Host: What are the common after-effects of a stroke?

Dr. Nina Solenski: There are actually quite a few effects. First I will talk about some of the obvious ones are directly from the stroke itself, which could be again difficulty in your language, having real serious communication problems or weakness to the amount that you may need a wheelchair or be able to go through a full rehabilitation course to be able to stand and walk. But it's actually the subtle other things that are very important and probably don't get understood the way that they should and these include fatigue. Many patients for up to a year after the stroke will really have some serious fatigue and that's probably because their brain is regenerating and trying to recover and there is a lot of energy, mental energy to try to learn different processes that they lost because of the stroke.

The other one is depression. There are certain areas of the brain that are important for our emotional responses and if it happens to be that part of the brain you may experience depression, that's normal and it should be discussed with your doctor. Sometimes there is a depression because you realize what has happened to you. So there are two reasons to experience depression and that needs to be addressed fairly quickly, so that you can get back into a rehabilitation course .