks about a mid-trade Australia EECP system model, external counter pulsation system stationary. So it seems like they have a…

Jack Clifford (51:36)
Like they’ve approved it, sounds like they have some approved devices. Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (51:38)
Something like they’re at least looking at it. Let me see what that

says. The inclusion of the kind of device in the AI community is subject to compliance with conditions placed in post. Yeah, it sounds like it’s been through some regulated body in 2021.

Jack Clifford (51:52)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Yep. There you go.

Bill Gasiamis (51:57)
This device is intended to provide external counter pulsation therapy and is indicated for use in the treatment of stable angina.

Jack Clifford (52:06)
Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (52:08)
pectoris and congestive heart failure. There you go, my friend.

Jack Clifford (52:10)
Yeah, it works great for

people with art failure. It really does.

Bill Gasiamis (52:14)
Dude, father-in-law had heart failure. He passed away from heart failure just a few, about a year and a half ago. ⁓ Now, I don’t know, I’m not saying anything, but we’ve never heard of this before. Today’s my first time where I’m really going to deep dive about this thing with you. ⁓ So what are the challenges that you face? what are the, what is it? ⁓ The barriers that you face?

Jack Clifford (52:20)
Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (52:44)
when you’re speaking to people about this or how people finding out about it, how do you help people like

Jack Clifford (52:50)
It’s just an awareness piece. It’s an EECP what? And then, you you get in with some physicians and then you got to duke it out a little bit. Not with all of them. There’s plenty of physicians, you know, I’ve talked to the physicians that have machines and are doing the right thing for society and still making plenty of money. ⁓ They’ll just tell you, you know, I’ve talked to some cardiologists and just they know that all their colleagues are, you know, kind of crooked in certain ways. But

Bill Gasiamis (53:03)
Mm-hmm.

Jack Clifford (53:17)
⁓ Or at least they just haven’t taken the time, you know, like it’s a matter of what catches your shiny attention, right? Like you’re gonna, I know that’s fair. I want to retract that. I do.

Bill Gasiamis (53:20)
Yeah, let’s not call them crooked. I want to feel

like they are just not aware or they are

Jack Clifford (53:32)
Yeah, no,

and think that’s accurate, but I think maybe a more accurate thing would be to say not curious. It’s the lack of curiosity that bothers me. ⁓ I don’t need to go into it any further than to say like, hey, ⁓ some people know about it. Plenty of people haven’t bothered to find out that probably should have. ⁓ But in either case, we are where we are. ⁓

We’ve got a giant access crisis, but China has 5,000 access points. We have 150. I don’t know how many you have in Australia, but it’s not enough. let’s fix this because this could change the health status of your entire country, of the world. Like if people were proactively getting 35 hours of VECP, it’s some kind of an interval when they’re in an at risk.

category, which we can quantify with various tests and measures, you could easily stop people from ever getting to your father’s situation. My dad who died of dementia situation, sorry, father in law, yeah. ⁓

Bill Gasiamis (54:36)
Yeah, other in-laws. Yeah.

I hear you. hear you. Maybe what we need to do is maybe we need to, ⁓ get some data out and say how bad this is. Like it’s, we’ll call it something as bad as smoking and then we’ll get an advertising company to create a marketing campaign about how something bad is good for you. And then we’ll just teach people to be addicted to doing something good for themselves that they don’t know is good for themselves. Maybe that’s the way in. I know, I know where you’re coming from. get it.

Jack Clifford (54:58)
Yeah, right. There you go. We’ll reverse psychology.

Exactly. Yeah, although I want

to comment on one little side piece of benefit of the machine, which is I didn’t discover this right away and in 35 hours, probably not enough to do it, but you can appreciate the value of breath work, I believe, right Bill? And on the machine, it’s going to dunk, to dunk, to dunk at the rate of your heartbeat. If you learn to…

Bill Gasiamis (55:22)
Yeah, yeah, that’s huge.

Exploring the Future of EECP Therapy

Jack Clifford (55:31)
You slow the machine down like 30 beats a minute. You know, it’s real dramatic. goes from the dunk, the dunk, the dunk, to the dunk, to dunk, to dunk. And it’s just really crazy biofeedback in addition, because the pressure in your hips, right? It’s doing this to you. It’s strengthening your core and you really get to learn how to do breath work on the machine. And what I’ve found is over these 700 hours now, I have reflexive breathing. When I’m stressed out, don’t hyperventilate. I do the opposite.

it’s reflexive. And that’s because of those hours on the machine and just using that time, that time you’re stuck there for an hour. You guys will do some stuff.

Bill Gasiamis (56:14)
Yeah. I imagine it makes you feel really well. Also afterwards, I imagine like you’re meditating or you’re focusing on your breathing. Plus it’s doing that. Like the whole experience one hour or giving yourself one hour of time to do that is an amazing experience anyway.

Jack Clifford (56:18)
It does.

Mm-hmm.

I agree, totally agree.

Bill Gasiamis (56:33)
Yeah. ⁓ so let’s just get back to the book a little bit. Like, how does it go through? What does it go through? it scientifically based? What’s the idea with it?

Jack Clifford (56:41)
Yeah, yeah,

my story and you know a little bit about my wife’s journey along with me because it’s really benefited her as well too, but ⁓ She doesn’t have as many hours as I do and then we talk about ⁓ The you know the differences between other countries like China and India and why and what you know They’re different for both countries and some other countries where it’s more advanced And then we talk about the different, know how it works and what it works for and then we talk about

⁓ how a patient could actually go about, you know, accessing this therapy in the United States. And then we talked about kind of the future of the world of the possible if the EECP access was a thing and you how much money it could save our government and know, healthcare dollars or at least healthcare dollars could be spent better. ⁓ And

That’s about it. But it really helps you understand if you’re in the why haven’t heard of this camp before, you’ll really understand why. It’s very, very particular about picking apart what happened and why it kind of… So it had it like it’s high watermark was probably around 2006. And then drug eluding stents came out and people kind of lost interest in the EZP in the US. And so it just went a different direction.

And then here China with medicine, know, incentives that are different than ours, you know, it expanded from there and we were trying.

Bill Gasiamis (58:10)
Yeah, I love it. ⁓ so I, while you were chatting and I did it, I did another search for a CPM machine image photo. And there’s a Australian organization that has, ⁓ a machine that you lie on that they wrap you up in and it takes you through that process as well. Okay. So I’m just, I can’t believe I’m just becoming aware of this. They call it. They, they, one of their, ⁓ offerings is mitochondrial cell training.

Jack Clifford (58:37)
Yeah, I don’t disagree. I mean, when you deliver it, when you get so much blood flow in these small little capillaries that are the size of a human hair, right? You know, there’s a profound change at the cellular.

Bill Gasiamis (58:40)
Yeah, yep.

What I like about it is ⁓ if there is a therapeutic goods administration kind of approval and these machines are appearing in, we’ll call them ⁓ medical centers or health wellness centers or wherever, ⁓ clearly there’s.

a lot of benefit, very little risk. And then therefore people are feeling comfortable promoting this. This particular organization, I won’t name them, they have medical in ⁓ in their title, which sort of suggests that they are kind of maybe general practitioners or doctors of some sort. There’s a link, I’m in Melbourne, there’s a link that says new to Melbourne and it’s got an organization that’s there as well that talks about it.

Jack Clifford (59:11)
Yes.

Nice.

Bill Gasiamis (59:37)
So there you go. It’s more well known than I could ever have thought. And then there’s a video battling AONOCA angina and dyspnea after the COVID vaccine is one of the videos. yeah, look, doctors names listed all over here. Interviews. Okay.

Jack Clifford (59:41)
Yeah. That’s a start anyway.

Bill Gasiamis (1:00:04)
This is brilliant. I didn’t come in here skeptical, but I had never heard of it. So I didn’t even know how to start this conversation, but I love the idea of being able to offer solutions to stroke survivors who would benefit from additional blood flow, blood vessels, reroute around the damaged areas in their brain. ⁓ It’s kind of what hyperbaric oxygen therapy ⁓ aims to do as well.

Jack Clifford (1:00:23)
So.

Yeah, yeah, they go

hand in hand. The two are probably really powerful together. just, EECP works, but I’ve owned a hyperbaric chamber. I’m actually really familiar with it. ⁓ And I think a lot of it, but it’s really, it’s uncomfortable. And, you know, EECP can be uncomfortable in its own way, but it’s not, it’s not, you know, if you’re claustrophobic or if you have, you know, ear pressure sensitivity, ⁓ you know, hyperbaric has its challenges. ⁓

Bill Gasiamis (1:00:36)
Yeah.

Jack Clifford (1:00:55)
But it’s not going to grow blood vessels. It’s not in the same way. It’s going to oxygenate what you have. The EECP is going to give you a lot more. ⁓ They would work really well together. ⁓ Anyhow, ⁓ the one thing I want your listeners to just keep in mind is, it works just like exercise. So it’s gradual. So you’re going to get into it what you put out of it in terms of hours on the machine. ⁓ There are ways to get machines.

Bill Gasiamis (1:01:02)
I

Jack Clifford (1:01:22)
So if anybody, feel free to reach out to me. If you go to eecpbook.com, I’ve got all my contact information. I’d be happy to have a discussion with anyone. I’ve got a contact to my Facebook group and I’m talking to people from all over the world there. ⁓ I don’t charge anything to consult with people. I just passionate about EECP and spreading the word. yeah, it ⁓ sounds like it’s already approved in Australia. So that’s great. That means they could ship you a device if you wanted to. ⁓

One of the things that’s been really neat, we’ve been working with lot of couples lately and they’ll treat each other on our machine. They’ll stay with us for a couple of weeks and do that or stay near home. In the US, I’m open and I’ve got a space, like a six unit Airbnb. People will come and just stay there and get the treatment done. They’ll get the 35 hours done in 18 days, so it’s a lot faster instead of seven weeks.

Bill Gasiamis (1:02:15)
Mm-hmm.

Jack Clifford (1:02:17)
But the couples thing is actually a really big deal. I will say this, like, I don’t have the picture. I just posted it on my Facebook group, but it shows the different parts of the body and the blood flow increase. And let me just say the pelvis stands out about four act. So I like to say, like couples should really be doing this together. It’s almost a little dangerous for them not to.

Bill Gasiamis (1:02:31)
Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Yeah, I hear you.

hear you. It could actually probably help some men in, you know, ⁓ erectile dysfunction issues. Like I get that as well. Like it makes complete sense. we’ll diet, so we’ll not smoking, so we’ll not drinking, so we’ll exercising, so we’ll not eating carbs, ⁓ and increasing your testosterone through, you know, physical activity and all that kind of stuff. Like all those things go hand in hand, right? And

Jack Clifford (1:02:55)
Yes, all these can be done.

Bill Gasiamis (1:03:09)
If you can give it a boost as well with this thing, that’ll be, you know, that’s amazing. Again, non-invasive, ⁓ everything about it sounds like it’s good. I’m glad we had this conversation and I’m going to look into it a lot further. Thanks so much for reaching out. We will have all the links in the show notes so that anyone who wants to reach out and ⁓ catch up with Jack. ⁓ I love your story, man. Thank you so much.

Jack Clifford (1:03:33)
Yeah, thanks Bill. This has been fun. Really appreciate it.

Bill Gasiamis (1:03:36)
That was Jack Clifford, and I want to thank Jack for taking the time to walk us through the science and his personal experience with EECP therapy. So what stays with me from this conversation is the biology. The idea that the body already has dormant bypass channels and that under the right mechanical stimulus, it can be told to activate them and that it’s not science fiction, that it’s arteriogenesis.

and it changes how I think about what’s possible in stroke recovery. But I do wanna be clear one more time, EECP therapy is approved in Australia for stable angina and heart failure. I’m not sure what the status is in the United States, but I think it’s similar. It is not approved for stroke. This is emerging off-label research and everything we discussed today is for informational purposes only. So please speak.

to your treating doctor before pursuing any treatment. If you want to explore EACP further, find the provider at eecplocator.com and learn more about the therapy at eecpbook.com. The research we referenced today was a 2026 meta-analysis from the QJM across 15 studies and 506 participants. The link is in the show notes.

If today’s episode sparked something in you, I’d love for you to grab a copy of my book, The Unexpected Way That Stroke Became the Best Thing That It’s the resource I wished I had had in own recovery in the early days. And you can get it at And if you want to support this podcast and the work of getting evidence informed, honest conversations about stroke recovery out into the world.

join us at can sign up there and you can support the podcast for as little as $6 a month. Until next time, keep recovering. I’m Bill Gasiamas. This has been Recovery After Stroke.

The post EECP Therapy and Stroke Recovery: Can a Cardiac Treatment Help Grow New Blood Vessels? appeared first on Recovery After Stroke.

Near-Infrared Light Therapy After Stroke: Does the Science Hold Up?

A viewer reached out recently with a question I have been getting more frequently: Does near infrared light therapy actually help the brain recover after stroke? It is a fair question — the claims circulating online range from cautiously promising to outright extraordinary. In this post, I am going to cut through the noise and look at what the peer-reviewed research actually shows.

What is Near-Infrared Light Therapy?

Near infrared (NIR) light therapy — also called photobiomodulation (PBM) or transcranial photobiomodulation (tPBM) when applied to the head — uses specific wavelengths of light (typically 630-1100 nm) to penetrate tissue and interact with cells at a biological level.

This is not a tanning lamp or a heat lamp. The mechanism is specific: NIR light at the right wavelengths is absorbed by cytochrome c oxidase, a key enzyme in mitochondrial energy production. When stimulated, cytochrome c oxidase increases ATP synthesis — essentially giving cells more energy to carry out repair and function.

For neurons recovering from ischaemic or haemorrhagic stroke, the theory is compelling: damaged brain cells that are energy-starved might benefit from an additional energy stimulus.

The Mechanism: What the Biology Says

The cytochrome c oxidase pathway is well-established in photobiology. What is less settled is whether light at therapeutic intensities can penetrate the skull deeply enough to reach relevant brain structures.

Skull and scalp tissue absorb and scatter light substantially. Transcranial delivery requires sufficient power density (irradiance) at the source and long enough exposure to accumulate meaningful fluence (energy dose) at depth. Studies using ex vivo human skull specimens suggest that only 1-3% of surface irradiance reaches cortical tissue at clinically relevant depths — and deeper subcortical structures receive even less.

This does not make tPBM ineffective — it means dosing is everything. And most consumer devices do not disclose their irradiance or fluence specifications, which makes comparing them to clinical trials nearly impossible.

What the Research Shows

Animal Studies: Encouraging Signals

Several well-designed rodent studies have demonstrated that tPBM applied within hours to days of stroke onset reduces infarct volume, improves functional recovery, and modulates neuroinflammation. A 2019 study by Thunshelle et al. found tPBM reduced lesion size in ischaemic stroke models and improved neurobehavioural scores.

Animal models are useful for mechanistic insights. However, rodent skulls are thinner and brain structures are more superficial than in humans — so translational accuracy is limited.

Human Clinical Trials: More Complicated

The human evidence is where the story becomes nuanced.

The NeuroThera Effectiveness and Safety Trial (NEST-1 and NEST-2) were the most prominent early RCTs. NEST-1 (2007) reported positive outcomes for acute ischaemic stroke patients treated within 24 hours. However, NEST-2 (2009), a larger double-blind RCT with 660 patients, failed to replicate those results on its primary outcome measure.

NEST-3 was halted early in 2013 after an interim analysis showed it was unlikely to meet its primary endpoint.

What went wrong? Researchers identified several issues: heterogeneous stroke populations, inconsistent dosing protocols, and the fundamental challenge of transcranial light delivery in adults with varying skull thickness and tissue composition.

More recent work has shifted focus. A 2023 review by Zomorrodi et al. examined pulsed tPBM and found preliminary evidence for cognitive and neurological benefits in traumatic brain injury and neurodegeneration — but noted the absence of large, well-powered RCTs in stroke specifically.

The Consumer Device Problem

Here is where I have to be direct with anyone considering purchasing a NIR device for home use.

Clinical studies use medical-grade devices with precisely calibrated irradiance, typically 10-700 mW/cm2 at the source, with controlled exposure times to achieve specific fluence targets (often 0.9-36 J/cm2). Consumer devices vary enormously — and most do not publish their specifications at all.

Buying a NIR cap or helmet marketed for brain wellness is not equivalent to receiving the protocol used in clinical research. This does not mean it is harmful. It means we do not know whether you are getting a therapeutic dose, a sub-therapeutic dose, or anything in between.

The Stakes

If you are in recovery from a stroke or brain injury and you are exploring every option — which I completely understand — the risk here is not primarily financial. The risk is investing hope, time, and energy into something that may or may not be delivering what clinical trials suggest is therapeutic.

The opportunity, on the other hand, is real: the underlying biology is sound, and the research pipeline is active. This is an area worth watching closely.

Three Actionable Steps

Talk to your neurologist or rehab physician before purchasing any device. Ask specifically whether tPBM has been considered in your care plan and what the current clinical guidance is.

If you want to explore the evidence yourself, search PubMed (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) for transcranial photobiomodulation stroke — filter for systematic reviews and RCTs published after 2018 for the most current picture.

Check ClinicalTrials.gov (clinicaltrials.gov) for active trials recruiting stroke survivors for tPBM studies. Participation in a trial gives you access to a properly calibrated protocol and contributes to the evidence base.

What Recovery Can Look Like

When the brain is given the right conditions — adequate sleep, nutrition, rehabilitation, reduced inflammation, and potentially adjunct therapies that the evidence supports — healing happens in ways that can surprise both patients and clinicians.

I have spoken with hundreds of stroke survivors on this channel who found approaches that contributed meaningfully to their recovery. Not a single one found a shortcut. But many found tools — used thoughtfully, in partnership with their medical team — that made a genuine difference.

That is what this channel is about: doing the work so you can make informed decisions.

References

Lampl Y et al. Infrared laser therapy for ischemic stroke: a new treatment strategy. Stroke. 2007;38(6):1843-9. PMID: 17463313. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17463313

Zivin JA et al. Effectiveness and Safety of Transcranial Laser Therapy for Acute Ischemic Stroke (NEST-2). Stroke. 2009;40(4):1359-64. PMID: 19233936. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19233936

Thunshelle C, Hamblin MR. Transcranial Low-Level Laser (Light) Therapy for Brain Injury. Photomed Laser Surg. 2016;34(12):587-598. PMID: 27854434. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27854434

Zomorrodi R et al. Pulsed Near Infrared Transcranial and Intranasal Photobiomodulation Significantly Modulates Neural Oscillations. Sci Rep. 2019;9(1):6309. PMID: 31004089. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31004089

Bill Gasiamis is a stroke survivor and the host of the Recovery After Stroke podcast. He is not a medical professional. Nothing in this post constitutes medical advice. Always consult your treating physician before starting any new therapy.

The post Near-Infrared Light Therapy After Stroke: Does the Science Hold Up? appeared first on Recovery After Stroke.

AVM Burst in the Brain: A Recovery Story of Patience, Aphasia, and Finding Your Way Back

Jennifer Tomscha was 39, driving her three-and-a-half-year-old daughter home from preschool, when an AVM burst in her brain. She felt a wash of dizziness first. Then her vision started collapsing on the right side. She pulled onto a narrow verge on the highway between Greytown and Carterton in New Zealand, tried to reach her husband, got no answer, and dialled 111 instead. When the dispatcher asked what was wrong, she said something she still can’t fully explain: “I think I’m having a stroke.”

She didn’t know yet that she had two arteriovenous malformations in her left frontal lobe — one discrete, one diffuse. She didn’t know that within hours she’d be helicoptered to Wellington Hospital for an emergency craniotomy, or that the following Monday a neurosurgeon named Dr. Woon would spend thirty hours trying to remove both malformations from her brain. She just knew something was wrong, and that her daughter was in the back seat, and that she couldn’t keep driving.

That moment — pulling over, self-diagnosing, refusing the urge to simply lie down and rest — may be the reason she’s alive.

What happens when an AVM bursts in the brain

An arteriovenous malformation is a tangle of abnormal blood vessels that connects arteries directly to veins, bypassing the capillary network that normally regulates blood flow. Most people with an AVM never know they have one. But when an AVM bursts in the brain, blood floods into surrounding tissue at high pressure, and the consequences are almost always severe: haemorrhagic stroke, seizures, sudden neurological deficits, and in many cases, death.

Jennifer’s first surgery controlled the bleeding. The second, five days later, was supposed to remove both malformations. It didn’t go as planned. The surgical team discovered that blood flow to the first AVM was feeding the second one, causing the brain around it to swell. Dr. Woon had to make an impossible decision in the middle of the operation: let her die, or remove a portion of healthy brain tissue along with the malformation.

He chose to keep her alive. The surgery took thirty hours. When it was finally over, he called her husband and said, “Well, you’ll be lucky if she talks.”

The six weeks she can’t remember

Jennifer has no memories of the first six weeks after her AVM burst. She was in a medically induced coma for the surgery, then in intensive care, then transferred to rehabilitation. Everything she knows about that period has been told to her by other people.

When her memory started returning, she found herself in a rehabilitation ward in Masterton, using adult nappies, unable to sit up in bed. The front of her skull had been removed and wouldn’t be replaced for months. She wore a protective helmet whenever she walked. And yet — she insists — she felt fine.

[Quote block — mid-article]

“I kept saying, ‘I’m okay, I’m fine. You guys should just take it easy around me.’ But of course, I wasn’t really fine.” — Jennifer Tomscha

The honest recognition of what had happened to her didn’t come for almost two years. It took that long for her brain to have enough capacity to think about her brain.

The myth of the one-year recovery window

Most stroke survivors are told, either directly or by implication, that the first year matters most. That after twelve months, improvements slow. That after two years, you’ve plateaued.

Jennifer’s experience — and the experience of nearly every long-term survivor interviewed on this podcast — contradicts that narrative. Four years after her AVM burst, she is still discovering what recovery means. Her academic writing, once her profession as the Director of the Writing Program at NYU Shanghai, doesn’t flow the way it used to. She can’t recall songs from memory anymore, or sing the ones she used to sing. Her aphasia shows up most at night, when she’s tired. She still takes an afternoon nap most days.

But she’s also finishing a PhD. She can read as well as she ever could. She’s speaking, articulately, in a podcast interview eighty minutes long. And the parts of recovery she thought had stopped improving are, quietly, still improving.

What Jennifer wants other survivors to know

Her advice, offered near the end of the conversation, is short and unsparing:

“You can rest, and that’s okay. You can be as slow as you want to be, and that’s also okay. But don’t give up. Just keep going — at whatever pace feels right.”

It’s a rejection of both the productivity culture that tells survivors to push harder and the clinical culture that tells them to accept their limits. Recovery, for Jennifer, isn’t a race against a deadline. It’s a long, patient process of finding out what comes back and learning to live fully with whatever doesn’t.

Bill’s book and community

If Jennifer’s story resonates with you, Bill Gasiamis’s book — The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened To — explores the same territory: the slow, unexpected, sometimes beautiful work of rebuilding a life after a brain event.

Get the book here

Readers who want to support the podcast and connect with the community of survivors it serves can do so at Patreon.

Support on Patreon

This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Please consult your doctor before making any changes to your health or recovery plan.

Jennifer Tomscha: An AVM Burst in Her Brain at 39, and the Four-Year Climb Back to Herself

She self-diagnosed her own stroke while driving with her daughter. Four years on, she’s still discovering what recovery really means.

Highlights:

00:00 Introduction and Background

10:00 Reflections on the Experience

18:00 Long-term Effects and Adaptations

26:45 Identity and Self-Perception Post-Stroke

38:48 The Long Game of Recovery

51:07 The Journey of Recovery

01:03:42 The Evolution of the Podcast

Transcript:

Introduction and Background: AVM Burst in the Brain

Jennifer Tomscha (00:00)

Dr. Woon was my neurosurgeon. And he just said,

I’ll never do another surgery like that ever again.

it was really long. And I think he definitely

had made me worse. Like they had taken out.

too much of my normal brain. when he called my husband after the surgery was over,

Dr. Woon said like, well, you’ll be lucky if she talks.

he was just so discouraged from how the AVM surgery went.

when I finally talked to him on Zoom. was so you And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course I can. He was like, will you show me?

and I walked up and down the room and he was like laughing so hard at my being able to walk. He was like so enthusiastic about it.

Bill Gasiamis (00:44)

Welcome back everybody. I am Bill Gassiomas and my guest today is Jennifer Tomche. In March, 2022, Jennifer was 39 years old living in New Zealand, finishing the first year of a PhD program when something happened to her brain that changed everything.

What followed was a medical emergency unlike anything I’ve heard described on this podcast and a recovery story that quietly dismantles one of the most damaging myths

in stroke survivor community. That after a certain point, the window for improvement closes. Jennifer is four years out from what happened to her. She still takes an afternoon nap every day. She still notices the edges of what her brain can and can’t do. And she is also finishing a PhD, raising two children and speaking with a clarity and warmth that will stop you in your tracks.

This is a conversation about what it actually means to play the long game and why might be the most important thing any survivor can do.

Before we get into it, if this podcast has been part of your recovery journey, I’d love for you to check out my book, The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became the Best Thing That Happened, at recoveryafterstroke.com/book.

And a genuine thank you to everyone supporting this work on Patreon. If you wanted to support the show, you can go to patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke.

really helps me keep the conversation going. Let’s get into it.

Bill Gasiamis (02:12)

Jennifer Tomscha welcome to the podcast.

Jennifer Tomscha (02:14)

Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Bill Gasiamis (02:17)

It’s lovely to have a local with me. Usually all my guests are from the United States or Canada or the United Kingdom. You’re just a hop, skip and a jump away in New Zealand.

Jennifer Tomscha (02:20)

Yeah.

Mm hmm. Yep. Yep. I’m American originally, but we moved here in 2020. So ⁓ we I’m grew up in Iowa. And then and then I after but we were living in Shanghai for us for almost seven years, my husband and I were living in Shanghai and I was teaching at New York University, Shanghai and then when COVID happened in China.

Bill Gasiamis (02:35)

Where are we from in America?

Jennifer Tomscha (02:54)

they told us to leave the country because it was where it started. So, and we had two kids, so my husband didn’t want to go back to the United States. And so my sister lives in New Zealand. So we moved here and then we just stayed here. mm-hmm. So, yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (03:11)

So

in China, was it just a request? Was it a directive? What was the situation?

Jennifer Tomscha (03:18)

From New York University, they said if you weren’t a Chinese national citizen, they strongly urged us to leave because they just didn’t know how they were gonna manage it. everyone, mean, in China, they had had SARS in the early 2000s, so they had already had it. And so right away, everyone had their masks on. They were ready to…

go and I was like, I want to get out of here. So we went to New Zealand and they also had a lockdown, but it was just for a month and then everyone could wander around because the virus was not here. we just stayed and I got into this PhD program. So that’s why we’re still in New Zealand.

Bill Gasiamis (04:00)

Wow.

That kind of brings us to the first question I ask most people these days is what was life like before stroke? So there was a little bit of stuff going on. was, work in China. There was a bit of, ⁓ travel from the United States to China. was children, but daily life. What, what was that like before the stroke?

Jennifer Tomscha (04:21)

When I saw my stroke happened in March of 2022 and at that time I had been in my PhD program for about a year. And I was just finishing up my research proposal. And so I was doing that during the day and my kids were both at, I have an older son who was in second grade year two. And then I have a daughter who was in preschool. And so my days were I dropped them off at their schools and then I would work for a little while. And then I would.

go and get them. So, and then they would come home and we would do all the other stuff in parenting. And my husband at that time was working at the library. So he had, he was at the libraries from nine to five every day. So he was at work. And that’s what, that’s what we were doing. Yeah. When I had my stroke. I was busy trying to finish up this research proposal. And then, yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (05:14)

39 years old at the time as well.

Jennifer Tomscha (05:16)

Yes, was 39.

Bill Gasiamis (05:18)

any signs, any kind of inkling that something was not right.

Jennifer Tomscha (05:23)

I didn’t, weirdly, so I’m trying to think about, my whole life I’ve had this thing where if, especially at just certain points if I hit my, this is maybe nothing to do with anything, but if I hit my elbow or my wrist, then I would pass out. And sometimes I would have like a little seizure while I was passing out. So wasn’t just like a regular fainting, it was like a seizure. And I had some of those in high school and I actually went to the,

hospital for those at one point and I think they didn’t know what that was and they just did an EEG. I don’t even think we had an MRI where I lived. So I didn’t really know and then that sort of passed. But I was feeling when I have a daily journal that I was writing and when I go back and read that daily journal, the whole, for a couple months ahead of time, I was like, I just feel kind of weird.

I don’t feel great. I feel like a little bit sick and I don’t know what’s wrong with me. And at that time they were allowing COVID to enter New Zealand. They were putting it in. So I was like, I think I might have COVID, but I took a bunch of tests. They were all negative. And then my stroke happened on Tuesday, but the Friday before I was so sick. And then that weekend I was really sick too. And then I got, like, I kind of felt like I woke up, I felt really nauseous. And then I felt better on Monday and Tuesday.

And Tuesday was when my stroke happened. So I think that was all, it was all, think, my body reacting to, I was probably bleeding in my head at that time or something. mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (06:57)

I got it. And we’re to have to go back and talk about how it was that when you got hit on your, on your wrist and your elbow, how hard was the hit?

Jennifer Tomscha (07:05)

I don’t know.

Not super hard, I just, I don’t know what, I actually don’t know, and maybe it’s nothing to do with it. You know, maybe it’s something else in my body that I am prone to fainting. But I don’t know, I don’t really know why that, and maybe it wasn’t anything like that. But I had one day when I was 16 and I passed out three times and that did seem kind of funny. And I went to the doctor and I passed out while I was at the doctor’s office.

So they were like, there’s nothing wrong with you. So they put me to the hospital. They did the EG. stayed the night. And then they were like, there’s nothing wrong with you. So that was it. But I think if nowadays they probably would have done an MRI, maybe, and they would have seen that I had my AVM and my whole life would have been different because I wouldn’t have done all the stuff that I’ve done now. Like my mom was like, if we had known you had had an AVM, you would have gone to school.

in Sioux City, you know, or we would have done something to keep you nearby because we would be worried about you. Instead, I was just like, doing whatever I wanted to, which is good.

Bill Gasiamis (08:14)

Laze, but

that’s kind of good. But also I get the preventative thing. One of the, my former guests had a daughter who had an AVM and I think she was five when she passed away from a bleed in the brain because of an AVM. That’s horrific. And one of the, it’s actually worth listening to that episode and it’s worth me interrupting this right now to jump on and find that episode so that I can share it with people.

And this particular lady has made it her life’s mission to raise money, get an MRI machine and do preventative scans for people in case they have an AVM or some other undiagnosed neurological condition. I think it’s Gina. Gina Keely. OK, it’s. And her ⁓ foundation is now called the Paige

Keeley Foundation, it’s the most heartbreaking story. It’s episode 141 and I’ll have the link in the show notes and I’ll have it in the YouTube description. So for anyone listening, jump back and have a look at that. And also maybe even consider supporting the foundation because the story is heartbreaking and the efforts that this lady is going to ensure that this doesn’t happen to other people is just amazing. So.

I wanted to, I raised that because I had a, in 2011, no, no, in 2010, about 18 months before my actual AVM bled, I had a really terrible negative episode, nauseous, room spinning, like all the signs of stroke, but completely missed the, completely missed

Jennifer Tomscha (09:47)

Mm.

Bill Gasiamis (09:55)

the AVM when I went and actually had an MRI. So yeah, I went to the hospital, gave them my, rundown of what was happening to me and they were so switched on and they got me in and they did all the tests, but they didn’t find anything because they didn’t know what they were looking for. And there was no obvious sign of bleeding. So they didn’t dig deeper. And I have a friend of mine who is a radiographer who actually did my MRIs

Jennifer Tomscha (09:58)

⁓ really?

Mm.

Reflections on the Experience

Bill Gasiamis (10:22)

when I was in hospital being treated after my AVM burst in 2012. And he said to me, the preventative stuff is very difficult because if you don’t specifically know what you’re testing for, you don’t know how to set up the machine and how many slices that it needs to take and at what resolution. So that when you deliver that to the radiologist and they’re looking at it, can they see an AVM and then pass that on?

Jennifer Tomscha (10:37)

Mmm

Bill Gasiamis (10:49)

that information onto the neurologist. They might even miss it, even though they’re doing MRI. But what Jena is doing, it sounds like they’re specifically going after aneurysms, AVMs, other malformations, and therefore they have kind of this better opportunity to find it. So if somebody is considering getting a preventative scan of their brain, you have to be very specific.

Jennifer Tomscha (10:53)

Bye.

Bill Gasiamis (11:14)

with the team of doctors, radiographers, neurologists, as to what you want them to look for and make sure that they adjust the scan so that it’s fit for purpose.

Jennifer Tomscha (11:25)

That’s interesting. That’s really interesting.

Bill Gasiamis (11:26)

Yeah.

So what was the day of the stroke like? Was it, you said you’re feeling better on that Tuesday.

Jennifer Tomscha (11:34)

Mm-hmm. I had a good day. I have like lots of notes from my research proposal and I went to pick up. I don’t know why I did it this way actually. I went, my daughter’s preschool is in our town, Greytown, and I went and picked up her first and then I went to get my son. His school is a Montessori school. It’s in one town north. And so I went and got her and we were driving in the car and when I turned onto the highway that connects Greytown and Carterton,

I just felt like a wash of dizziness and I started losing sight, I think, in my right eye. And it’s seven kilometers from Graytown to Carterton. And right before we got into Carterton, I pulled over onto the side of the highway. I tried, so by that time I think I had lost most of the sight in my one, my right eye. And so it wasn’t very long actually. And so I tried to call my husband, he didn’t answer. And then I just called

111 and I was like, I don’t know why I was like, I think I’m having a stroke, but I don’t know why I even thought that actually. Do know what I mean? I just, was like, something is wrong with me. And so my daughter was fussing in the back and, I don’t really remember anything after that. I don’t remember the paramedics coming. I don’t remember talking to anyone. but so when they, I think the police came first and then

Then the paramedics came and they said I was nauseous, but talking a little bit. But then they moved me into the ambulance and, I started, choking and, or something, and they had to intubate me in the ambulance. And then they took me in. I was helicoptered off to Wellington hospital. So.

Bill Gasiamis (13:12)

How did you feel about it? I know you did the right things. You nailed it. But how did you feel? What were you thinking? I was completely oblivious to the risk I was at or in.

Jennifer Tomscha (13:14)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. I don’t know. just, let’s see, I think…

I think when I was losing my vision, that was hard. I mean, I’m really lucky. There was a little ⁓ path on the side of the road right before you enter Carterton. So I pulled over there so I could still control the car. You know what I mean? I wasn’t so bad. And I could dial 111 on my phone. I could still think about those things. But it wasn’t very long after I dialed 111 and talked to those people that I’d

that my memory is gone. So I think, I mean, I have spent a lot of time trying to like go back and figure out like, what was it? What could I have done early? know, like I was really lucky I was in the car, because honestly, because if I was at home, I might’ve like laid down and taken a nap and not called anybody actually, or called Dan and half have not answered. So then I could just see myself.

Bill Gasiamis (14:14)

you

Jennifer Tomscha (14:22)

It was actually really lucky that I was in the car with my daughter because it made me, I mean, I couldn’t keep driving very well. And so it made me pull over and it made me, I’d have to do something because I wasn’t in town. So I had to like figure out how I was going to manage the situation. And so I was really lucky actually that I was in the car and that I was in a public space where I was easy to find and like I could, so I felt like really lucky that all that happened.

in that time period, but also that soul that my daughter was with me because it made me, I had this like parental responsibility that I had to, I couldn’t keep driving with her in the car. Like I just, I knew I had to do something and quickly. I feel like, I feel really lucky that that was the situation that I was in because I could see a different day where I didn’t go get the kids at that time. And I maybe would have tried to take a nap and it would have been totally different.

So you know what I mean.

Bill Gasiamis (15:19)

It’s such a

common thing for people to go, oh, I’m not feeling well. I think I’ll just go lay down and have a rest and see if I can just get over it, sleep through it or whatever. yeah. And then it just leads to even more and more trouble or problems. The fact that you said, I think I’m having a stroke, right? That is so cool and bizarre and amazing.

Jennifer Tomscha (15:29)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

The guy was like,

why? And I was like, well, I’m losing my sight. I was like, I mean, I don’t know how it was. I was like, why do you think you’re having a stroke? I was like, I don’t know. But there was something wrong. You know what I mean.

Bill Gasiamis (15:52)

Yeah,

that’s such a good question for me. Why do you think I’m going to strike? I don’t know, but I just came up with it. What? That was enough though. Like that was such a response from you to say, I think I’m having a stroke. It’s very, very rare that people get there, but the fact that you got there kind of gave, gave them also like an understanding of how to attend the site and what to do.

Jennifer Tomscha (16:01)

Mm.

Bill Gasiamis (16:18)

And that saves time as well. That saves a ton of time.

Jennifer Tomscha (16:21)

Right. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (16:23)

and gets them, even though you may have been wrong, right? Gets them looking in the direction because they’re already got that in their mind. And then, well, let’s look at that first and then let’s suss it out. She might be completely wrong. But I walked into the hospital after my, while I was having the third blade and said, I’m having a brain hemorrhage or something like that. And I was in the hospital upright, standing, looking normal and

Jennifer Tomscha (16:27)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s true. That’s ⁓

Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (16:51)

They were looking at me like, okay, what are you on? This guy, this guy must be on something because it doesn’t look like he’s having a stroke. And then I had to try and convince them, but I wasn’t giving them my contact details. So they weren’t able to bring up my record. And all they were saying was just give us your name, give us your name. We’ll put it in the system. We’ll have a look. And eventually they got it out of me and, ⁓ and I was right. But yeah, such a good thing.

Jennifer Tomscha (16:54)

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, uh-huh.

no.

Hmm.

you

Bill Gasiamis (17:21)

I love those little bits and pieces that go well together because you often hear I often hear the bits and pieces that didn’t go well and and it turned out differently and how old was your daughter at the time? Yeah, wow.

Jennifer Tomscha (17:30)

Mm-hmm. She was three and a half. And so she was still

in the backseat, know, backwards in her car seat. And then we stopped and she was like, why are we stopping or whatever in her three and a half year old voice? And I was like, I just had to make a couple of phone, you know, I don’t know what I said to her. And then I think when the police came, she was asleep. Like she fell asleep back in the car. then, and then.

It’s just, I, I’ll, so then for the next six weeks I don’t have any memories of anything. So all, all of the information has been given to me by other people. But, so, yeah.

Long-term Effects and Adaptations

Bill Gasiamis (18:04)

So was quite a large blade after all of that.

Jennifer Tomscha (18:06)

Yeah, it was

large. They took me, so I flew in the helicopter from Masterton to Wellington and I think they, by then my sister had gotten to the hospital and they, yeah, I think they said, yeah, they did an emergency, is it craniac? Or what’s the?

Bill Gasiamis (18:25)

Craniotomy,

Jennifer Tomscha (18:26)

Yeah, they did an emergency cradionomy and they saw that I was bleeding. And then they saw that I had this large left frontal or frontal lobe AVM. So, and then they said that at that moment they couldn’t tackle that AVM. So they, controlled the bleeding and then they, and they left my skull out and then, yeah. And then, then they, they talked to the neurosurgeon and

He, that was a Tuesday and he said, why don’t you, I was in a coma, just keep her in a medical coma. And then Monday they would do the, the, the surgery to get rid of the AVM.

Bill Gasiamis (19:05)

And

then that surgery happened.

Jennifer Tomscha (19:07)

That happened

and it was, had my, actually had two AVMs. One was really discreet and they could see all the endings of it. And the other one was diffuse. I don’t really understand it, but, the neurosurgeon said there was like parts of regular brain in and around the AVM. I don’t really understand how that happens, but, ⁓ so they started in the morning and they did, they got rid of the one AVM. They were taking it out.

And then something about the blood vessels that had some of they had been putting blood into that AVM. They then started feeding into the other AVM. So then that AVM made my brain sort of swell where that AVM was. And so the neurosurgeons had to decide if, mean, basically it was like, let me die.

because they couldn’t do anything about it, or they would get rid of that AVM and they would just take out the brain that was, the normal brain that was in the regular AVM. So they took, they decided not to let me die, thank goodness, and they decided to do that. so, but it was really long surgery, it was 30 hours, I think they just didn’t, yeah, it was really long. And…

And I think Dr. Woon was my neurosurgeon. And he just said, when he went and sewed my head back together, he didn’t think I was listening, but I was in the other room and I could hear him after I had my skull put back in. And he was like, I’ll never do another surgery like that ever again. it was too, it was really long. And I think he definitely thought that he had made me worse. Like they had taken out.

too much of my normal brain. when he called my husband after the surgery was over, like they didn’t call him. Dan, my husband was waiting for the whole 30 hours and they only called him one time at like 11 o’clock that night. And they were like, we’re finishing up. But then they had all this other stuff happen. So they didn’t actually call him again until noon the next day. And Dr. Woon said like, well, you’ll be lucky if she talks. Because we had to take out.

he was just so discouraged from how the AVM surgery went. And so, yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (21:24)

Dr. Woon needs to give himself way more credit.

Jennifer Tomscha (21:27)

I know, I know, I also

think that. I also think that, I mean, it’s, I mean, neurosurgeons, they’re, it’s amazing that you could, I’ve just, it’d be so weird if your job was to cut people up and go into their brains and try and fix something in that organ, which is so mysterious, do you know? Like, yeah, so.

Bill Gasiamis (21:48)

Wow. 30 hours.

So he also is thinking in his career, he’s probably never going to come across another 30 hour surgery. Yeah. Well, only if it’s necessary to make somebody better, but yeah, we definitely want to avoid that if we can for every human on the planet and for Dr. Woon, but I just, I’m just completely in awe of these people. I bumped into my surgeon last year.

Jennifer Tomscha (21:57)

I hope not. mean, I hope, you know, yeah, I don’t think, yeah.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (22:15)

because I had another MRI, because I had another bout of headaches and all that kind of stuff. still, you know, it hasn’t ended. I still go through all these things. And I mean, I mean kind of, I get emotional when I’m around her and when I’m in the room with her. If she told me to jump off a cliff because there is something positive down there and I would do it. If she said, if she said punch a hole through that wall, I would do it. Like I would do whatever she said because

Jennifer Tomscha (22:20)

no.

Yes.

Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (22:44)

I just cannot get over the, know, when, you know, when you make a decision, some people, my phone is weird. I’ve never done this before, but you have a piece of fabric and it’s got some lines on it. And you know, if you cut it wrong, that you can’t use that piece of fabric for that pair of trousers anymore. You’ve got to use it for something else. Like that’s a pretty mild problem to happen. Like you cut wrong, you go in the wrong place. You pop that aside and.

You’re useful. If you do that to a human, there’s no going back. And you’ve got to make that decision every single time you walk into the operating theater. And imagine his family. Like, I feel like we need to reach out to his family and say, is there anything we need to make up for? I know we had your husband for 30 hours, but like, how can we support your family now that he’s done that for my family?

Jennifer Tomscha (23:40)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (23:40)

Do you know, like it’s so

interesting that these people have been able to get to that level of capability.

Jennifer Tomscha (23:49)

Yes.

Bill Gasiamis (23:50)

with humans and helping people stay alive and be here with their family, be a mom, be a wife, be a daughter, be a member of the community.

Jennifer Tomscha (23:51)

Mm-hmm.

Yep. Yep, exactly. It’s just, it’s amazing. It’s just so, and I’m so grateful to him and he had another neurosurgeon working with him and yeah, it did, I mean, yeah, it’s amazing. I always think though, I’m trying to think about like, did, why, if he cut out those parts of my brain, why weren’t they, why?

I mean, I have some things I can’t do that I could do before. Like I can’t, this is so weird. I can’t recall songs very well and I can’t sing songs from memory, like at all. Like that part of my brain is done, which is fine, but I used to sing a lot. but I think because if the AVM is there when you’re in your, if it’s there when you’re in your mom’s womb, like if you’re, when you’re developing.

It’s probable that my brain was like, there’s a little issue here in this brain. We’ll move some of the stuff away from, don’t you think that would be, yeah, because I just think like, I think where my AVMs were, my brain was like, we’re gonna move, we’re not gonna put stuff by those AVMs because yeah, because your brain is really adaptable. Like that’s one of the things that I’ve been reading since I had my stroke.

Bill Gasiamis (24:59)

Wow. Yeah, I’ve never thought about that. Why not?

That makes sense, Jennifer. Because it’s… Yeah.

Jennifer Tomscha (25:18)

My mom’s like, your brain is so adaptable and flexible and it can do different things. You just have to try doing things, you know, and failing.

Bill Gasiamis (25:26)

And the blood flow

is not right. So you imagine with blood flow not being right, then the brain’s not developing correctly in that spot anyway. And it’s just developing where there is blood flow.

Jennifer Tomscha (25:37)

Yes, exactly. Exactly. I just I feel like that makes sense to me. And that’s why if you’re the neurosurgeon, I mean, you really don’t know. Like Dr. Woon didn’t know what was there. But I just feel like maybe my brain when it was developing was like, well, this isn’t a good spot and this other spot isn’t a good spot. So we’ll just do everything in a different place. And the brain is really you can really do that. I think your brains are really plastic in the way that they can order themselves. And so I

So it’s still all Dr. Woon. I’m just so grateful to him and everything that he did. Because honestly, I feel like I come from the States. I don’t know that a neurosurgeon, I just don’t know how long a neurosurgeon would have, they might be like, I’m done, I can’t do this anymore. I just don’t really know. It just all depends on the doctor and who sees you and everything. So I just felt so lucky to have been here.

Bill Gasiamis (26:30)

Imagine

doing a 30 hour shift on any day for anything.

Jennifer Tomscha (26:34)

No. And the thing about neurosurgery is like you’re in, I mean you’re doing like, you’re in a microscope or whatever doing that little and you’re tying off a little blood vein and I don’t know, it’s nuts, it’s so nuts. mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (26:39)

them.

Identity and Self-Perception Post-Stroke

Yeah.

And they talk about, you know, how dangerous it is to drive when you’re off a take when you haven’t slept, when all those things. And these guys are going for 30 hours and they’re doing the most intricate, life altering surgery and it all goes perfectly well. So how wrapped was he when he realized how well it went.

Jennifer Tomscha (27:09)

I didn’t talk to him until June, so that was at the end of March. And then I was in the ICU for a while. then they moved me to Masterton and I did rehab.

And then I went to this last clinic, this ABI, this brain clinic for people who had brain injuries. And that’s when I finally talked to him on Zoom. And he was like, so can you walk? And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course I can. He was like, will you show me?

and I walked up and down the room and he was like laughing so hard at my being able to walk. He was like so enthusiastic about it.

I was, you know, I mean, we can talk about this too. was, everyone was like, when I finally have my memory back, I was in Masterton and I was using a diaper. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t step in bed, but I remember being, actually,

⁓ I remember being like, I’m fine. I’m fine. Everyone is just fussing over me. But of course, they were right too. Do you know what I mean? But I was like, I’m okay. Everyone needs to just like, let me just relax around me. And everyone was like, everything I did, they would be like, you know, I couldn’t feed myself. And then, you know, there’s all this stuff. And I was like, I’m really okay. You guys should just.

take, like, I’m fine. I kept saying that, like, I’m okay, I’m fine. You guys are all. But of course, I wasn’t really fine, but I felt like,

Bill Gasiamis (28:36)

It

sounds like you weren’t physically there yet, but you were emotionally and mentally fine. Like it sounds like you were on the, you kind of knew that things were going to turn out or.

Jennifer Tomscha (28:48)

I think so. I think, or maybe, I always think like maybe you can only manage so much. like at that time I had my front part of my skull was gone because it had been taken out when they did both my surgeries. And so I had to wear like a rugby helmet or whatever when I walked. But otherwise I would sit in my room and it looked terrible. It’s just so terrible.

but I just didn’t really recognize that. Like I didn’t, wasn’t, I couldn’t do all the things at once. So I think I was just thinking about like, and finally at the middle of May, my mom and sister, I still had my like long hair in the back and short in the front. So my sister was gonna cut the long hair in the back. And I saw myself in a mirror and I was like, that doesn’t look very good. You know, like I wasn’t, I don’t feel like I was totally aware. I wasn’t, my brain wasn’t.

totally back in it. It’s a long time to recover and I feel like my brain only gave me, I don’t know, I felt like I couldn’t think about my own brain, maybe for like a year or something, really think about it in a second order way.

Bill Gasiamis (29:59)

allow yourself to kind of observe your state, your brain condition.

Jennifer Tomscha (30:02)

Yes.

Yes, I think I was like, it was like that my it was like maybe in October of the next year, October of 2023, where I was like, Oh, I can think about my brain and what it is in a way that I couldn’t. Because I don’t know, you have to go through, you just have to relearn a lot of stuff. But I didn’t like

I’m lucky, like, it didn’t affect my reading, so I could read right away. I’m not a very good writer, like, I don’t have good handwriting anyway, and my handwriting still maybe isn’t as good as it was before I had my stroke, but, yeah. I feel like, felt like, the actual healing was a longer process than I thought it was going to be, especially right when I first woke up, because I was like, I’m fine, but I wasn’t really fine, actually. Do you know what I mean?

Bill Gasiamis (30:55)

100%, they can make doctors and neurosurgeons do a 30 hour surgery, find that part, fix it, ta-da-da-da-da, do all those things, but they can’t make a helmet for God’s sake look half decent after they’ve taken your skull out. Like as if it’s bad enough, have skull missing and then they put this terrible looking thing over your head.

Jennifer Tomscha (31:11)

No.

It’s true. It’s true. It’s true. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (31:22)

And I know for women

like hair is a big deal and become.

Jennifer Tomscha (31:27)

It was really,

I have always liked my hair and it was, I had short hair for about a year and a half maybe, you know, and I started growing out more and that was a little bit hard. I felt like that’s really vain, but I was like, man, I just did not like that short hair. Cause it’s not very, I don’t know. I just, wanted my old hair back. So I was lucky that it came back though. You know, everything, it’s not cancer. It’s a different thing. So you have a different, you know.

Bill Gasiamis (31:51)

I never would have told you that your hair didn’t look good, but my favorite hair is brunette curly hair. Yeah. My wife is a brunette naturally and she has curls in her hair and she straightens it all the time. I haven’t seen her brunette curly hair for 30 years.

Jennifer Tomscha (31:57)

Thank you.

⁓ yeah.

no.

Bill Gasiamis (32:13)

I’m like, woman, that’s what I like. Like that’s my thing. you stop straightening your hair, but I can’t get it to stop. ⁓

Jennifer Tomscha (32:20)

Yeah, that’s fine. Everyone has

to do what they want with their hair and everything. you know, that’s something that one thing I think about my stroke is you just got to go live your life. Like you can’t and you’ve done that beautifully. You know what I mean? Like this podcast is amazing. it’s just like, you just got to go do what feels good for you at the time and what you want to do and just do it.

and stop saying no, or you know what I mean.

Bill Gasiamis (32:49)

I’m trying. am. know exactly what you mean. One of the biggest things is identity is a big, big thing. And I don’t talk about me so much. I’ll talk about what happened to me, my stroke journey, but I don’t really give people a look behind the curtain. You know, sort of really understand what’s going on. This is just all a facade. And one of the challenges that I have is this painting company that I started 20 years ago was the main source of income. And it stopped abruptly seven years in when I became.

Jennifer Tomscha (33:02)

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Great.

Bill Gasiamis (33:17)

and it sort of still kept bubbling along. And then I got back to it in 2019 because my clients were still calling me and I was well enough after seven years of going through stroke and all the stuff of surgery, learning to walk again and all that. I was good enough to sort of get back into it. And of course in 2019, I only had six months and then we were in lockdown.

And then in lockdown, we had two years of lockdown in Melbourne, and then I’m trying to keep that thing going again. And then there was this massive influx of work after lockdown because everyone’s going, I’ve been looking at these walls for two years. They look terrible. Let’s get them painted. They had spare money because they hadn’t spent anything for two years. And that was like, let’s do this and let’s do that. And there was this massive amount of work for about 18 months. And then that was done. It was gone.

And it’s been a steady decline since as soon as Trump opened his mouth and did something in Iran and said what he said, and he plummeted like we’ve got no work. And I’m okay to have no work because I’ve been there before and we’ve managed our affairs so that we’re okay. But I can’t employ people right now at all. That’s gone. And getting people back and starting that again is going to be extremely difficult because the curve

Jennifer Tomscha (34:27)

Yeah.

Mmm.

Hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (34:36)

is not it’s not going to be a sharp dip and then it’s going to be a big spike of work and demand and all that kind of stuff. this podcast has been my saving grace every time I’ve needed to occupy myself with a project and make it so that I’m not thinking about me. The podcast was there. I did. I did an interview. It got me over the line. But now the biggest void that’s going to occur is not that I’m going to

Jennifer Tomscha (34:47)

Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (35:05)

potentially not have work in this field and after shut it down, which is gonna be fine if I do that, I’m okay with that. I’ll kind of pass it on to my younger son who’s looking to do some work in a similar space. I’ll give him the phone number and he’ll be able to take those types of inquiries and then he’ll do it on his own, like very small, the way I started at the beginning. And is that I’m gonna have all the time in the world.

Jennifer Tomscha (35:23)

Mm.

Bill Gasiamis (35:29)

on my hands to do the thing that I’ve been avoiding doing because I had this business that relied on me and the thing was to do public speaking. Right. And to actually do it the way that I’ve wanted to do it for more than a decade, which was to talk about the topics that I want to talk about, which no one’s talking about post-traumatic growth, overcoming trauma, how that’s applicable in organizations.

Jennifer Tomscha (35:38)

yeah, yeah,

Mmm.

Bill Gasiamis (35:56)

how to

treat people better in an organization so they have less mental health issues, so they have less physical issues, so they’re sick less, so they enjoy their work, so they’re not hating their life. And now I’m going to have all the time in the world to do it. And I’m shitting myself.

That’s the biggest issue, right? So that’s a little bit of a look behind the curtain. I am loving this. This is an amazing thing. And I do remember when I first started it, I was concerned about what people would say about me. You’re going to sound dumb, Bill. You you’re not going to, you know, what authority do you have? All those kinds of things, they were coming up in my head. And then when I wrote the book, the same thing, I wrote my first book, The Unexpected Way That a Strike Became the Best Thing That Happened to Me. Everyone has said, don’t write that book. Don’t write that.

Jennifer Tomscha (36:27)

Mm.

Bill Gasiamis (36:39)

Don’t let that be your title. It’s bizarre, it’s weird, like it’s strange, it’s too long and all these things. So I did it. And of course, the first time I spoke about it on YouTube, one of the first comments was a negative comment on my YouTube channel. It’s like, ⁓ okay. My God, that’s a kick in the guts.

Jennifer Tomscha (36:44)

really?

⁓ yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (37:03)

So those little kicks in the guts that I’ve had along the way have been few and far between, but they’re the ones that seem to persist the most. And they stay in that part of your head, which says, you know, that public speaking gig, you’re probably going to do the first one and they’re going to say you were terrible. And then you’re to feel all sad at 52 about, you know, yourself and all these things.

Jennifer Tomscha (37:15)

Yeah.

you

Bill Gasiamis (37:29)

how you’re going to overcome that emotionally and mentally and all this kind of stuff. It’s like, Bill, relax. You’re gonna have time to build your new career at 52. You’re gonna have time to do it. So that’s like, all right. I find myself getting pushed into a corner and only then responding with, all right, all right, I better step up again. I better do this again.

Jennifer Tomscha (37:33)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (37:58)

Very

strange, re-imagining yourself and recreating yourself after stroke is a huge thing because you’re also doing it with a stroke brain. Whereas before I had no excuses, I was doing it still. Like the pattern is the same. The stroke brain part of it is an obstacle that I wish I didn’t have, but somehow this stroke brain part has made me do things I’ve never done before.

Jennifer Tomscha (38:14)

You

The Long Game of Recovery

Bill Gasiamis (38:27)

a podcast, a book.

You know, I was a tradie. I was like, I didn’t study. didn’t read. In my, by the time I got to the age of 37, honestly, Jennifer, I reckon I’d read maybe seven books. And they were about this criminal underworld figure in Melbourne who had this, who had this career and of being like really terrible and somehow.

He was the thing that I was interested in reading about. Like that’s the only thing that captured my imagination. Everything else, everything else I picked up from listening to podcasts or watching shows on TV and that kind of stuff. So I wanna just, I wanna make people understand that the battles that you’re fighting, I’m fighting, it’s real. Like you’re not doing it alone. Everyone’s fighting this. How do I reimagine myself?

Jennifer Tomscha (38:56)

Bye!

Bill Gasiamis (39:20)

after stroke, you know, I don’t tell people I’m an author. Still, this book has been out for three years. I’ve had amazing reviews. I’ve had a couple of, you know, negative reviews and that’s okay. I’m not, I’m not an intellectual. I haven’t, I’ve never studied how to write literature, any of that stuff. And it’s sold about seven or 800 copies just through the podcast.

Jennifer Tomscha (39:21)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

That’s pretty good.

That’s actually quite a bit, I feel like. It’s quite a bit, actually. Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (39:47)

I feel like to like I don’t promote it. I don’t tell anyone about it just in the podcast.

And it’s like, I still don’t say I’ve authored a book. Nobody knows.

Jennifer Tomscha (39:56)

You

should say it. mean, I do think the what are you going to do after you have a stroke? How are you going to do it? It’s all very strange and scary, I think. And like, yeah, I, I totally get your feeling about it. And it’s just really tricky to know what is the

You know, for me, I feel like I was in middle of my PhD, so I took 22 months or 20 months off of doing the PhD just to rest. And then I went back in and it was, it is still, it was really hard. I like, wasn’t very good at figuring out how to write in the academic way.

Which was my position. I was director of the writing program at NYU Shanghai. So I was like, that was my thing. And it was very hard to figure out how to return to do the critical work of my thesis. was just, it’s just, I don’t know, my brain just couldn’t figure out how to do it right. It was really interesting. was like, the sentences I was writing weren’t as good. They probably still aren’t as good.

You know, like when I look at what I was writing before I had my stroke, which is part of my thesis, and then the stuff I wrote after my stroke, I feel like I can tell a little bit of a difference in the fluency of my writing, for sure. So, yeah. And I just, so… Yeah, I don’t know. It’s tricky. It’s tricky to figure out. But I was really lucky, actually. I think the PhD was helpful because…

I could just go at it on my own time and I could just take however much time I needed. And I, I had a deadline. but it was good to just, it was actually like a really good place to start to work my brain again, to be like, okay, I have to, I’m going to write on this author and what she thinks about character. And I’m just going to, and I have these other texts that I’m interested in and I have to figure out how I’m going to.

Represent them in my own work. And so it was really good to do all that. It was a good stepping stone for me I think actually to get back into it and to see What I could and couldn’t do very well, like I feel like I’m a really good reader. I’m a really good Critic and I’m not so good at ⁓ writing down what I think anymore as well So I’m just I really have to work on and I don’t know how you get it back like

Bill Gasiamis (42:26)

articulating

Jennifer Tomscha (42:28)

Yeah, articulating what I mean and yeah, I feel like I can’t, I can’t say things as artfully or as proficiently as I used to. So I don’t know, this woman who is getting her PhD at Vic too, she’s like, she studies how people learn to read. And she was like, if you’re having problems with academic writing,

you should get a, and I still haven’t done this, you should get an academic book and you should listen to it because a lot of learning to read is listening to how sentences sound. She was like, so you should listen to an academic book and that will help you think about how those sentences work and how they’re maybe different from like, I write fiction. So fiction is one thing and then this is a different way of writing. So she said that was one thing that she thought I should do to help.

develop my proficiency in academic writing, which was really interesting. So.

Bill Gasiamis (43:25)

Yeah,

it’s a different approach. You know, it’s coming from the auditory, you know, system and therefore the auditory digital system. Therefore you go in and you you, you pick up nuances that you wouldn’t have known were there if you’ve never heard an academic speak or if you’ve never read an academic document in that way. So you might read it.

Jennifer Tomscha (43:28)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (43:51)

to get something out of it. Like, okay, what is this academic saying about this topic? But that’s not paying attention to the structure of how it’s written. That’s a different filter.

Jennifer Tomscha (43:55)

Mm-hmm.

No, exactly.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Exactly. So I thought that was an interesting way to think about, like, how I could get better at that thing. That was, like, a really important thing for me. That, for some reason, it did just get a little bit, I don’t know, stunted? Or I don’t know what happened, you know? Or I just haven’t been in academia as much. So you know what I mean? So, yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (44:17)

Yeah.

Yeah,

100%. The skill is not as refined or, or practiced as your other skills. So it’s not the thing that you’re the best at. and you’re getting better at it. The thing about it is also, may I add you’re only four years out from all the drama that you had with your brain. So there’s a lot of healing to happen that is going to improve. That’s going to get better and better. And in four or five years from now, you will have

Jennifer Tomscha (44:29)

Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (44:49)

turn the corner again, you’ll see that there’s more and more improvement. It’s really important for people to hear this, who are three, two, one, five, six years in, there’s still heaps of healing and recovery to come. So it’ll happen.

Jennifer Tomscha (45:07)

Yeah, that was something that my husband and I, in my first year after my stroke, he would be like, go to the gym. And he did. He, I went to the gym and I, had me lift weights and he wanted me to like exercise. And he was like, what are you doing to improve your mind and your body over this first year? And I was like, I’m, I’m again, I was like, I’m fine. I’m really fine. And, and, ⁓ he thought I wasn’t doing enough.

Like he wanted me to just go at it with this intensity. I don’t know. was an, cause I was like, I am going at it with my own sort of intensity, but he wanted me to be more aggressive than I wanted to or something. You know what I mean? He wanted me to be like, he wanted to see me really working at it and like sweating or doing, you know what I mean? And I was like, I don’t wanna, I don’t know.

Bill Gasiamis (45:59)

He wanted it to be more

masculine.

Jennifer Tomscha (46:01)

Yeah, I guess. And he’s not very masculine guy. I mean, he’s a masculine guy, but he’s like, he was just he just wanted to see me sweating it out or doing the really see my focus. And I just yeah. And that has been an issue because he’s like, yeah, he’s just like, are you going to work again? I was like, yes, I’ll work. I just don’t know what I’ll do. And I don’t know if I could do a full eight hour day right now. I still take a nap every day in the afternoon. So

But yeah, it’s just, don’t, yeah, so.

Bill Gasiamis (46:34)

It’s

easy for a caregiver to say that because they haven’t had a stroke. Thank God. Thank God. ⁓

Jennifer Tomscha (46:40)

No, I know. Thank goodness. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually,

I mean, I feel really bad for Dan and my mom and my sister. Like, it’s actually worse to be the caregiver in some ways because you just, you don’t go through it. So you, you don’t really know what it’s like.

Bill Gasiamis (46:55)

I and you, and if you’ve got an imagination, a wild imagination, you could turn it into something completely way worse than what it is. And if you’re ignorant, which most family members and caregivers are, let’s face it. And that’s okay. Then you do the other thing. You play it down and you assume she should be going harder than that or

Jennifer Tomscha (47:11)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (47:19)

If I was, if it was me, I’d be doing that. But your brain has actually been injured and in that space, perhaps where motivation is for some people. And there is no way that you can make that person more motivated by willing them on or telling them to go to the gym or whatever. That could actually be missing the motivation part. So there’s a whole bunch of things that caregivers and family members miss. And it’s for me, it’s when I’m surrounded, when, when the people that are around me are

Jennifer Tomscha (47:33)

Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (47:46)

⁓

people who don’t want to engage deeply in those types of troubles, life and all that kind of stuff. they’re great people. They’re just like, emotionally they don’t go deep, right? They love it that there’s ambiguity around like what’s wrong with me. Cause they look at me, I look right. And then they just go, everything’s fine. He looks amazing. I feel better now. And when I’m around him, I can just talk about dumb stuff.

Jennifer Tomscha (48:07)

Mmm, yeah, yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (48:14)

And we can talk about things that are not important and everything’s fine. And it’s kind of like head in the sand. It’s a, you know, one step, one emotional step removed from the actual goings on. And it kind of also helps me strangely enough, because then I don’t have to deal with their inability to handle actual life and the real things that are going on.

Jennifer Tomscha (48:39)

Mm. Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (48:43)

that can just be living in La La Land and I don’t have to deal with that level of complexity. So it’s kind of, they’re both situations are helping me in a way. Whereas at the beginning I was taking that negatively. The thing I do, the thing I would like to do is challenge caregivers to listen to the podcast, especially of the spouse who I’ve interviewed.

Jennifer Tomscha (48:50)

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s true.

Bill Gasiamis (49:09)

You know, and then

a couple more after that to get an insight so that they’re not guessing or second guessing or think they know better, et cetera. No doubt about it. they, know, they know some things about us that they can see that we’re not doing a pattern in behavior that we’re avoiding. Perhaps they know that part and all that type of thing. But we’ll say, we’re also dealing with a messed up brain. So have a bit of a kind of a Q

Jennifer Tomscha (49:13)

Hmm.

Right, right.

Bill Gasiamis (49:36)

be curious about where that person’s coming from, not how you’re feeling about where they’re coming from. And that’s what family members and caregivers do. They make it about them. And I had to say a few times to people in my circles, like, it’s not about you.

Jennifer Tomscha (49:43)

Right.

Ha Tomscha Tomscha! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (49:56)

It’s actually really about me. cannot walk and I can’t use my left hand. It’s not about you. Like I know you woke up with a numb leg one day because you slept on it wrong, but it’s not the same.

Jennifer Tomscha (50:05)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s funny. Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (50:14)

My

wife was dragging my foot in the wheelchair. It had fallen off the, you know, the rest where your leg, your feet sit. It had fallen off and I hadn’t noticed. This is like day three or day four after brain surgery. And it was dragging underneath the footrest. And she noticed that the wheelchair wasn’t moving and she was shoving it until we realized.

Jennifer Tomscha (50:22)

higher.

Bill Gasiamis (50:40)

My foot was stuck underneath the rest and we had a laugh. that kind of like, that’s one of those, if those people were there and they saw that, they would realize like, it’s not about your numb leg when you slept on it weird one night. take your stuff and just, you know, park it for now. So it’s interesting. That’s kind of why I think I do this podcast. I think it’s for those

Jennifer Tomscha (50:44)

Yeah, yeah,

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

The Journey of Recovery

Bill Gasiamis (51:08)

people if they, I’ve never told them that they should jump on, but if they, for example, get curious one day and they want to know what it’s like to be in Bill’s head, pick one of the 400 episodes. Just have a listen.

Jennifer Tomscha (51:09)

Mmm.

I have a question for you. you, this is something that, so you think you could just, you can keep improving from your stroke. There’s not like a deadline. There’s not like a couple of years or any.

Bill Gasiamis (51:36)

One of the things I learned from my wife and my brother, my brother is my biggest nemesis. You he’s older and he’s the most loving guy. He’s the most supportive guy, but he has a weird way of doing it. Just, you know, we’re different characters, right? So he just is a bit different in the way. one, one of the things my brother said was that I picked up, I reckon it was five, six years ago is he’s in it for the long game.

Jennifer Tomscha (52:03)

Hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (52:04)

When I was young, I had 20 jobs in 10 years. He said two jobs in 40 years or 30 in 30 years. So he just chips away, works away, works away, works away. This is an analogy, right? But also a true story. My wife started her, her, her master’s in psychology. She only started that a few years ago, but the whole.

Jennifer Tomscha (52:08)

Hmm.

Hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (52:28)

journey to get to the Masters of Psych started in I think late 2011 or early 2011, about a year before I ended up in hospital. She is just now finishing the last part of her Masters degree and she found a job literally a week ago in her field two days a week.

Jennifer Tomscha (52:35)

Mm.

Mmm.

⁓

Bill Gasiamis (52:56)

to work as a provisional psychologist so that she can get the 1500 hours of work in the field before she actually gets her actual full psychology license. And I’m like, dude, I get it. So what you’re telling me is that if you just start and never stop, you’re gonna see some kind of progress. And I apply that to…

Jennifer Tomscha (53:08)

Right.

That’s amazing.

Mmm. Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (53:27)

stroke recovery. I know that people are dealing with far more deficits that perhaps you and I show visibly and that their hand may not specifically work the way that it always that they wanted it to work or that the way that it worked before. But that doesn’t mean the brain’s not continuously continuously healing that part of the brain might be gone. But as far as healing the parts around the brain that are still there, that’s continuing.

Jennifer Tomscha (53:28)

Uh-huh.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (53:58)

And if, and, and one of the questions that I have for people is like, is what I’m doing supporting my recovery or is it hindering my recovery? Because I’ve met stroke survivors who have gone back to the smokes, who have gone back to alcohol. And if you’re doing things that are getting in the way of recovery, then you’re not allowing the brain to continuously do what it does best, which is overcome challenges, rewire.

Jennifer Tomscha (54:05)

Mmm.

Bill Gasiamis (54:25)

find new ways around, know, develop new neural pathways and adapt. And that’s kind of where I think it’s at adaption, right? And the great thing about understanding these days about neurodiversity and understanding what somebody with ADHD goes through is the one skill they’re really, really good at is adaption.

Jennifer Tomscha (54:31)

Mm-hmm.

Mm, that’s interesting. Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (54:49)

because and people with dyslexia. my God, like some of the biggest, most wealthy billionaires on the planet had dyslexia. Richard Branson is a classic example of that. Yeah. And they adapt. They find a way to somehow overcome the normal world and be weird in the way that they see letters and what letters do and how they move on a page and all that kind of stuff because their brain adapts and they can just continuously improve their adaption strategy.

Jennifer Tomscha (54:57)

really? didn’t know that.

Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (55:17)

to get to a point where no one knows that they have this condition. So that’s what I’m really passionate about. That’s why the podcast exists. I’ve interviewed in my 400 episodes, I’ve certainly interviewed stroke survivors who I’ve had improvement 10, 11, 12, 13 years post stroke, got a finger movement back. Yeah, got sensation back, something rewired. So yeah.

Jennifer Tomscha (55:19)

Right.

Mm-hmm.

really?

That’s amazing. Yeah, because I feel like when when you read about stroke recovery, they’re like, the first year is really important. Next couple years are important. And then after that, it’s slow going and maybe nothing, you know, they’re like, you got to get going right away. And that’s interesting. Yeah. I mean, that’s I still feel like. Like,

my brain’s still coming back to me. I maybe can’t describe the way like I feel that a little bit. Like, yeah, I can definitely feel like I’m getting better at a little better at talking about the stroke and not wanting to push it away. Or, you know, like, I was at a party a couple months ago, and there was a 16 year old girl there and she was, she had had a she had been homeschooled for something and I was like, what happened and she had had a traumatic brain injury.

And I was like, okay, so should I talk about it? And I finally, I was like, I had a stroke and I had this brain injury and it allowed us to, and I had never really told that to somebody before. And so I was like, it’s good, it’s good to share. You know what I mean? So.

Bill Gasiamis (56:46)

Absolutely. I had an

interview last week.

with Maggie Widom. It’s 11 years since her stroke. I had the first time I interviewed Maggie was in 2019. And experiencing Maggie in 2019 was a completely different Maggie than the one I was chatting to this time. And I say that in that by 2019, she had only been three or four years into her stroke recovery journey. But she was dealing with so many deficits because she had a brainstem stroke.

Jennifer Tomscha (57:02)

Really.

Bill Gasiamis (57:16)

So it took off so much of her. impacted her, the way she feels on one side of her body, how she feels on the other side of her body, her eyes, her balance, a whole bunch of things. And she was doing it hard. Like recovery was really hard. And she had been an actress amongst other things. And she was 33. Again, she had an AVM.

Jennifer Tomscha (57:29)

Wow.

yeah,

Bill Gasiamis (57:46)

burst or some other malformation and the and the challenge back then for me, I was early on in the podcast journey as well. And in the stroke recovery as well was me kind of understanding what happens after like, long does it take? What happens that are and Maggie is the classic. I started a project. It was called the great now what?

Jennifer Tomscha (58:04)

Mmm.

Bill Gasiamis (58:14)

in 20, I think she started in 2017, 2018. This is only a short number of years after her very serious stroke where you would have forgiven her if she didn’t. You would have thought, yeah, makes sense. You were dealing with all these deficits. And the project was to tell the story of stroke from a stroke survivor’s perspective, because there wasn’t a real story where somebody was giving that.

Jennifer Tomscha (58:29)

Right.

Mm.

Bill Gasiamis (58:44)

that version of it and she wanted to make sure that it was an accurate retelling of what stroke is like for somebody to go through what she went through. That project hasn’t completed yet.

because of funding, because of her health, because of COVID, all those things got in the way and yet the perseverance, the persistence, the fact that she started it and it hasn’t finished yet. The last episode that we did was to bring awareness to the project so that if anyone wanted to go, who listened to the podcast, wanted to go and support the crowdfunding part of the, I think the editing or the audio or the last part of putting that

Jennifer Tomscha (58:59)

Hmm

Hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (59:27)

documentary together and that’s the thing. And Maggie talks differently than before, like more, better than before. Her sentences come out differently, her voice sounds differently, her eyes focus better. ⁓ Her head doesn’t move as much because it used to involuntary move. And she spoke about some of the other deficits that have resolved, that have.

Jennifer Tomscha (59:42)

Wow.

Bill Gasiamis (59:51)

kind of got less worse than what they were. And also she spoke about how she’s adapted and overcome and changed. That’s 11 years since stroke. Like it never ever stops. I’ve been doing this. I’ve been going through my journey since February, 2012. I’m still talking about it.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:00:06)

⁓ Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (1:00:10)

And it’s so bizarre. Like I’ve never done a project that’s lasted this long other than the painting company. And then I did that out of necessity, work, money, you know, all that kind of stuff. This is a completely different experience. So I want to encourage people to play the long game like my brother does.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:00:18)

Right, right.

Mm.

Bill Gasiamis (1:00:29)

and my wife and Maggie. And if you play that game, you’ll get through the dips, the troughs in this journey. You’ll get through them a lot more calmly and easier. And when you do that, you recover and you rest better and your brain heals better. And it’s just a different way to go about it.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:00:47)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. That’s great. I think that’s just so powerful and important for people to hear about. Because I know sometimes, especially at the beginning, I was just stressed out and frustrated. And I had a lot of aphasia, so I had a lot of words that I

I just did say weird words that weren’t even English words, but you know what mean? I didn’t, couldn’t think of the word for the moment and it would be so frustrating and it’s just good to.

to have the long game in mind, I think would have been really helpful for me in those times to be like, I’ll get through this, it’ll be okay. And even if it’s not okay, even if I have aphasia for forever, which I still do, especially at night when I’m tired, that’s okay too. You know what I mean? Like it’s okay. It just is what it is and you can manage it. And yeah, I think that’s a really helpful way to frame it for people.

And their caregivers both, yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (1:01:45)

Yeah.

What’s really cool. Someone asked me on YouTube. I think that they have accessibility issues to, therapists for aphasia, that kind of stuff. Accessibility being they may not have either the funding or there might be not, might be near somebody or whatever. It just a couple of days ago and they were like, what do I do? Like, how do I start this aphasia recovery journey? Jump on YouTube.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:01:55)

⁓

Mmm.

Bill Gasiamis (1:02:08)

type in aphasia for your condition, there’s somebody doing therapy, 100%.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:02:13)

Interesting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh-huh. And yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah, I hadn’t thought about that. You’re totally right. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (1:02:21)

So

there are resources that now most people can access that don’t cost any extra that you can jump on and that you can do rehabilitation at home even if it’s just 20 minutes a day or one hour a week or whatever it is. if you feel like it’s gonna be okay even if it’s not okay, then that’s gonna be okay like it will.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:02:35)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think I I understood what you meant. Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (1:02:47)

Yeah, convoluted,

but it makes sense in my mind. And and you know, my book, the first one from idea to publication, took four years.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:02:51)

huh.

that’s interesting. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (1:03:02)

I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t even

know how to start a book. I got somebody to help me. had to pay them to help me to write this book. They guided me to a certain point and then we got it published. And it says it at the beginning of the book. This is not a scientific book. It’s not an academic book. This is not being written by somebody who’s studied writing or knows how to write a book. I made sure that people understand it’s just a stroke survivor.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:03:18)

Right.

You

The Evolution of the Podcast

Bill Gasiamis (1:03:29)

who came across this weird story that other people were saying that they thought that stroke was the best thing that happened to them. And I thought we’ve got to tell this story. There’s a 10 people I’ve got to tell that story because why the hell are they saying that? And they had these 10 things in common. And if I could bring those 10 things to you and you did that, then maybe, not the experience of stroke because I totally don’t think that was the best thing that happened to me, but the lessons that come.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:03:54)

You

Bill Gasiamis (1:03:56)

and the growth that’s possible and the new opportunities that could open.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:04:01)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (1:04:02)

That’s been the best thing that happened to me. Cause the trading life, the painting life has proven to be the same the next 13 years as it was the first seven years. Somebody either wanted a house painted or a wall painted, or they didn’t want one painted. They either wanted me to pay that much money for it, to pay me that much money for it, or they didn’t want me to pay that, be paid that much money.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:04:13)

Right, right, right, right.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Right.

Bill Gasiamis (1:04:28)

Nothing’s changed there. Everything has changed and all the opportunities came outside of that. And there’s this thing in business, the opportunity cost. If you’re focused on a particular task and you’ll think you’re kicking goals and you’re loving that, and you’re doing that for something that’s substandard to you, the return is substandard to you, then not only are you doing something that you don’t love, that you don’t enjoy,

Jennifer Tomscha (1:04:29)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (1:04:55)

that you’re not making enough money for all that kind of stuff. But you’re also taking your resources away from the other thing that you could be doing that could be bringing you more money, more joy, more meaning, more purpose, more whatever. The opportunity is lost as well as I’m not getting satisfaction over here. And kind of that’s like another way to think about how you’re doing your current life and what recovery

Jennifer Tomscha (1:05:03)

Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (1:05:23)

or when you get to the fork in the road, like why you might take the other path.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:05:29)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I have my ⁓ oral exam for my PhD is next Thursday. So I’m like, I was just thinking about like, hopefully I pass it and then I’ll have my PhD or I’ll have to probably do some revisions on my thesis, but then I’ll have my PhD. And then I don’t know what we’ll do. You know, it’s just like, don’t, I don’t know what I’ll do.

I don’t think I can, you know, it’s just so, and I’ve been just looking at all different kinds of jobs, trying to figure out like what type of work I can do and full-time or part-time and all that stuff. yeah, it’s, I like that idea about the opportunity cost and like,

what am I doing now that maybe I should do something different or, you know, yeah, like what is it preventing me from doing something? So that’s really good. ⁓

Bill Gasiamis (1:06:17)

Yeah. For me,

just, what ended up happening, why I kind of stumbled in this, I just took on the challenge when somebody said to me, um, the guy who wrote my forward is an amazing mate of mine. I met him in 20, in 2013, and he knew how unwell I was and he would just keep in touch and he just turned up at really bizarre times and would just keep in touch and

Jennifer Tomscha (1:06:39)

⁓

Bill Gasiamis (1:06:46)

He would just keep in touch and then it came to my rehab hospital after surgery. And I was just amazed by this guy. Just, we really didn’t have much of a connection. Anyhow, I call him Mike the marketing guy, cause he’s in marketing. And he said to me, so, know, with all this stuff that you’re telling me about how you’re going to go about your recovery and how you’re going to heal your brain and all that kind of stuff.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:06:53)

Mm.

Bill Gasiamis (1:07:11)

Because what do you want to do with that information? So I’d love to tell other people about it, you And he goes to me, how, do you want to share that? I said, I could go to my local community here where I live and I could talk to people, you know, at the, at the town hall and I can meet people locally. He said to me, have you ever heard about this thing called the internet?

And I said, I don’t know. Like, why do you mean he goes, you know, YouTube and there’s podcasts and people are sharing all the information that they know, but it’s going to a global audience. And that was it. He just put the seed in my head.

And then the podcast happened. That is all he did. And I’ve just taken those kind of little bits of beautiful advice and thought, I’m not going to do it. I didn’t think I was going to do it for 10 years. I just thought, I’m going to give it a go. Let’s see what’s cool about it and what hard things I have to overcome and learn about myself to do this.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:07:57)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

What did you, did you have like, did you have five people lined up to interview or how did you, no, okay.

Bill Gasiamis (1:08:13)

The first 10, maybe more, certainly the first kind of 15 people were not stroke survivors. And I was just building stories of people had overcome difficulties in life. And they may have been, cancer, the death of a loved one, all kinds of different things, but it wasn’t really resonating with me. And it wasn’t resonating with people who I was telling about this podcast.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:08:20)

⁓ okay.

Right.

Bill Gasiamis (1:08:40)

It was so early that I didn’t really think I wasn’t doing well. And I was really unwell also. My head was still messed up and I was still recovering.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:08:50)

Yeah, I know.

How long after your, because you had three different stroke. How long after did you start the podcast?

Bill Gasiamis (1:08:55)

Yeah.

The podcast started in 2015 and by 2019 there wasn’t a lot of episodes, but in 2019.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:09:02)

Okay.

Okay.

Bill Gasiamis (1:09:07)

When was it that I decided to start doing an episode a week? I think around 2018, 2019, I started, I decided I’m going to do episode a week. But, but what changed was at around episode 20, I had the aha moment that my podcast is not about all those other people. It’s about stroke survivors. Yeah. And then when that happened, I started to get really good momentum and then people started to listen and actually continue at least.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:09:12)

Okay.

Mm. Mm, that’s interesting. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (1:09:35)

listen and reach out and tell me that they loved it and all that kind of stuff. Like that’s when it turned and then it

Jennifer Tomscha (1:09:41)

Because my husband and were just talking about this. He’s also figuring out what he wants to do for work. And he was like, he’s just trying all these different things. So he’s doing some Instagram reels. And he was like, I’m just going to do 10 of them or 15. And then we’ll see. He was like, but I’m going to let myself do a certain number.

And then after I have that number, then I can be like, is this good or what do need to change about it? And that’s what it seems like you did with this podcast. You’re like, I’m just going to try it. And then after I have like 15 or 20, then I can look at it see how can I reshape it or that’s really interesting actually. Yeah.

Bill Gasiamis (1:10:15)

Yeah, you kind of

got to do it wrong or not make it feel a bit weird or whatever, but just persevere through it. And then you kind of have the, actually I know what the angle should be now. You don’t get to learn what the angle is until you’ve done the other ones that you weren’t really pleased about or happy about.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:10:28)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that’s really interesting. Yeah, that’s I mean, that’s amazing. I just remember because Dan was the one who told me about your podcast, my husband, and he was like, there’s a guy he just interviewed stroke survivors. And I was like, that’s interesting. It was after I had my stroke, obviously. But and I was like, wow, that’s a it’s like a there are tons of people who have strokes. That’s not but but I had never heard of anybody doing that. And it was it’s I mean, it’s been amazing. I listened to your podcast.

Bill Gasiamis (1:10:40)

Thank

Yeah.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:11:02)

Not every week, but once a month, I’ll just see who’s on. I really love it. And it’s so wonderful that you’re doing this for people. ⁓

Bill Gasiamis (1:11:11)

Yeah. I,

I, I, it’s a selfish pursuit. It’s for me. Everyone else gets the benefit because I, I do it, but, um, yeah, it’s honestly, I don’t know why I’m still doing it. Like I, I don’t know why. Like it just, cannot not do it. Like it’s so weird. I don’t have an intellectual answer. I just have it. I wake up in the morning. There’s a booking. I sit at the chair, people come on. I press record. We talk. I upload it.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:11:15)

you

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (1:11:38)

I don’t

understand it. I don’t get it. think cause it’s so automated now and people reach out to me, it’s a lot less effort. Initially I was doing Instagram outreach, just following hashtag stroke, stroke recovery, stroke awareness, that kind of thing. And then I was just reaching out to those people going any chance you want to come on the podcast. And my gosh, people wanted to come on the podcast and I just couldn’t believe that they did. But my suspicion was that there was more of us out there.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:11:48)

⁓

Bill Gasiamis (1:12:07)

that were willing to talk about it. And we didn’t have, when I started this whole journey in 2012, my gosh, there was nothing out there for stroke survivors, nothing. It’s not sexy. It’s not sexy like all these cancer awareness things and multiple sclerosis and MND.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:12:09)

I

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

you

I know, no. Because stroke is kind of, it’s not random, but it feels random or it’s like, what I think is interesting about like the hospital care that I had here in New Zealand was amazing. But it’s actually funny that we have a system in place where people will go help me because it was my brain fighting against itself. And the people were like,

we can help you. I’m just amazed that we have that system in place where I could call 111 and they would come and they would fly me to Wellington. I mean, that’s incredible. It’s just amazing. And I feel like, but I think the stroke itself is not, nah, it’s not sexy. No.

Bill Gasiamis (1:13:03)

No, not at all.

And ⁓ I’m not, I’m not the guy to make it sexy, but if somebody out there knows how to make it sexy, please come forward. Let’s do something because we need to bring way more awareness. Cause we can feel in Melbourne, we’re sports mad. This is the sports capital of the Southern hemisphere. Almost now I’m overdoing it. At least of Australia, we can fill a stadium with a hundred thousand people.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:13:19)

Mm.

Bill Gasiamis (1:13:33)

who all will donate money to you name the cause that the particular footballer is promoting. And as if there haven’t been footballers and people of that kind of level of influence who have had a stroke, like as if they haven’t been those people. But there is this lack of ability to kind of bring those people into that awareness space where they’re doing a great job.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:13:37)

Mm.

⁓ yeah, yeah,

Right, right.

Bill Gasiamis (1:14:00)

of raising awareness. There’s a lack of people who are able to do that, but we can somehow do it for all these other conditions, which I love. I’m, which is amazing. I just feel like something has to change. So anyway, that’s why I kind of do this in a way. It’s like to just fill that gap

Jennifer Tomscha (1:14:00)

Mm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

That’s one thing. I mean, you’re a great interviewer, but I always feel like I don’t ever leave when I listen to your podcast. I never feel discouraged, like ever. And that’s amazing because that it just because you could definitely have talks with people who had strokes where you’re complaining the whole time and you can’t get but you don’t you don’t you don’t elicit that from the people who are coming to your show, which is great.

Bill Gasiamis (1:14:42)

No, what’s the

I want to thank you for reaching out to be on the podcast. really appreciate that. hopefully our conversation has been helpful, but I’ll, I do ask most of the people who listen is like one piece of advice, one thing that you can impart on stroke survivors that might be earlier on in the journey than you or I, like, what would you say to somebody who’s just come across this podcast and you know, they’re

Jennifer Tomscha (1:14:45)

yeah.

Hmm.

Bill Gasiamis (1:15:06)

They’re doing it tough right now.

Jennifer Tomscha (1:15:07)

Yeah, I think I would say you can rest you can take a nap, you know, that’s really helpful. Like you can be as slow as you want it to be and that’s also okay, but don’t give up. just keep going I think is the main thing, but go as slower, as fast as you want to and it’s okay.

Like I felt like my recovery was a little bit slower than other people’s. Like it took me a little bit longer to do some of the,

be able to talk and think about my own brain just took me a little bit longer than they say it does. But that’s not, it doesn’t really matter because I got there anyway.

Yeah, thank you. was great. Thank you so much. was wonderful to talk to you.

Bill Gasiamis (1:15:43)

On that note, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.

Bill Gasiamis (1:15:51)

That was Jennifer Tomche speaking with me from New Zealand four years after an AVM burst in her brain and changed the course of her life. I wanna thank Jennifer for her generosity, for her patience and for her honesty in this conversation. There are very few people who can articulate what it feels like to lose access to their own brain it. And Jennifer is one of them.

essential message that recovery takes as long as it takes, that rest is legitimate and that you don’t have to give up even if the progress is one that every stroke survivor and caregiver needs to hear. If you’d like to go deeper into some of the themes in today’s episode,

I want to point out to you two earlier conversations. The first is episode 262 with Gina Keely, whose work with the Paige Keely Foundation focuses on preventative brain scans to catch AVMs before they burst. Her story is devastating and important, and it directly connects to the questions

Jennifer and I raised today about what might have been.

The second is episode 399 with long-term recovery from a brain stem stroke reflects exactly what Jennifer spoke about, that recovery continues well beyond the first year, the people who say otherwise are simply

If Jennifer’s story moved you, please share this episode with someone who needs to hear it, a survivor in year two, year four, year 10, who’s been told they’re done improving.

They’re not done improving.

If you haven’t yet picked up my book, you can find the unexpected way that a stroke became the best thing that happened at recoveryafterstroke.com/book. And to everyone who supports this podcast, thank you.

This podcast exists because you believe it should. I’m Bill Gosialmus. This has been the Recovery After Stroke Podcast. Take care of yourselves. Look after the people you love And I’ll see you next week.

The post AVM Burst in the Brain: A Recovery Story of Patience, Aphasia, and Finding Your Way Back appeared first on Recovery After Stroke.