From Paralysis to Progress: One Man’s Quest to Recover After Brain Hemorrhage

Recovery of Brain Hemorrhage: What You Need to Know About Healing, Hope, and Possibility

The recovery of brain hemorrhage is one of the most misunderstood and under-supported journeys in stroke care. For many survivors, the moment of hemorrhage comes without warning; one minute, life is normal, and the next, everything has changed. What follows can be months or even years of physical, emotional, and mental rehabilitation. And no two journeys are alike.

Whether you’re early in your recovery or years down the road, this post offers insight into the multifaceted path of healing after a brain hemorrhage, from clinical interventions to emotional breakthroughs, and everything in between.

What Is a Brain Hemorrhage?

A brain hemorrhage is a type of stroke caused by bleeding in or around the brain. This bleeding creates pressure that can damage brain tissue, interrupt neural connections, and affect functions like speech, movement, vision, memory, and emotional regulation.

Recovery is possible, but it takes time, patience, and often, creativity.

Beyond the Hospital: What Recovery Really Involves

Once the initial emergency is managed, survivors often discover that recovery is far more complex than anyone explained. It’s not just about regaining movement, it’s about rebuilding life. The recovery of brain hemorrhage involves:

• Physical rehabilitation: Learning to walk, talk, or use affected limbs again through physiotherapy and occupational therapy.
• Emotional healing: Managing trauma, identity shifts, grief, and isolation that often follow stroke.
• Cognitive training: Rebuilding memory, focus, speech, and executive functioning.
• Lifestyle changes: Nutrition, sleep, exercise, and stress management play a big role in reducing brain inflammation and supporting neuroplasticity.

Exploring Treatment Options

Some survivors pursue traditional rehabilitation pathways, while others explore experimental or complementary approaches. Commonly explored treatments and supports include:

• Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT): May support brain healing by increasing oxygen delivery to damaged tissues.
• Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS): A non-invasive therapy that uses magnetic fields to stimulate neural activity in targeted brain regions.
• Etanercept (Perispinal): An experimental anti-inflammatory injection not widely available, but showing promise for some with post-stroke inflammation.
• Botox for spasticity: Can offer temporary relief from muscle stiffness, though results vary.
• Acupuncture: May provide pain relief and reduce stress or inflammation.
• Dietary changes: Many survivors adopt anti-inflammatory or plant-based diets to support brain and body recovery.
• Psychological support and coaching: Holistic recovery often depends on addressing mindset, inner dialogue, and long-held emotional patterns.

Each of these options comes with its own risks, costs, and potential rewards. Recovery is rarely about just one solution, it’s about layering tools that work for you.

The Role of Emotional Recovery

The emotional impact of a brain hemorrhage is often overlooked, but it’s just as real as the physical symptoms. Survivors frequently report grief, fear, frustration, and even moments of hopelessness. Others describe breakthroughs that came only after deep inner work through therapy, coaching, or spiritual reflection.

The truth is: healing happens on multiple levels.

Changing the way we speak about ourselves (“I’m not disabled, I’m recovering”) and processing emotional wounds from the past can have a profound effect on how the body responds to rehabilitation.

What About the Plateau?

One of the most discouraging myths in stroke recovery is the so-called “plateau”, the idea that progress stops after 6–12 months. But that’s not how the brain works.

Recovery can, and does, continue for years. What may look like a plateau is often the body recalibrating, consolidating progress, or responding to fatigue. In some cases, significant gains occur after the first year. Neuroplasticity doesn’t expire.

The key is to stay engaged, curious, and supported.

You’re Not Alone in This

The recovery of brain hemorrhage is not a solo mission. Whether you’re still in the hospital or adjusting to life months or years after your stroke, know this: there are communities, conversations, and tools out there to help you heal.

At Recovery After Stroke, we’ve created a space where hundreds of survivors and experts share their stories, strategies, and support. You can find full-length interviews on our YouTube channel or connect through our growing community of stroke thrivers.

Final Thoughts: Recovery Is Still Happening

Recovery doesn’t always look like it used to. Maybe your hand still won’t open, or your walk isn’t perfect. But if you’re choosing better food, showing up to rehab, or speaking to yourself with more compassion, you’re recovering.

Progress isn’t always visible, but it’s real. Your story is still unfolding.

Recovery of Brain Hemorrhage: Jason’s Journey Through Pain, Innovation, and Growth

Recovery of brain hemorrhage from Jason’s perspective, treatments, setbacks, and mindset shifts that shaped his healing journey.

Neurologic Recovery Clinics
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT)
Emma Thompson: Holistic Life Coach
Andy Husler

Highlights:

00:00 Jason’s Introduction and Initial Conditions
03:45 The Day of the Stroke and Initial Reactions
10:40 Treatments and Their Impact
15:51 Trading Life, Family, and Recovery After a Brain Hemorrhage
22:51 Hope, Hype, and Unanswered Questions
32:19 Tangible Relief from Spasticity
40:02 Family Life and Emotional Recovery
56:35 Challenges and Future Plans
1:01:51 Final Thoughts and Advice
1:05:26 Navigating Plateaus in Stroke Recovery
1:13:50 The Podcast That Heals: Bill & Jason on Connection, Recovery, and Regret

Transcript:

Jason’s Introduction and Initial Conditions

Bill Gasiamis 0:00
Jason was 56 driving to dinner in Dubai when his hand suddenly slipped off the steering wheel, and moments later, his foot slammed down on the accelerator. That’s how his stroke started. What followed was a brain hemorrhage, partial paralysis and a recovery journey that took him across countries, through experimental treatments and into some deeply emotional territory. But here’s the part that might surprise you, it wasn’t the cutting-edge drug or the therapy machine that changed everything. Jason says that the biggest breakthrough came from something far more personal.

Bill Gasiamis 0:39
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the recovery after stroke podcast. I am so glad you’re here. Whether you’re a stroke survivor, a caregiver or someone just looking for hope after a brain injury, you’re in the right place. More and more people are finding this podcast while still in hospital, sometimes just days after being diagnosed. That’s why I started this to shorten the time between stroke and connection. And if you’re someone who believes in the power of shared stories to make recovery feel less lonely and more possible.

Bill Gasiamis 1:13
Please consider supporting the show at patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke every contribution helps keep this mission alive. Now let me introduce you to Jason, a brain hemorrhage survivor who tried nearly everything to get his life back. Etanercept, TMS, HBot, acupuncture, Botox, dye changes, and more. But what you’re about to hear goes beyond rehab and into something much deeper. This is the real work of recovery, the mental, emotional and human side. Let’s dive in. Jason Hellowell, welcome to the podcast.

Jason Hellowell 1:49
Nice to see you. Nice good morning.

Bill Gasiamis 1:52
Thank you for being here. I really appreciate it. Tell me what was like, What was life like for you before the stroke?

Jason Hellowell 2:05
I was a very active person. I rode motorcycles, I water skied, I skied. I have a boat, living life at its best without question. Yeah, and then things change. How old were you within split seconds, I was 56 when it happened.

Bill Gasiamis 2:25
Tell me about that day. What was it like leading up to the strike? Did you notice anything? And then what happened?

Jason Hellowell 2:34
You know, in hindsight, when you look back after it happens, you you kind of think back, was there anything that gave me a sign that potentially would say, Okay, you’re about to have this brain hemorrhage. And in hindsight, yes, there may be a couple of things that happened, among others, waking up in the morning and having a very dizzy spill spell, just bang, whoa. That’s dizziness, right? And then it was gone. And being a typical man bloke syndrome, I just went “Oh, that’s nothing.” Just waking up. You know, I’m 56 nothing.

Jason Hellowell 3:07
And then on the ninth, sixth of September 2023 I was driving along the sheik Zayed Road, which is the main artery Road in Dubai, here where I live, and my hand fell off the steering wheel of the car, and my right hand just went and dropped off the steering wheel. Luckily, I pulled into the side, I put the car into Park, because then two minutes later, my foot did the same, but landed on the accelerator. So then it was, you know, the engine was revving and it was going absolutely Ah, so luckily I’d stopped the car, because if I’d have just carried on driving my left hand.

The Day of the Stroke and Initial Reactions

Jason Hellowell 3:45
I would have driven into whatever right Anyways, my wife was with me. Luckily, she found super strength to get me out of the car, into the back of the car, and off we went to hospital, and there you go. Where were you heading? We were on the way out for dinner, regular day to go in for dinner. No symbols, no pain, no signs, no pains, no headaches, no no nothing. I was aware that I had a blood pressure, and had had for some time, and I had been to the doctors and the doctors that all told me there is blood pressure, but none of the only one.

Jason Hellowell 4:23
I look now and find an email with a prescription for blood pressure tablets in 2000 in 2020, I think it was. And for some reason, I missed that email, and nobody followed up. So it was a prescription by email that I never saw anyway. But then you’ve gone to the doctor a few times afterwards, and you’ve been told blood pressure, nobody has gone boom, let’s just take you and give you a blood pressure tablet, which I’m a little furious about. But anyways, as everybody tells you, you can’t cry over spilled milk. You’ve got to face with the fake facts of what it is. And here I am now.

Bill Gasiamis 4:59
What were your face? First thoughts about what’s happening to your hand while you’re driving, and what happened to your leg

Jason Hellowell 5:06
Afterwards? Well, first of all, when my hand fell off the steering wheel, I said, I said to my wife, there’s something wrong with the steering wheel of the car. I don’t know what my reaction was. It felt like the steering was loose. So I blamed everything else. I didn’t even think about it. And even when I was in the back of the car, though, I did have seconds or moments where I thought, this is the end of it, right? Here’s the end. I did have that thought.

Jason Hellowell 5:34
I continued to be very chilled, and just thought, We’ll fix this. You know, it’s, it’s just something that you go to the doctors, they’ll give you something, you’ll be fixed. And I kind of still think that, but now you’re kind of more aware of what it really is and where I am. Now we’re just under two years from the happens, of it happening and fighting on the path, you know, of recovery, basically.

Bill Gasiamis 6:02
How long did it take to get you to the hospital from that particular location where you guys stopped the car?

Jason Hellowell 6:09
Less than half an hour. Okay, so we were very quickly to the hospital, but we had to go to another hospital to be treated. So I went to the clinic, actually, where I’d been six months before, and where I was told that I had high blood pressure too late then, but and then we took we were sent in an ambulance to a neurospinal hospital where they could do the neuro where I was told to wait for 72 hours to let the blood pressure go down. They had done a scan. They could see the bleed.

Jason Hellowell 6:44
And then afterwards, they did an operation where they cut in and they took out the blood, the excessive blood that was there, to give a better chance of recovery. And thankfully, because prior to the opening and the removal of the hematoman hematoma, my speech was pretty bad, but this the minute that blood was removed, my speech came back very weakly, but did come back so I didn’t lose speech.

Bill Gasiamis 7:15
Yeah. So the blood like me when I had the bleed in my head the first time it It impacted my left side, feeling sensation, all that kind of stuff. Everything was numb, like you’ve like, you’ve sat on your foot, your foot’s gone numb, then you’ve gone to step on it. Yeah, my entire left side was like that. But you know, you wouldn’t really feel like, you wouldn’t really feel like I didn’t know that it was associated to my head. Anyway, when the second bleed happened six weeks later, there was more blood about the size of a golf ball in my head. So that took offline.

Bill Gasiamis 7:53
That took offline the memory, you know, speech, typing, concentration, focus, driving, you know, lots of things went away, and then as the blood decreased in size over about a year and a half, because they never took it out initially, then what happened was all the functions started to come back, and I, I started to feel normal, and everything started to go back to like it was before, but the blood vessel was still faulty. It was still bleeding, micro bleeds. They called it micro bleeds. And then later on, when it bled for the third time, then I blacked out like everything went, pretty dramatic.

Bill Gasiamis 8:34
No, so I beg your pardon, the second time everything went and I blacked out. The third time it felt like sunburn. I was sunburned. That’s all I felt. And I went to the hospital said, right, so it feels like it’s burning. I have definitely have having another bleed, because this is my history, etc. So what your what your brain, what happened to your brain was the blood is just compressing on neurons and cells and just make them go offline. It’s not damaging. Yeah, I make them go off sleepy. The part that’s damaged is in a different location.

Bill Gasiamis 9:09
It’s at the at the epicenter of the blade, for example, and that’s the part of the blood, the part of the brain that perhaps you could say died or stopped working, and then the rest of it around there’s just gone offline and just waiting for an intervention so that it can come back online. Yeah. So when you were hospital, how long were you in there for?

Jason Hellowell 9:37
I was in hospital for a month, yeah. So we were doing, or obviously I was very, very disabled, you know, I was fully paralyzed right side. And quite quickly after the operation, I was beginning to do physiotherapy, but very difficult, but I managed to get. Up and move around. But then I was about a few weeks once I came home, was wheelchair bound. And then, you know, you just start training and hoping and the walking. I mean much as it looks, you know, I limp and I struggle and balance is pretty bad.

Jason Hellowell 10:17
My biggest challenge is the arm. I have very little use of the arm. And, you know, I can see your hand does the opening and closing. I just want to have a little bit of opening and closing to start to train that, you know, because I do believe that you can train it back, but I need that connection to begin to be able to train it. And at the moment, that hand doesn’t react, unfortunately.

Recovery of Brain Hemorrhage: Treatments and Their Impact

Bill Gasiamis 10:40
Let’s take a moment to pause and reflect on what Jason’s been sharing from paralysis on the right side of his body to trying nearly every therapy he could. Jason’s story is one of relentless effort and emotional depth, and while he’s seen progress from experimental treatments like etanercept and TMS, what stands out most is his emotional recovery, learning to speak kindly to himself, releasing long held pain and discovering strength he didn’t know he had. If this podcast is helping you make sense of your own Recovery After Stroke.

Bill Gasiamis 11:12
One way you can support it is simply by listening through the ads. It’s a small gesture, but it helps us keep producing and sharing stories like Jason’s. If you’d like to go further and help bring these conversations to people who are just starting their recovery, sometimes even in their hospital beds, consider joining us on Patreon, at patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. Your support makes this possible. Now let’s get back to Jason’s story and hear what he’s discovering about healing body, brain and heart.

Jason Hellowell 11:45
I can grip, I can grip, but I can’t open.

Bill Gasiamis 11:50
Yeah. Is it painful?

Jason Hellowell 11:54
Do you know what the pain went away when I did that? 10 recept. Okay, so you know, as I wrote to you on the thing, I’ve tried most of the solutions that you, you’ve written, talked about on your podcast, I’ve done all of them. Actually, the only one I haven’t tried yet is stem cell treatment, which I may go towards in a while, but I don’t know. I’ve looked into the guy in America, this guy Tom, who’s done the, who’s created the drug, you know, I’d be interested to hear that. Yeah, so the pain mostly went when I had a 10 receptor. Okay, we’ll talk about before that. It was like a it was a glowing pain. It’s just a continuous and in fact, having had it for, let’s say 16, 15 months, by the time I went for a 10 recept.

Jason Hellowell 12:47
I didn’t even realize I had the pain until it was gone. You know, your body gets so used to it. You get so used to being in pain all the time that until somebody injects you, and all of a sudden, I when I was lying in the chair, felt like somebody, what you know when they talk about somebody walks over your grave and you go cold, I had that down my right hand side, and the pain was gone. It’s come back a little bit. In certain times when my fist is tight like this, I get pain, but otherwise, I’m not in that much pain, to be honest with you.

Bill Gasiamis 13:24
Okay, so how about your leg? What sort of situation is your leg in? Are you fully mobile?

Jason Hellowell 13:33
Yeah, I can get up and walk around. You know? I can move around. I walk like this morning, I went out for a walk, and I walk a kilometer. It’s not the prettiest walk walk. It’s my arm. My leg swings out a little bit, but I can use it to get around, like you said before, a little bit of imbalance. So the risk of fall is there. I have spasticity in my ankle, spasticity everywhere, but my foot tends to kick inwards, which makes a little risk of standing wrongly and then falling.

Bill Gasiamis 14:06
Yeah. And if I recall correctly, that swing that your leg has got is from the knee, it kind of hasn’t got that real focused swing so that it goes backwards and forwards. It kind of just goes wherever it wants for a little bit.

Jason Hellowell 14:23
That’s right, exactly. So from the knee down, I have less control than I do at the hip. And actually the hip is interesting, because I have, I have forward and backward movement on the hip, but I have very little stability on the diagonal movement, so the leg tends to go out and swing around that, you know, it’s kind of like that, and then you land on your foot and use it as a support to move forward in the next one.

Jason Hellowell 14:47
Yeah. But again, that’s a training thing. I think we can train that pattern and get back to normality by building strength. I believe if I can get my leg strength fully back, we can begin to get there. Yeah. I. I need my hand. You know, I need to ride my motorcycle. Priorities, that motivation?

Bill Gasiamis 15:07
Yeah, you might have to get a three-wheeler and reconfigure the grips, or get an automatic one.

Jason Hellowell 15:14
Yeah, maybe. But I need the left-hand throttle and balance would be incorrect. It’s just, I keep the motorcycle because it’s a motivation to get better. Yeah, and I think where there’s a will, there’s a way, is my saying, right?

Bill Gasiamis 15:27
Yeah, why not? Like, I don’t see an issue with that as well, be great thing to try and and redo, and then and also adapt if you can’t get there, however many years down the track you decide I’m not. I might not get there. Well, then just adapt it and find another way to do it. Of course. Yes, if it’s a three wheeler, it’s a three wheeler.

Jason Hellowell 15:48
Exactly. It’s no issue. Yeah.

Trading Life, Family, and Recovery of Brain Hemorrhage

Bill Gasiamis 15:51
So yeah, just before we move into all the things that you’ve tried, I know you’ve tried a few things. I love that, because we’ll talk about them all. So yeah, what’s family life like you? Your wife? Who else? Anyone else around? What kind of work were you doing? How busy are you? What things were you up to?

Jason Hellowell 16:11
I’m kind of lucky that I work for myself, and a lot of what I do is networked or, you know, WhatsApp or zoom, and I do go out and meet people occasionally. I have a trading company here in Dubai where we import and export certain things. So that’s that’s okay, not obviously, there was a long period of time where I wasn’t even sharp enough in my head to do things. But I’m back to, you know, I’m on a path of recovery, and I’m good on my way there, right, with some restrictions. Family life. I live here with my wife, my two kids have grown up.

Jason Hellowell 16:44
They’re both, you know, in their 20s, living in Copenhagen, hence why I went to Copenhagen for the Aten recept and, yeah, you know, try my best in the situation we have. We gotta take the best you can, because I’m still here, right? Yeah, as you well know, brain hemorrhages are one of those ones where the chance of living are very minimal.

Bill Gasiamis 17:03
Apparently, so less common but more fatal.

Jason Hellowell 17:07
Correct. From what I’ve read, 5% of people who have a brain hemorrhage survive.

Bill Gasiamis 17:13
Right, wow, that’s dramatic.

Jason Hellowell 17:16
We’re the lucky ones.

Bill Gasiamis 17:18
Mate, I’m very lucky. I’m blessed. I didn’t know that there were the numbers were that bad against Yeah, it is bad images, right? Okay, yeah. So how did you find out about etanercept?

Jason Hellowell 17:36
I think it was just online, you know, or very possibly, I’ll tell you what it was. I have a friend in Denmark who has another friend who had had a stroke, ischemic stroke, a little older than me, and he had heard about this being given in Denmark. And so then I started to research on it, because this friend sent me the information, and I watched all the videos on the website and so on and so forth. And then I spoke with these people in Denmark.

Jason Hellowell 18:06
And then we went and did it. You know, it was my opinion, my attitude was, what have I got to lose once you’ve understood that there is no risk with it, it’s either going to work or it’s not going to work, or it’s going to work a little bit, and maybe not totally, but there’s, there’s more benefits and more, you know, chances of doing something than not.

Bill Gasiamis 18:29
The doctors in Denmark, are they affiliated at all, in any way with Dr. Tobernick from Florida?

Jason Hellowell 18:35
Yes, they are the licensed providers of a 10 recept perist final, attend recept following the, what can we say, the guidelines of Dr. Tobernick.

Bill Gasiamis 18:46
The method.

Jason Hellowell 18:48
Yes.

Bill Gasiamis 18:49
Is there any, did you do any? Did you do any preliminary test examinations to determine whether you’re a candidate or not? Like, what was that procedure like, beforehand.

Jason Hellowell 19:02
Yes, I had to do blood tests to test if my blood or, sorry, if I’d ever had tuberculosis, and come back with the tests to show them that my bloods were good to receive etanose. And then when we got to the clinic, I went through a bunch of tests, you know, load questions and cognitivity, how you walk, just to give a benchmark, so that when you’d had the injection, they could check how you were doing after having had the injection.

Bill Gasiamis 19:34
And what’s that like for you? You fly in, you settle in in your family home with your with your kids, or whomever, and then head down do the injection. What was that like that whole day?

Jason Hellowell 19:47
So my kids live there, but we stayed in a hotel, so we flew into Copenhagen, checked into the hotel, and then the next day, my daughter drove us out to where the clinic was, and we. Sat down and did the test with Doc, Mister Michael, and yeah, had the first injection. And the first injection, I definitely felt a difference, like within four minutes, I told you, this cold feeling through the body, pain was gone. The main benefit was my voice. I have depth to my voice. You know, I sound powerful in my voice. Before it was very weak it was, I was struggling to get the words out.

Jason Hellowell 20:28
And I would trip over words. You know, I would have to pause and count and think and, you know, my brain was working to try and get all these words into place. Now it’s just there. So I’m very grateful for that first injection was like that. I thought maybe that there was some mobility benefits. I’m not sure if that’s a placebo effect. And my desire willpower, wanting to be better, because injection number two came, and now there was not really any big change after injection number two. And the question is, now, would I go back in July and do the third one? Why July?

Jason Hellowell 21:10
Because you’ve gotta wait two months or something for the third one. You do two within a 10 day period, so first one and then 10 days later, you do the second one. If the first one has given you effect, if you didn’t have effect on the first one, you may say, okay, it didn’t do anything. There was not enough inflammation to be able to get a result. I wouldn’t do number two, but I was like, I’ll try anything, right? So I’ll do it, and maybe I’ll do the same with number three, but I don’t know, given that there has been no drastic change since number two, I’m not so sure.

Bill Gasiamis 21:44
Yeah, fair enough. What is the cost per injection?

Jason Hellowell 21:51
I’m not sure if I can talk about that, because I think they differ from different places, so I don’t want to mislead people, but the first injection was 9000 euros, and I believe in the United States, it’s $9,000 for an injection, I believe. But again, it may differ per injection. I think the first one, second, 1/3, one have different prices in different places, but the average price is about $9,000 per injection.

Bill Gasiamis 22:16
Okay, or 9000 euros somewhere there. Yeah, they’re around. Yeah, there seems to be a really interesting conversation happening around thetacept. So in Australia, you can’t actually access ataricept unless it’s in a clinical trial, which is for a very small amount of people, and that’s just to determine its efficacy, because nobody’s doing clinical trials for a tonic atanacep to see whether it is efficacious for people who have had a neurological injury. So Right? It’s extremely difficult to find anyone to talk about it, etcetera.

Hope, Hype, and Unanswered Questions

Bill Gasiamis 22:51
Now, I recently received an email from Doctor Toby’s office telling me that they wanted to refute some of the findings of a trial that was called the pesto trial, that was that was done about a year and a half ago, and the results haven’t been released yet after a year that the study has finished, And I asked Dr Tober Nick’s office for an interview, and I they refused. I couldn’t get an interview with him, so I also tried to get an interview with the researchers on the pesto trial, the trial that concluded in mid 2420 24 which the results were supposed to be out by now.

Bill Gasiamis 23:41
And they also haven’t been able to confirm whether or not I’ll be able to get an interview with anybody. So there’s this whole kind of industry of keeping information close to their chest, rather than telling people you know what’s going on with this product, or whether or not it’s suitable how to access it and all this type of stuff. And I don’t understand exactly why.

Jason Hellowell 24:05
No, neither do I.

Bill Gasiamis 24:08
One of the challenges, then, is managing all of the comments on YouTube. Which is it, was it worked for me? It was great, or this is a scam. This is where we’re sitting. From your experience, I know that you had a positive outcome of sorts, but your hand didn’t, perhaps have any positive outcome. No, what is your sense of the entire of this entire thing? Like I know you, you kind of thought it can’t harm so I might as well give it a try.

Bill Gasiamis 24:46
But what’s the sense now that you’ve done it about this whole etanercept thing, miracle drug for some people, complete, demonic, ridiculous, terrible thing for others.

Jason Hellowell 25:00
Yeah, I think you know my reckoning is that the sooner you can do it, the better you know I was beyond 12 months. So I can’t remember. It was 16, 17 months after my stroke that it happened. So therefore has the inflammation reduced. And as we both know, every single stroke is different. Every single person’s reaction to the stroke is different. You know, how, how much you affected whatever, I’ve watched all the videos, I’ve listened all the interviews online. You know, it’s working for some people.

Jason Hellowell 25:39
So my belief I’m very pro-etanercept, as I said, I’ll try it if it works positive, if it doesn’t, I’ve not lost anything. But given that, it has worked for many people, and I can tell you, for me, it has given me clarity of brain. It has given me better speech and a pain relief to a degree that is unexplainable. Mobility. You know, my stroke happened on the left side of my brain in what’s called the motor strip.

Jason Hellowell 26:15
So my mobility is very affected. Is it 10 recept going to fix that? You know, I don’t know what I would be interested to know, because they say you can do these three injections, I’d be like, what if I took six injections? Would that have any bigger benefits? Is there a chance if I took more of it, that I would have a better effect? I don’t know. I would love to know those kind of things, and I will be following up to find out that.

Bill Gasiamis 26:42
Yeah, the good questions to ask, I feel like, what a tenner step does is it impacts in a positive way, inflammation, as opposed to brain damage. So once the brain is damaged, it’s damaged, it’s offline. You’re not getting that part back. Yeah, and if you have a lot of that, well, then your deficits are huge. But with regards to the other parts where there’s inflammation, and it’s taken some of the brain offline, just like the blood when it was touching on the brain cells. Yeah, that is, I think, what it impacts positively by reducing the the inflammation there.

Bill Gasiamis 27:15
Removing the chemical situation that occurs, and then allowing that part of the brain to come back online, and it does it instantly. The question is, is also, with regards to inflammation, you can re inflame the brain, poor diet, say you’re smoking and drinking, you can re inflame the brain, and then I imagine, yeah, undo the positive work that etanercept has done, have you? Yeah, give us a bit of an understanding of like, how you look after your body and brain these days. What do you do?

Jason Hellowell 27:50
You know, my wife has become my personal nutritionist, and she’s amazing. So I eat, eat healthily. I eat, I would say, 80% vegan, no dairy. You know, I do eat meat, and I do do, like, I say 80% I exercise every day. I’m pretty much in the gym every day. I still do physiotherapy, 345, times a week. Yeah, so a lot has changed, and it’s all focused on the path of recovery.

Bill Gasiamis 28:23
Yeah, so in regards to a vegan diet, I wouldn’t recommend a strict vegan diet, but I’m not a I’m not a doctor, so don’t take any of my recommendations or comments as advice, but but also, adding protein is really important to help the brain, so the fact that you’re having a high vegetable diet that includes protein and doesn’t include dairy, what I’m saying is, like, that’s a very anti inflammatory diet most of the time, correct, especially if you’re not overdoing it with lentils and things that have a lot of inflammatory kind of situations.

Bill Gasiamis 28:59
You know, people can some people can bloat if they lentils, beans and all that kind of stuff that tends to also impact the brain negatively. Okay, so you’ve tried some other things as well as etanercept. What else have you tried?

Jason Hellowell 29:15
So, pretty much, soon after I came from hospital, I did hyperbaric oxygen chamber, which I did three sessions. I did 30 sessions of hyperbaric oxygen chamber. Again, I had read that, you know, if you can increase the oxygen and you go to hyperbaric, it’s very good for healing. So will it heal the wound in the brain and so on. And can I give you a specific Yes, it did something. No, is it a part of my healing? Is it a part of where I am? It’s very possibly. You know, the more I read about it, the more I think I would go back and do it again. You know, it’s very good for you anyway.

Jason Hellowell 29:56
So there’s nothing to lose by doing it, but there’s no specific. I felt this different because of it, whereas with the tan receptor was a definite, I felt this, there we go.

Bill Gasiamis 30:10
Did you do the 10 seconds or the hyperbaric first?

Jason Hellowell 30:14
Hyperbaric first? Then I did so. I did hyperbaric first 30 sessions. I then went to Switzerland, to a particular clinic in Switzerland where they did TMS, transcranial micro magnetic stimulation. There I only did 10 sessions. I’ve since come to I’ve since met a doctor here in Dubai who does it too, and they want to do me 30 sessions, which I will possibly, you know, I’m likely to begin soon.

Bill Gasiamis 30:44
Okay, tell me about that. Yeah, that’s supposed to do.

Jason Hellowell 30:54
I think the whole idea is, so it’s a plate that comes to your head here, and you just feel this like a crackling. It’s not painful. It isn’t. It’s a little weird. If you imagine two electric things going together and you see that little flashing light that goes across it, and it’s like, if you put your finger between it, that’s the feeling that you have on your head kind of thing. And it’s supposed to, you know, if you go on to chat GPT and say, what, what are the best things I can do to recover mobility of my right arm having suffered a intercerebral hematoma, TMS is one of the top things that comes up.

Jason Hellowell 31:34
And you know whether you believe in AI or not, you know, AI is a source of information second to none. And so when you go in and throw these questions into chat GPT, it comes up with some fabulous responses, yeah. And so I, you know, I’m following those kind of things really.

Bill Gasiamis 31:52
Yeah. So TMS and ChatGPT. I mean, ChatGPT is just a search engine, and it’s really good at, of course, being really detailed search engine, and sometimes it’s not accurate. So if there is, so if there is some information there about TMS, it’s only because it’s starting to be discussed regularly, and there’s stuff on the internet about it, because church apt is trained on the entire internet, so that’s where it’s getting the information from.

Recovery of Brain Hemorrhage And Tangible Relief from Spasticity

Bill Gasiamis 32:19
So, I type in TMS to ChatGPT, which I just did, I said “What does TMS do?” It says it delivers magnetic pulses through a coil placed against the scalp. These pulses target specific areas of the brain, often the prefrontal cortex, to influence neural activity. Okay, great. Is that how it was described to you? Again, do you need to qualify for that? Do they need to assist you? How do you just? How do you do this?

Jason Hellowell 32:55
Well, I was in a particular clinic in Switzerland where it’s a neuro specialist, neuro rehabilitation clinic, and that was a part of their recovery suggestions to me. And yeah, I just it was a part of my process of recovery. You know that that was one of the things. And I have to say, the result of that was also tangible. It was a huge reduction in spasticity in my shoulder. I had frozen shoulder for a good six or seven months where I could not move at all. It was so painful. It was agonizing.

Jason Hellowell 33:31
And TMS definitely, relieved the spasticity. It has not gone fully, but that’s that is the reason that I will go back and try again to see if I keep going with TMS. Can I reduce more spasticity, and can I get to a level where I can train my hand more?

Bill Gasiamis 33:50
Did you notice it gradually getting better? Or did one day again you woke up and thought “Oh, my God, that’s gone.”

Jason Hellowell 33:57
Well, we did 10 sessions, and I did a lot of electro stimulation and training immediately after having had the TMS. And I would say it was a gradual feeling of reduction in spasticity, okay? And it was primarily the reduction in spasticity. And as you may know, I don’t know if you ever suffered spasticity, but the spasticity is a big blocker from being for being able to gain recovery, because the spasticity freezes you up so you can’t train you can’t build muscles.

Jason Hellowell 34:31
You can’t teach yourself, you know, because, okay, that part of my brain is dead, but Neuroplasticity continues, so you can teach yourself to use those parts of your body by using another part of your brain. Yes, if you work hard.

Bill Gasiamis 34:46
Yes, if, and I believe that spasticity released and gave you access to those muscles, correct? Yeah, hence Botox and hence other things to try and relieve spasticity in people’s arms, legs, shoulders. And all that kind of stuff. I know what you mean. Okay, so I did do Botox as well. Okay, we’ll talk about that as well then. So your your TMS, 10 sessions over what period of time?

Jason Hellowell 35:16
During a two to three week period.

Bill Gasiamis 35:19
Okay, how long do they sessions go for 10 minutes.

Jason Hellowell 35:25
Yeah, you just, you go into the room for 10 minutes, and then off you go to the rest of your rehab.

Bill Gasiamis 35:33
Does it make you feel strange, different at the time? Do you notice anything?

Jason Hellowell 35:38
No, you sit there. I mean, initially you’re a little bit apprehensive to this device going to head, but once you’ve felt the feeling, you go in and sit down and let it happen. You know, in hindsight, I would want to do that, you know, having been to visit this doctor in Dubai who would now like to do 30 sessions, I would like, you know, ideally, if it wasn’t so expensive, give me 30, you know, let me keep going. Okay, I’m very much. I’ll try anything.

Bill Gasiamis 36:07
I love it, I love it. Jason, so, hyperbaric first, TMS second, a tennership Third, yeah, and then yeah. What was the other one I mentioned you just, yeah, me too. You just mentioned that, just then.

Jason Hellowell 36:25
Yeah, Botox, you know, there’s a lot going on. So I did Botox. Probably I did the Botox before the TMS, actually. So I came out of hospital, I did hyperbaric oxygen, and then I did Botox, which was injected with ultrasound so that they could sense the movement of the muscle to make sure that we injected it into the right muscles that controlled, for example, the wrist and the hand and the shoulder, because the frozen shoulder was there as well.

Jason Hellowell 37:01
Because of that, think I felt a little change from there, but I went twice. Actually, I went back for a little top up as well. I’m not so sure about the but, you know, I do believe that Botox works. I’m not that keen on putting botulism into my body. Call me weird. Call me whatever. I’m not that keen on that a you know, that’s not my thing.

Bill Gasiamis 37:32
Not weird, fair enough. Yeah, people have had really negative reactions to Botox, which makes sense, because it’s a poison.

Jason Hellowell 37:41
Yeah. So they just in those words there, right? Botox is a poison. So why would I inject poison into my body? Yes, I know it’s going to relax the spasticity, but it’s also disabling the muscle. So therefore my training ability, I don’t think, is going to be that good, like right now, my grip. Can hold on to a rope, and I can pull weights up and down with my right hand.

Jason Hellowell 38:05
If I have the Botox, I can’t hold on to things, and I like to be able to hold on and be able to do some exercises, even though it doesn’t give me great mobility. You know, I can. You know, I can. I can get down, up there and move it around, and the hand closes, you can see, but the spasticity now it’s difficult for me to push it out.

Bill Gasiamis 38:23
So it just releases the hand. It doesn’t give you more ability to activate the different parts that you need to activate, to do the things that you need to do, correct, correct. Okay, so botulism. The reason they do it is because it’s a poison. But dose matters. Dose is really, yeah, right food is certain foods are okay, but if you overdo certain foods, well, it’s a poison. It’s just a dosage is over a longer period of time, and you, you know, you cause all these negative things by eating the wrong foods. And, yeah, it’s having the same outcome.

Bill Gasiamis 39:00
So that with botulism, I imagine, because of the way it’s absorbed into the body, the way that it’s dealt with in the different locations, etc, that’s why they can pinpoint accuracy, put it somewhere and do, quote, unquote, good with it instead of cause harm, dosage. But yeah, there have been negative outcomes with people receiving cosmetic Botox, and who knows under what conditions they received that and why they have negative effects. Everybody’s different. Yeah, agreed, agreed. So I understand that.

Bill Gasiamis 39:36
So as far as your personality goes, you’re really interesting kind of guy, because let’s talk about the negative stuff, a little bit like, didn’t you have bad days? Weren’t you? Yeah, struggling having, you know, depressive thoughts or anything like that. Tell me about that side of it, not just the Woo, woo, everything’s fantastic. I’m going to go for it. Stuff. Yeah. What you’re human, right?

Family Life and Emotional Recovery

Jason Hellowell 40:02
Absolutely, absolutely. And, yeah, of course, you know, you have very bad days where you wake up crying in the morning and everything’s, you know, I can get myself crying now if you want, but it’s an emotional trip, right? The whole thing is an emotional trip. And I’ve, I’ve gone to therapy, you know, I have a friend who’s a holistic life coach, and she’s done a lot of work with me, working to understand things about myself, to be able to be stronger in on the path to recovery. You know how you use the vocabulary of what when you talk about yourself in this situation.

Jason Hellowell 40:47
The vocabulary you use about your situation, so that you’re not being derogatory to yourself? You know I’m going to say it now. You know I would say, Geez, I’m handicapped, or I’m disabled, or whatever. Well, no, you’re not actually. You’re just on a path to recovery, and there’s nothing you know. You’re absolutely fine, you you, you are normal. I used to say when I’m normal again. And she said to me, you can’t say that, because you are normal. There’s nothing wrong with you. You do. You’re just on a path to recovery. You’ve just got to recover.

Jason Hellowell 41:22
And we will work on that conversation, and we’ll go deep inside and dig out things and remove barriers and emotional things that you work on to to, it’s called the journey to, to help you be stronger, you know, yeah, but yeah, definitely, I’ve had black moments. I mean, come on, you can’t you know the the the not being able to do the things you would normally do. I mentioned riding motorcycles, water skiing, skiing, all these wonderful things that you can’t do that has, that has an emotional burden, no question.

Bill Gasiamis 41:58
Your, you know, your is it? Your predisposition to be problem solving, looking for solutions, rather than focusing on, again, on the negative. But as happens with a lot of people, when you’re in a stroke situation, the negatives tend to, you know, rear the rack of the heads. And let you know that things a little bit shit at the moment, and you’ve got to, you’re going to dig deep, and you’ve got to find new ways to overcome what’s going on in your life, right? 100%

Jason Hellowell 42:32
Yeah, I am definitely a you know, solution guy. I will look for, I believe that there’s a solution to everything. We just have to find the way. I believe that “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” And if you work hard, you will get to the top of the hill, and that is the only result that I’m looking for, but the easy option, in many cases, is to just sit back and accept and “Oh, this is my situation.” I’m going to sit on the sofa, I’m going to eat the wrong food, I can’t exercise, I can’t walk, so I’m going to sit in a wheelchair. And that’s me done. Well, I’m not gonna accept that. I ain’t having that at all, no way.

Bill Gasiamis 43:26
And it seems like the easy route, but it’s not because it creates a harder life, still, still. It just makes things more complicated, difficult. And, yeah, yeah, it’s a different kind of hard. It’s a hard down the road rather than a hard effort, consistency, yeah, eating well, changing your habits, changing the way you speak to yourself, your behavior and all of that stuff. Yeah, what fully agreed? Maybe this is inaccurate, but I’m going to ask it like this anyway.

Bill Gasiamis 43:58
And then we can address it. Why is? Why is your wife not the person that you can sit down and talk to about those things that your life coach can talk to you about, as in, what does a third person bring into the conversation that you’re not getting in your regular daily life?

Jason Hellowell 44:19
Yeah, you know, I mean, I can definitely have deep conversations with my wife and my family and my kids and everything. That’s not a problem. But I think when you bring in a person who is professionally educated and has tools to work on understanding and helping you to come through these things, barriers, emotional barriers, that you maybe even don’t forget the stroke in general.

Jason Hellowell 44:43
I think talking to a third party who has tools and methodologies to help you to discover how to be a bit more you know, in line with yourself is, yeah, it’s fabulous, amazing. That my therapist is called Emma, and she’s genius.

Bill Gasiamis 45:06
Professional, Tools. That’s why, because your wife is your wife, and her profession is not to find ways and tools to get you over the line. It’s to provide emotional support, household support, you know, all the things you need to cook a meal, to take it to an appointment, to do all these sorts of things. And she offers great value, but she’s, it’s not her, it’s not the way she makes her living.

Jason Hellowell 45:33
That’s right, absolutely. And you know, like, yeah, professional person who is trained. And I’ll be honest with you, you know, I go to these sessions, the session is two hours long. If I let’s say I’ve done 11 sessions out of the 11 sessions, I would say nine or 10 of them, I have probably bald with tears for an hour and 45 minutes, like uncontrollable emotional release that’s not going to happen when you talk to your wife.

Jason Hellowell 46:08
This is people who have an ability and a tools and an emotional a spiritual connection. I don’t know what you want to call it, but they know how to get you to be honest with yourself, and I think that’s one of the biggest problems so many people have. They lie to themselves. They don’t face the truth.

Bill Gasiamis 46:32
Yeah, so these releases that you’re having are these long-held, pent-up things from your past that you didn’t know were there, or are these things that you professionally avoided confronting while it was okay and you didn’t need to confront it.

Jason Hellowell 46:48
And no, a lot of it is definitely, you know, past things that have happened in your life that you have, what I call boxed and shelved, you know, emotions that you have boxed and parked, and you just carry on and until you go back and dig them out, deal with them, face them. And as Emma says, embrace them with love. You can never get rid of them, and they’ll remain a blockage in your system or in your journey.

Bill Gasiamis 47:17
How are they blocking your life before stroke that you weren’t aware of and how have they released you now that you’re aware of them?

Jason Hellowell 47:23
I can’t tell you that because I didn’t, you know. I can’t tell you that because I wasn’t aware at that time that that’s where it was. But could that be an added reason for what’s happened? Who knows? You know, I just don’t know. I can’t explain it, but I can tell you it’s been good to do it.

Bill Gasiamis 47:41
Yeah, emotional trauma is definitely going to considered a a negative health risk to people’s outcomes, stroke, heart attack, cancers, like it’s all connected, because you change the chemistry of your body when you’re in constant emotional stress, turmoil, pain, suffering, and if you don’t run it and you don’t release it and let it go, well then it constantly impacts the body negatively.

Bill Gasiamis 48:11
So that’s really important. 100% 100% and it sounds like because this is the thing you’ve bragged about more than any of the medical interventions, it sounds like the thing that was one of the keys to, well, your recovery, and I’m not talking about being able to move your hand better, but that other part of recovery that’s in here and in your heart.

Jason Hellowell 48:36
You know, As I say to many people, the biggest challenge with the result of my stroke is the mental fight you have with yourself, within yourself. You know you have the physical issues, but it’s that willpower to carry on that is the challenge, and to have that mental strength is is one of the challenges. And therefore, I think you can take medicine and you can do medical things, and they’re obviously a part of the process.

Jason Hellowell 49:14
And you hope that they’re going to give you something. But that emotional control to manage the mental state of mind is, you know, you not unquestionably, one of the biggest things you have to deal with.

Bill Gasiamis 49:29
Is that what you refer to, what people would refer to as building resilience.

Jason Hellowell 49:37
Yeah, I guess, I guess partially Yes, yes. But building the resilience to continue with a will and a drive and a self motivation that you will win this.

Bill Gasiamis 49:51
Yeah, I, I went and did a whole bunch of coaching at the beginning of my journey as well 2012 right, man for about. Two years solid, and then counseling from a psychologist at the same time. So psychologist was more about helping me with the thinking, how i i did my thinking, and make me aware of the things that I was doing, saying acting, that were perhaps getting in my way. And then the Yeah, the coaching was more about how to take action on the new ways I wanted to think, the action on the new ways I wanted to behave, talk to myself, etc.

Bill Gasiamis 50:28
They combined, right, and they were the they were the biggest part of the transformation. That was Bill. Because the people that watch this podcast who’ve never met the bill before, the stroke at 37 that was a completely different person. I mean, we inhabit the same body, but they were completely two different people.

Jason Hellowell 50:51
In what way do you feel that you’ve changed?

Bill Gasiamis 50:54
Well, the old me would never do a podcast, would never write a book, would never have met 350 people from all around the planet that had gone through something similar to find a way to make sense of it, transform it, battle it out, overcome it. I wasn’t a problem solver. I was a problem finder, and that was about most of find a shitload of problems and then get stuck there and go “Oh my god, I’m overwhelmed. I’ve got all these problems.” And what I didn’t realize was, I was focusing on all the problems rather than all the solutions.

Bill Gasiamis 51:32
And I was and that created more problems in my head, in my heart, sure, in my entire life. And I felt like the walls were sort of coming in around me, and I find myself there sometimes as well. Still these days, okay, because the stroke makes me wake up in the morning like I did this morning with a headache that I’ve had for about, I don’t know, the last three or four weeks, on and off. Every second or third day, it kind of dissipates and then it comes back again.

Jason Hellowell 52:01
Have you tried to 10 recept yourself?

Bill Gasiamis 52:03
I haven’t tried it yet. I haven’t tried I haven’t I haven’t gone down that path.

Jason Hellowell 52:09
I thought that would be interesting for you.

Bill Gasiamis 52:11
I mean, on the path of kind of trying to convince myself whether I should go down that route. And the challenge I have with it is that there is no and maybe this is, again, that thing you know, where I’m getting in my own way. The challenge I have with it is that there’s no way of knowing whether you’re the right candidate or not, where some of the people I have interviewed about HBot will go through the process of determining whether you’re a candidate for H bot, and whether you’ll get results, which is the most important thing.

Bill Gasiamis 52:45
Because what that does is that minimizes the risk of people who haven’t got 20 grand or 30 grand to put it down and then get no result for it. And I know sure a lot of stroke survivors might not be in a situation where they’re comfortable financially, and especially when you’ve had a stroke and you can’t work, and you’re working a job, you know, finances an issue instantly, right?

Jason Hellowell 53:10
Sure, and I heard you on one of your other podcasts with people talking about insurance. You know, insurances are good. I was luckily insured, so the hospital was covered by the insurance. And the insurance has been fabulous on that level, but when it comes to being an outpatient, having left hospital as an outpatient, you need physiotherapy for as long as it may need.

Jason Hellowell 53:32
And these insurances have a limit to how much they will pay for physiotherapy or chiropractic or occupational therapy, and that i is, is for many people a problem. And, you know, of course, I feel the expense, you know, it’s an expensive game. This whole thing is very expensive.

Bill Gasiamis 53:50
Yeah, I’m at the chiropractor, I’m at the my therapist, I’m at the acupuncturist, I’m at all those people. So regularly, you’ve tried acupuncture.

Jason Hellowell 54:01
You mentioned acupuncture, so I had to bring that one in too. So had a very, very good acupuncturist from who was from Switzerland, called Andrew, and he came to my house and we did acupuncture, and I’m talking needles across the top of the head, with electricity and all these things now, was that a part of my reasons for recovery at the time? I don’t know his his healing, his pain removal was pretty intense and very good. It wasn’t permanent, unfortunate, yeah. But acupuncture was also a good one.

Jason Hellowell 54:37
And I’ve watched, I don’t if you ever watched the video on YouTube called “999 Needles” or something.

Bill Gasiamis 54:43
No.

Jason Hellowell 54:44
Do you watch that? It’s about an American guy who unfortunately passed, but he was very affected by his stroke, and he went to China for acupuncture, and they managed to do some pretty intense recovery on him. And he number of years later, he had another stroke and didn’t. To survive, but that was an interesting one.

Bill Gasiamis 55:03
Maybe you’ll send me the link, it will include it in the show notes, and then we’ll get people to go have a look at it.

Jason Hellowell 55:10
Yeah, maybe not sure if I should reference to that. Maybe Yeah, I can do Yeah. But yeah, interesting acupuncture is one. What else have I tried? I feel like I’ve tried everything, and it sounds like except stem cells. Stem cells? No, I’m not going to stop. Yeah. Have you heard about stem cells? What do you think to that?

Bill Gasiamis 55:34
I have but nothing positive in that. Again, stem cells seem to be not negative, so they don’t tend to cause negative side effects. The challenge with them is, how do you get them into the location that you want them to go, and how do you ensure that they target the part of the brain that they can that they need to target, and and where this Where do the stem cells come from, and which ones are the best. I know there’s a bit of research and little bit of work being done, but again, in the Western countries, there is this seems to be a ethical issue around stem cells.

Bill Gasiamis 56:10
And I know in Panama, there seems to be more work done on stem cell research than anywhere else. And I think the reason is because the government is a little more relaxed about the so called ethical issues around stem cells, and when they come from, and it’s a little it’s one of those places in the world where there’s a little less what’s the word government into interference into.

Jason Hellowell 56:35
Red tape.

Recovery of Brain Hemorrhage Challenges and Future Plans

Bill Gasiamis 56:35
Yeah. So I’ve had somebody who I know who’s had stem cells in the hip before and told me that they’ve got good results in pain relief, etc. But again, yeah, it’s about it’s a bit of an arthritic hip, so it doesn’t remove the damage that the arthritis has caused. It somehow seems to regenerate supportive tissues or or structures that make the pain ease, but again, it also wears off. It doesn’t last forever, similar to Botox, similar to acupuncture, the temporary resolutions.

Jason Hellowell 57:13
Fixes. Okay, interesting, yeah, you know, the story that you talked about one day in your podcast with this drug that they found, DD-970, I think it’s called.

Bill Gasiamis 57:28
Yeah, the trial that was done recently.

Jason Hellowell 57:32
Yeah, Dr. Tom, something, in UCLA.

Bill Gasiamis 57:36
They showed it in UCLA and it showed positive results in mice that they can reduce inflammation in the brain with a pill, yeah, tablet.

Jason Hellowell 57:48
Yeah. And, you know, then there’s neuro link in all of these things. Basically, for me, those things all provide a positive outlook that, and with AI and science now and technology, I’m quite confident that we will find something soon, not, not, not too much in the distant future, that is going to be positively able to help with mobility, over, over and above, physical training. You know, I definitely believe in physical training.

Bill Gasiamis 58:24
I do believe there was some groundbreaking work done in people with quadriplegia and paraplegia, where they were able to bypass the damaged part of the spine, from the top of the spine to the path underneath the damaged area of the spine, to take the signals and send them further down the spine, bypassing the area that was damaged. Again, not massive inroads, but results, some kind of theoretical results, anyhow, being able to sort of show that.

Bill Gasiamis 58:57
And if you think about people who have lost an arm, they have a robotic arm that they can open and close and twist and grab things with it, kind of is the similar type of thing, yeah. But somehow they they get those signals to transfer from the part that’s remaining to another device and create a create a movement, create an outcome.

Jason Hellowell 59:26
Yeah, I that there’s got to be a way. I have this dream that we could create a form of poly filler, or silicon filler, that we could go in and that silicon filler can fill the gap. Because if I showed you the scan of my brain, there is, there are definite black areas, right? Yeah. And you know, you have this vision that if you could just go in with a poly filler and fill it, then that material that has gone in could carry the neurons, and it would like a plant grow new roots through that piece. At the moment, the black.

Jason Hellowell 1:00:00
App is unable to grow. It needs to be reconnected. Put some poly filler in there, and Let’s reconnect the wires that are in between. Surely, that’s possible in today’s science. You know what I’m saying? It’s like, I have this dream that we could create, that it’s I like the idea.

Bill Gasiamis 1:00:15
Love him or hate him, we need another Elon Musk type character to get that product under development. I know with neural link, there’s been a bit of a challenge. A cousin of mine is a neurologist, and he spoke to me about the challenges with stuff like neural link, because the implants that they put into the brain to sort of generate that additional function with the implant chip, they say that those prongs that they put into the cavity of the brain, or wherever they go to sort of embed.

Bill Gasiamis 1:00:49
They say that there is a challenge with them in that they get ejected from the area that they were installed over a period of time, and reinstating and re intervening with the brain, you know, creates additional challenges and risks. So not as, not as clear cut as what it might have been like, thought up for be like early on, long term, people who are being studied with it seem to have had this, what’s the word, like, like, a disconnection with the device? And, right? They’re not certain yet how to address it.

Jason Hellowell 1:01:30
You know, hence my thinking that if you could have this silicon filler that was able to carry the, you know, I don’t know, like a special potting potty that allows growth for the neurons and wires to grow through, slowly, must be possible.

Bill Gasiamis 1:01:49
Conductive of electrical type.

Final Thoughts and Advice

Jason Hellowell 1:01:51
That was the word I was looking for.

Bill Gasiamis 1:01:53
Yeah.

Jason Hellowell 1:01:54
My lack of English words, there you go. Even though I’m English.

Bill Gasiamis 1:01:59
Now you’re doing alright. You’re doing alright. Well, that’s really interesting. So we’ve had a very interesting conversation. What? There’s people listening here? You know, the title of this podcast is going to see, going to be some like, he’s tried everything, or he’s tried this. He’s tried that. People are going to jump on and they’re going to have a listen, like, what would you sort of say to people who are just going through what you and I have been through?

Bill Gasiamis 1:02:28
Because some people are finding this podcast in their hospital beds just after they’ve had a stroke. So what do we tell people, I wish I had that journey?

Jason Hellowell 1:02:37
Well, firstly, I wish I’d done that and found it the when I was in hospital, you know, I What would I say? You know, hopefully you have somebody who cares for you and loves you, which I had, and does the research. I think I would have liked that hospitals and doctors who were treating me at the time were more open to telling you about all these different opportunities or possibilities that there are, you know, instead of just saying you’ve got to go down the path of physiotherapy and occupational therapy and repetitive movement and data you know.

Jason Hellowell 1:03:20
That’s what you’ve got to do. I would have liked somebody to tell me of all of these different things we can do now, of course, then I went to this place in Switzerland, and they had of all those things very expensive, so prohibitive to many people because of the price. If you can afford it, great. The sooner you go to those places, the better it is. I think with with a stroke, the quicker. If I knew that, you know, those early six to seven to 10 months were, how important they were, I may have made more of an effort, you know.

Jason Hellowell 1:03:58
Because at the time you’re very neural fatigue. You have fatigue. You’re tired. You know, I’m not as tired now as I was. So I can fight harder. But the reality is, had I known that and pushed harder in those first six months, could I have made a difference? Now, I did push quite hard. We did do a lot of work, and I think there is also a natural recovery process that goes on. I believe that even, you know, I went to one doctor who said to me, you know, once you’ve passed your six months to one year, you’ve pretty much done the recovery you’re going to do.

Jason Hellowell 1:04:36
That was probably the worst statement any doctor could ever tell me, because that really knocks you back. I agree you who shit? You know, luckily, my wife and other people kept me going. You can’t say that, because there’s always hope and there’s always, you know, the more effort you make, the more chances you are going to recover. You. You will recover. You just have to work hard and believe.

Bill Gasiamis 1:05:04
And you might recover with an arm that doesn’t work. You might recover with a leg that doesn’t work, yeah, but that after that six month period that they keep talking about, I know why they bloody say that. But after that six month period is a, you know, they you know, they call it the plateau. People hit the plateau, yeah, but the reality is, that’s when things become nuanced.

Navigating Plateaus in Recovery of Brain Hemorrhage

Bill Gasiamis 1:05:26
You start to focus on little bits of the recovery that you didn’t get in the first six months, that might also include the emotional recovery, because that’s a part of the recovery that people gloss over and overlook.

Jason Hellowell 1:05:42
100% you know, you talk about plateau. I think I’ve hit multiple plateaus. You know, some days I’ll wake up and I will feel that my leg is less effective than it was two days before. Now, the way I deal with that is, as you said, every time there is a difference, it’s a difference. It may be a backwards movement, but that backwards movement may well be the body just going, hold on a second. We’ll just recheck this passage before we go there, and then two weeks later, like this morning, when I went for my walk, my walk was so much better than it was two days ago.

Jason Hellowell 1:06:22
But then I’m going to say two, three weeks ago, my walk was very good, and it kind of went down. And I feel that every time I hit those plateaus and I have these sort of down moments, the next step up is a bigger one. So all of these plateaus are bounding levels where you improve, you might go back, you improve, but every time you improve, it’s that little bit better than it was. Yeah, that’s my result and feeling of it. But the plateau is definitely an issue, and it’s also one of the spaces where you’ve got to be really mentally strong, because it will, it smacks you back.

Bill Gasiamis 1:06:58
Yeah, you kind of got to anticipate it a little bit it might come, if it does, don’t panic, just yeah, let it go, let it do its thing, and then reassess a couple of weeks after this supposed plateau, or whatever has passed.

Jason Hellowell 1:07:14
Exactly, and you, I think that’s one of the things that I would say to somebody now, and I’ve spoken to a lot of people who I’ve found online, stroke survivors. I’ve was a couple of people here, stroke survivors, you know myself and this guy, Galinda. He’s a fighter. I mean, he’s a fighter, unbelievable fighter. And you know, the happiness of of being alive is key. You have to be focused on I’m still here. It, you know, it’s easy for me to say, because I have my speech.

Jason Hellowell 1:07:50
And you know, if you look at me now, I like you. We work. We can’t tell that we’ve had strokes, you know, severe brain hemorrhage, and that’s difficult to say to somebody who maybe has aphasia and many other issues where they can’t communicate or whatever. That’s a bigger challenge, right? But you’ve gotta stay positive. You’ve gotta believe that you can.

Bill Gasiamis 1:08:12
Yeah, I agree with that.

Jason Hellowell 1:08:15
I think an Etanercept for people with aphasia is one of the bigger things that works is it is aphasia speech as from what I’ve seen.

Bill Gasiamis 1:08:28
I interviewed Lorenzo a few weeks ago, and we spoke about his AVM brain hemorrhage, like me, and as a result, his vision is impacted, and he used to be a tattoo artist, and, you know, he’s lost that ability. And for a stir, for a laugh, I sort of said “Why? Why don’t you see if somebody would be willing for you to do a tattoo from a blind person?”

Bill Gasiamis 1:08:58
It would have to be the first tattoo from a blind person, and in this day and age with the amount of body art that people have, yeah, surely that could be interesting.

Jason Hellowell 1:09:10
And what did he say?

Bill Gasiamis 1:09:11
Yeah, it was like his eyes lit up, like you could see that he kind of had a moment of, like, I don’t know if it’s a thing, but if somebody wants to be tattooed by me, yeah, I’ll, I’ll tattoo them, yeah. I mean, you can create, yeah, you can create a stencil and work within the stencil so you don’t go all over the arm or all over the leg or wherever, and, yeah, and look at that piece of art behind that piece of art. I’ve had a lot of artists who said they can’t be they can’t paint anymore because they can’t see properly, or their hand, or their hand trembles, or they can’t hold the brush properly.

Bill Gasiamis 1:09:47
Like, if we look at that piece of art behind you, who cares? You’re still an artist. You still have that capability of understanding how things go on a canvas, color and texture, all these things. I don’t even know what the words are, so, yeah, I kind of want to encourage people to take their identity and bring it and combine it with their stroke identity. So they’re not just one or the other. They are both of them, and they are weird and strange and different because they’re tattooing blind, or they’re painting blind, or whatever they’re doing like to me.

Bill Gasiamis 1:10:28
I don’t want people to say, I can’t be this anymore, because this happened to me. It’s not great. It should be one or the other. I think it should be every part of you combined into this thing that you’re going to move forward as and you need to develop that. I don’t let anyone tell you that you have to stop now, like sports people who are in the Paralympics, who win gold medals after they’ve had a massive car crash or, do you know?

Jason Hellowell 1:11:01
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think for me, you know, I say to myself, this is one of those challenges that been thrown at you to teach you a bunch of things to make you a better person. You know, my has my personality changed? I don’t think so, but maybe other people tell you I have, but I definitely am more conscious of things and the way of being than I potentially would be before. Yeah, the diet and the health and all of these things you’ve got to carry on to do.

Bill Gasiamis 1:11:36
Yeah, and not better, as in you were bad or terrible or worse, before, but more evolved, more wise, more knowledgeable, you know, like 100%

Jason Hellowell 1:11:49
you know, I would like to create a charity to help other people in the similar situation to me. You know, I want to, I would love for people who can’t afford the tools to recover. It would be great to have a foundation that could, even if it’s only 20 people in my vicinity, or that I can find out about that I can help them on the path to recovery. I would love to do that. And I have a few tricks that I would like to you know, if I could find somebody to invest a few million dollars into something I can make a way to do this. So it’s very possible to do that.

Bill Gasiamis 1:12:25
Yeah, and some philanthropy that would be amazing as well. That’s my hope for the podcast, is say that I get some sponsors and or I get some, you know, decent revenue from from YouTube or wherever. You know that would be my hope. That hasn’t happened yet. But you know, you never know I should do.

Jason Hellowell 1:12:45
I mean, you it’s a great podcast, and you know, I, I fell across it. There’s a lady in America who’s a stroke therapist, occupational therapist. I forget right now the name of the lady and I was on there. And when you look at it on YouTube, it, you know, and you search for these things, you came up as one thing. And then I read, watched a couple of your podcasts, and when you talked about it and recept, and I thought, I just drop you that note and say, I’ve tried everything, pretty much, or I’ve tried most of the things.

Jason Hellowell 1:13:20
Might be as a worthy conversation, you know. And I would love to partake in conversations with other people too, you know, where we build a conversation with people, to encourage people to be stronger emotionally. Because I think the emotional and mental fight is going to be the biggest one for everybody.

Bill Gasiamis 1:13:38
I tend to agree with you, yeah.

Jason Hellowell 1:13:40
And I think, if in conversation, you can help somebody giving them back up. And, you know, a conversation with somebody is a wonderful thing, isn’t?

The Podcast That Heals: Bill & Jason on Connection, Recovery, and Regret

Bill Gasiamis 1:13:50
Man, it’s the best, I mean, it’s literally been the key behind my own recovery without this podcast, I’m not sure where I would be in the mental health space, in the emotional space, because even though I can’t represent the broad spectrum of stroke, because, you know, I look the way I look, and my experience is my own. Yeah, the people that I’ve had, they’ve arranged every version of stroke, from aphasia and actually not being able to talk at all while we’re on the podcast.

Bill Gasiamis 1:14:23
Yeah, to people who can’t walk, to people who have had a stroke and don’t look feel talk about it in any way that it impacted them negatively, like there’s a one in 350 of them, but there is at least one person who had the medication immediately, and everything went away and went better, and they don’t have any deficits to deal with and overcome, which is like, amazing.

Jason Hellowell 1:14:51
The few of us, that’s a friend of mine’s mother, the other day. A friend of mine’s mother had that and was, you know, straight away and has no effects. And I’m so happy for them, and that’s amazing. I wish. You know, you kind of wish, don’t you? There is always that fight in your head when you look, in my case, you look back and go, Why didn’t I see that email? Why didn’t I do this? And you can beat yourself up for days on end. Changes it ain’t going to get you nothing. Not going to give me nothing, if you can’t do anything about it, pack it.

Bill Gasiamis 1:15:23
Yeah. What I love is that the I looked at the stats on the YouTube channel and the people listen to the podcast is about 60% men, 40% women. Now I didn’t expect that. I didn’t expect that men would be listening. Now they’re not the people who reach out the most. It’s a lot of women who reach out and do more of the conversation side, but the men are paying attention listening into the background. So congratulations to everybody who pays attention and listens. Congratulations to those blokes who are paying attention or listening to us.

Bill Gasiamis 1:15:57
Thank you for being on the podcast and reaching out. My pleasure, and Yeah, my pleasure. And I’m really excited by the amount of people who reach out and say I’d love to be on the podcast, and I don’t have to reach out to them and find them now, that is exactly why I created this community, to create a platform for people to come on board. And what it’s helped me to do is be a connector every, every so often.

Bill Gasiamis 1:16:20
I find out who something from somebody that I remember, that I can pass on to somebody else, and that that’s a life change. Very cool, decreases the time that we that it takes to gain new information. And yeah, it’s brilliant, I love it. Thank you so much for being in my podcast.

Jason Hellowell 1:16:39
Amazing, my pleasure. Thank you for having me on board. It’s, you know, it’s an interesting topic, isn’t it, and one that affects a lot of people. So we need to spread the word, spread the word, like I said, if, if only the medical practitioners spread the word about alternative things more openly. It could be different.

Bill Gasiamis 1:16:59
It could be let’s hope. Let’s hope that things change and continue to improve for stroke survivors, mate, thank you so much for joining me.

Jason Hellowell 1:17:09
My pleasure, all the best. Thank you very much.

Bill Gasiamis 1:17:12
That brings us to the end of this remarkable conversation with Jason, a man who faced a life altering brain hemorrhage, lost his mobility and speech, and then set out to reclaim what he could by trying nearly everything he could find, from hyperbaric oxygen to etanercept in Denmark, from frozen shoulder to holistic coaching sessions that moved him to tears. Jason reminds us that the recovery of brain hemorrhage isn’t just about medical treatment. It’s about the courage to keep showing up even when progress is slow and the emotional toll is high.

Bill Gasiamis 1:17:47
If this episode resonated with you, please let me know. Like comment and subscribe on YouTube or leave a review wherever you’re listening, and remember even just pressing play or listening through the ads helps this podcast stay alive. If you’d like to go deeper in supporting this community and help me keep sharing stories like Jason’s, please visit patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke.

Bill Gasiamis 1:18:13
Your contribution helps ensure that the next stroke survivor, maybe one Just days into the recovery, finds hope, connection and possibility right when they need it most. Thanks again for being here, wherever you are on your recovery journey, remember your stroke isn’t over, and your next breakthrough might be closer than you think. I’ll catch you in the next episode.

Intro 1:18:35
Importantly, we present many podcasts designed to give you an insight and understanding into the experiences of other individuals, opinions and treatment protocols discussed during any podcast are the individual’s own experience, and we do not necessarily share the same opinion, nor do we recommend any treatment protocol. Discussed all content on this website and any linked blog, podcast or video material controlled this website or content is created and produced for informational purposes only, and is largely based on the personal experience of Bill Gasiamis.

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Intro 1:19:29
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