Understanding Prosopagnosia After a Stroke: Causes, Symptoms, and Recovery Strategies
Prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, is a condition that can significantly impact a person’s ability to recognize faces. This condition can be particularly challenging for stroke survivors, as it adds an extra layer of difficulty to their recovery journey. In this article, we will explore the causes, symptoms, and recovery strategies for prosopagnosia following a stroke.
What is Prosopagnosia?
Prosopagnosia is a neurological condition characterized by the inability to recognize familiar faces, including one’s own face in the mirror. This condition can vary in severity; some individuals may have difficulty recognizing faces they have only seen a few times, while others might struggle to recognize close family members and friends.
Causes of Prosopagnosia After a Stroke
The primary cause of prosopagnosia after a stroke is damage to the brain areas responsible for facial recognition. Strokes can lead to brain damage in regions such as the fusiform gyrus, which plays a critical role in processing facial information. When these areas are damaged, the ability to recognize faces can be impaired. Other contributing factors include:
- Ischemic Strokes: These occur when a blood clot blocks a blood vessel in the brain, leading to tissue damage and loss of function in the affected area.
- Hemorrhagic Strokes: These involve bleeding in or around the brain, which can also cause damage to the facial recognition areas.
- Secondary Effects: Complications from strokes, such as swelling and pressure on brain tissue, can further exacerbate facial recognition difficulties.
Symptoms of Prosopagnosia
The symptoms of prosopagnosia can vary widely among individuals. Common signs include:
- Inability to Recognize Familiar Faces: This can range from difficulty recognizing acquaintances to not recognizing close family members.
- Difficulty Identifying Faces in Photographs: People with prosopagnosia may find it challenging to identify faces in pictures or videos.
- Reliance on Other Cues: Individuals may depend on non-facial cues, such as clothing, voice, or unique features, to identify people.
- Social Anxiety and Isolation: The inability to recognize faces can lead to social withdrawal and anxiety in social situations.
Diagnosis of Prosopagnosia
Diagnosing prosopagnosia typically involves a combination of neuropsychological tests and imaging studies. Key diagnostic steps include:
- Face Recognition Tests: These assess the individual’s ability to recognize and differentiate between faces.
- Neuroimaging: MRI or CT scans can help identify areas of brain damage that might contribute to prosopagnosia.
- Neuropsychological Evaluation: A comprehensive assessment by a neuropsychologist can determine the extent and nature of the facial recognition impairment.
Recovery Strategies for Prosopagnosia
While there is no cure for prosopagnosia, several strategies can help individuals cope with the condition:
- Facial Recognition Training: Rehabilitation programs focusing on improving facial recognition skills through repetitive practice and cognitive exercises.
- Using Alternative Cues: Encouraging the use of other identifying features, such as voice, hairstyle, or clothing, to recognize people.
- Social Support: Building a supportive network of friends and family who understand the condition and can assist in social interactions.
- Technology Aids: Utilizing technology, such as facial recognition apps and software, to aid in identifying and remembering faces.
- Psychological Counseling: Therapy can help address the emotional and social challenges associated with prosopagnosia.
Living with Prosopagnosia
Living with prosopagnosia requires adjustments and coping mechanisms. Here are some tips for managing daily life:
- Educate Others: Inform friends, family, and colleagues about the condition to foster understanding and patience.
- Develop a Routine: Establishing consistent routines can help reduce anxiety and improve social interactions.
- Use Memory Aids: Keeping a diary with photographs and names can assist in remembering and recognizing individuals.
- Join Support Groups: Connecting with others who have similar experiences can provide emotional support and practical advice.
Conclusion
Prosopagnosia after a stroke can present significant challenges, but with the right strategies and support, individuals can improve their facial recognition skills and enhance their quality of life. Understanding the condition, seeking professional help, and employing adaptive techniques are crucial steps toward managing and overcoming the difficulties associated with prosopagnosia.
Jim Moody’s Double Stroke Miracle and Prosopagnosia (Face Blindness): A Journey of Survival and Resilience
In this powerful episode, we sit down with Jim Moody, a stroke survivor who experienced an ischemic stroke and a hemorrhagic stroke following heart valve surgery at the age of 49.
00:00 Introduction
02:33 Stroke Caused By Heart Surgery
07:14 The Initial Deficits After The Coma
13:03 Dealing With Prosopagnosia
18:08 Mental and emotional health after a brain hemorrhage
23:04 Controlling controllable for stroke recovery
29:04 Managing Emotional Issues After A Stroke
41:23 Recovery From Vision Loss And Focusing On Gratitude
47:16 Dealing With The Relationship Breakdown After The Stroke
51:52 Challenges with navigation and time management
1:05:32 Stroke Recovery, Self-criticism, And Patience With Others
Transcript:
Introduction – Jim Moody
Bill Gasiamis 0:00
This episode of the recovery after stroke podcast is brought to you by headbed.com.au. Hey everyone, before we dive into today’s episode, I wanted to share something with you that’s really special. In Episode 305, I had the chance to sit down with Catherine Randabel, the inventor of HeadBed, a groundbreaking product that’s changing the game for hair salons and more importantly, for stroke survivors like us.
Bill Gasiamis 0:29
HeadBed is designed to provide exceptional support for your neck and head during hair washes, for stroke survivors, this means reducing strain, promoting better blood flow and decreasing the risk of damage to your arteries, easing your concerns about another stroke. It’s all about making sure you can still enjoy an amazing salon experience without compromising your health.
Bill Gasiamis 0:55
I’m incredibly excited to promote a product that aligns perfectly with my mission of stroke prevention and safety. In our interview, we discuss how HeadBed’s ergonomic design helps prevent neck hypertension, a common issue that can increase the risk of another stroke. With the BeadBed you can feel confident and comfortable during your salon visits, knowing that your health is being looked after.
Bill Gasiamis 1:22
If you’re a stroke survivor or know someone who is the BeadBed is a must-have for your next salon visit. Make sure to check out episode 305 of the podcast to hear my full interview with Catherine Randabel and learn all about the benefits and how this product can make a real difference in your life.
Bill Gasiamis 1:42
If you are in the United States, visit headbedusa.com to get yours today and enjoy peace of mind while indulging in a relaxing salon experience. I’d also like to take a moment to mention my book The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened 10 Tools For Recovery And Personal Transformation.
Bill Gasiamis 2:04
It’s a collection of inspiring stories from 10 stroke survivors showcasing their incredible journey from adversity to personal growth, covering everything from nutrition and exercise to handling their emotional challenges. This book is a beacon of hope for those on the road to recovery. For more information, you can check out recoveryafterstroke.com/book or simply search for my name Bill Gasiamis on Amazon.
Stroke Caused By Heart Surgery
Bill Gasiamis 2:33
Now, this is episode 307. And my guest today is Jim Moody, who at the age of 49 experienced heart valve surgery that resulted in an ischemic stroke and a hemorrhagic stroke, leading to the breakdown of his marriage.
Bill Gasiamis 2:52
This is a compelling episode, Jim shares his incredible journey of survival and resilience, detailing the life-threatening events that led to his strokes, the physical and emotional challenges he faced during recovery, and how he found hope and gratitude in the midst of adversity.
Bill Gasiamis 3:12
Join us as we delve into Jim’s story of determination and the lessons he learned along the way. Now it’s on with the show. Jim Moody, welcome to the podcast.
Jim Moody 3:23
Hey, thanks. It’s good to be here.
Bill Gasiamis 3:26
Lovely to have you here. Tell me a little bit about what happened to you.
Jim Moody 3:30
Yeah, so I was pretty healthy my whole life. I played competitive sports, most of my life. I was healthy weight, healthy everything. And then in 2013 I blacked out and had to take an ambulance ride to the hospital wasn’t sure what was going on. And little did I know, my whole life like I said, I was very healthy, very active.
Jim Moody 4:00
Little did I know I had a ticking time bomb on my chest. I was born with a congenital heart defect. So this is a little bit different story than probably most of your interviews. Most of yours are straight up strokes, or car accidents, or whatever, mine was the result of a heart surgery.
Jim Moody 4:18
So in 2013, I had to go have open heart surgery to replace a valve that I was born with an aortic bicuspid valve which means my valve was almost sealed shut, I was getting no blood flow to my brain and blacked out.
Jim Moody 4:35
So as a result of that surgery, I had a mechanical valve put in, everything was looking great. Well, I had an ischemic stroke. So during that surgery, sometimes some of the plaquing or whatever in the surgery will break loose and head north to the brain and that’s what happened.
Jim Moody 4:51
So I had an ischemic stroke that night as a result of the surgery and then it got worse. I had a massive brain bleed and the pressure was building up so much in my skull, my brain was crushing itself. They said, that I would never live, they told my family he’ll never make it out of here and he’ll never open his eyes again.
Jim Moody 5:13
So I spent eight days I went in under general anesthesia had heart surgery, never woke up until eight days later, when I was in a coma that whole time being kept alive on ventilators and life support systems feeding tubes. And then I woke up. Doctors never thought I’d live and I woke up on day eight. Let’s go.
Bill Gasiamis 5:37
You just needed to prove them wrong.
Jim Moody 5:41
I said I’m gonna live through this man, I’m a fighter. But then after that, I spent 32 days in the hospital, I was very sick. I mean, I wasn’t expected to live, probably maybe not even past that eight days. So I spent 32 days in the hospital. Before I could go home, it was a long time.
Jim Moody 6:00
So as a result of that my brain was crushing itself. And here’s a nice little souvenir that’s a craniotomy. So they took off half my skull, and they took it off and stored it under my skin in my abdomen for few weeks, a month and a half and then put it back on.
Bill Gasiamis 6:22
It’s amazing what they can do. Just amazing. I mean, everything you’ve said is amazing heart valve replacement. You know, ischemic stroke, hemorrhagic stroke. We know what caused the ischemic stroke, but what caused the hemorrhagic stroke? Why did you have a brain bleed?
Jim Moody 6:39
I’m not sure. I mean, anything, you know, during surgery like that, they’re having to adjust the pressures in your your arteries. Right. And so they can get off. And you know, who knows. But I had both. So I had the worst case scenario, I had the, you know, the ischemic stroke started it. And the chain reaction that led to the massive brain bleed, that’s, I think, what did the damage.
Bill Gasiamis 7:06
When you woke up, and they were able to assist you? What deficits did you have?
Jim Moody’s Initial Deficits After The Coma
Jim Moody 7:12
Yeah, so I was in really bad shape. I mean, when I first came out, I had a lot of physical issues. So I had I was I was losing sight, my right eye. And this is even after I went home, I mean, this is weeks, months down the road, I was losing sight in this eye, first of all, my stroke, my brain bleed, and all the problems were in this front right lobe.
Jim Moody 7:38
All right, everything else was I think, okay. So I was losing vision in this eye, I was losing functionality in my left arm, I had, you know, some major physical things going on. And I did have some other things like that I still deal with. So fortunately for me, I have been able to heal through most of the physical things.
Jim Moody 8:03
I mean, I healed through what I just talked about, I’ve got perfect vision in both eyes, full functionality. So my problem now is not any of the physical stuff. The problem is a lot of the memory stuff. I mean, so I had a lot of loss. I mean, for me, in my in my as a result of all of it.
Jim Moody 8:29
I mean, I suffered through a lot of loss, I lost my memory, my health, my marriage, my friends, my family, my job, I was forced to go on disability. So it was a lot of loss.
Bill Gasiamis 8:42
Your identity?
Jim Moody 8:45
Yeah, everything. I mean, I lost it all.
Bill Gasiamis 8:49
I spoke about that a little while ago, just before we begin the podcasts properly. You told me about the book, you bought a copy of my book, you’re halfway through it, you found a lot of similarities in the way that I went around about things the way that you went about things.
Bill Gasiamis 9:06
And a couple of days ago did the book launch and we spoke about, you know, my journey, the person I was before stroke, the way that stroke impacted us, and the way that I kind of responded after stroke.
Bill Gasiamis 9:22
And one of the things I mentioned was the loss or the losses, and man they just stuck up and quickly and then over it’s overwhelming and you get to that stage where you go well, I don’t know how much longer this was all these losses can go on for how many more can I take you know?
Bill Gasiamis 9:41
But what’s interesting is I feel like I got to rock bottom. I had found a place that was rock bottom when I recognized myself being there. It was like, oh, oh, okay. Well now, there’s out there can’t go further than this. Now there’s only The the way forward, how do you go forward from all the things that you experienced then all the losses?
Jim Moody 10:09
I mean, I gotta say that one of the things I talked about, one of the things I really do believe in is you can’t change the past, so you can’t focus on it. And I learned that really quickly that, you know, I’m not going to change what happened to me what was taken from me, I’m not going to change my healthy lifestyle, my career in medical sales, my income, the relationships I had with some friends, families, co-workers, whatever.
Jim Moody 10:39
I’m not going to change that. So why focus on it, you’ve got to make the best possible life you can moving forward. So I mean, one of the things that I was talking about, somebody’s talking to me about, you know, comments on stroke, whatever.
Jim Moody 10:53
This is a comment, a quote that I read a long time ago. And it’s true, and I think you’d agree with this one. If you don’t leave the past in the past, it’ll destroy your future. Instead, look at what is in front of you, not what yesterday took away, right? The best is yet to come.
Jim Moody 11:15
So you have to look at it like, you have to accept, okay. Okay, this is what I lost. And this is what I have left, and I’m going to play the best hand of cards I’ve got with what I’m given. That’s, that’s the way I look at it tonight, when people talk to me about what happened to me, I always try to communicate a positive message.
Jim Moody 11:40
So it’s a message of hope and faith, and optimism and happiness and to other stroke survivors, we’re survivors. An outlook don’t ever give up that you can’t heal through this, you know, I heal through stuff that doctors are still shaking, their heads are going how do you heal through that?
Jim Moody 12:03
You know, it could take a day, a month, a year, 10 years, but people heal through this stuff. And, you know, I still don’t suffer with the physical stuff. But I still have memory issues, facial recognition, navigation, I drive everywhere, everywhere with Google Maps. I’ve lost all navigation.
Jim Moody 12:29
You know, I can go somewhere, drive down to where I grew up. 20 minutes away, have no idea where I am. And without Google Maps, I couldn’t get back home. I mean, that’s I’ve lost all navigation.
Jim Moody 12:41
People understand that. You know, facial recognition is gone. no concept of time. That’s the funny thing. You know, I talk to my kids and like, Oh, I miss you. I haven’t seen you in weeks. And I, Dad, we saw you like, last weekend.
Jim Moody Dealing With Prosopagnosia
Intro 13:00
If you’ve had a stroke, and you’re in recovery, you’ll know what a scary and confusing time it can be, you’re likely to have a lot of questions going through your mind. Like, how long will it take to recover? Will I actually recover? What things should I avoid in case I make matters worse?
Intro 13:21
Doctors will explain things that obviously, you’ve never had a stroke before, you probably don’t know what questions to ask. If this is you, you may be missing out on doing things that could help speed up your recovery. If you’re finding yourself in that situation, stop worrying, and head to recoveryafterstroke.com where you can download a guide that will help you it’s called Seven Questions to ask your doctor about your stroke.
Intro 13:48
These seven questions are the ones Bill wished he’d asked when he was recovering from a stroke, they’ll not only help you better understand your condition, they’ll help you take a more active role in your recovery. Head to the website now, recoveryafterstroke.com and download the guide. It’s free.
Jim Moody 14:08
You gotta have a sense of humor about it.
Bill Gasiamis 14:09
What are you going to do? As long as they understand where you’re coming from and why you said what you said and it doesn’t really matter that you didn’t realize what’s interesting is, you know, facial recognition. So are you able to explain how it doesn’t work? Like what does that even mean? So you see my face now? And then what does that mean for my face? Later, or tomorrow?
Jim Moody 14:36
I’ve seen your face on a number of your podcasts and obviously in your book and all that kind of stuff. So it’s kind of in there now. But that was the mess. You know, that was the mess. When I went back to work I tried to go back to work. I was covering you know, hospital systems and accounts I had about 150 accounts.
Jim Moody 14:56
And I couldn’t get to accounts that were located two miles from house without Google Maps. That’s scary. And then the real thing with facial recognition when I knew it was a real issue was I had the stroke and had all the issues and stuff and tried to get back to work.
Jim Moody 15:13
And I would meet somebody, I would meet somebody on a Monday, oh, it’s nice to meet you. You know, here’s my business card. I’d go back to that account, maybe four or five days later and see him in the hallway and go, Oh, hey, I’ve been wanting to meet you.
Jim Moody 15:25
Let me give you my business card, introduce myself. What? I just met you like Monday. Facial recognition, it’s a real challenge for me. So I can meet somebody, and it just won’t lock it in. It’s hard to lock it in.
Bill Gasiamis 15:44
Okay. And then what about other types of recognition? Do you lack any other types of recognition? Is it tied in with memory, facial recognition? What is it tied in with? How is it that you have some parts of that, but not others?
Jim Moody 16:03
I don’t know. I really don’t know how to. I assume it’s, I assume it’s a short term memory thing, because that’s where I struggle. My struggle is really short term memory. And it’s like, from today, backwards a few days or a week or two really struggle. But my long term memory is pretty well intact. So the short term, I think it falls under that short term category. That’s where I struggle. Yeah, it’s still it’s still a major, major issue.
Bill Gasiamis 16:36
When your relationship ended, was that your marriage that ended?
Jim Moody 16:40
Yeah, that was that was my first marriage, we were married a long time, 27 years, and
Bill Gasiamis 16:48
that in the thick of your recovery, your illness, what phase of the
Jim Moody 16:54
trial, right after all that, and it put, you know, it puts this kind of challenge. It puts a lot of pressure not only on the person that’s going through it, but the spouse, the kids, the friends, family, everybody, and it was, you know, I was always the breadwinner, I was always the guy, you know, all that. And it just kind of fell apart. So that was really rough. was really rough. So I lost a lot. I had a lot of loss so it was 2013.
Jim Moody 17:32
So yeah, you had your troubles 2012 right? Just ahead of me. Yeah. So one year ahead of me, we’re both in the thick of all this mess at the same time. So yeah, you know, a lot of loss. And over the last 11 years, it’s been, you know, I really took a lot of time to see how I could make my life better. How I could cope with this and that and loss and ongoing things, right, like what I’m talking about.
Mental And Emotional Health After A Brain Hemorrhage
Jim Moody 18:01
And that’s where I was like, I found out some good stuff. And I think that healing your mental side is absolutely as important as hearing healing your physical side. Yeah, certainly, I’ve come up with things that have helped me deal with it. And I’m in a great place now. And now, I’ve been trying to pass that along with stroke support groups and videos and stuff like that, if I can help somebody like you are, I mean, it’s a great thing.
Bill Gasiamis 18:34
You mentioned that, just before we started the recording, and we spoke about how you’re presenting some of the things that are in my book, you’re presenting them your support groups, but unbeknownst to my book, you didn’t know that my book was out yet and that I similar philosophy, you still already doing that. So tell me about the couple of things that you think are important in recovery. I agree with the mental health one because I also tied that into emotional health. And I try and I think that is separate, right?
Bill Gasiamis 19:13
So when when I hear when I go to a psychologist, the Greek word psychology, okay, means sit here, which is soul and logic. Okay. psychologic and it means soul law logic. So, when you go and see a psychologist, what I feel like you’re dealing with is not the head based stuff. Perhaps there is an element of dealing with the way you think about things, etc. But what you’re really dealing with is the emotional part.
Bill Gasiamis 19:47
Because your psych you know, your soul, I feel like kind of resides around your chest, your heart, you know, in that area where the emotional space kind of sits. And I was at counseling and very early on, I’m talking about within weeks of my first bleed. And I was in counseling, talking about the emotional impact and the psychological impact, and the mental impact of what it did to me to have a brain hemorrhage and then not be able to work and have a lot of those losses that we spoke about. So how did you tackle that? What did you have to do to deal with your mental health and your emotional health?
Jim Moody 20:42
I mean, I think that I realized pretty quickly, and I see it at some of the stroke support meetings, that there’s people that are really still stuck in this anger phase, you know, there’s people that they go through this and right up front, they’ve got denial, they’ve got anger, depression, all this kind of stuff, you know, and I think that right up front, I realized it, like I said, it’s going to change it. And you have to accept what I call a new normal, this is your new normal, and you got to get okay with it. In your in when you do.
Jim Moody 21:27
And this is really where I’m gonna get place. I mean, you know, when you accept your new normal set of circumstances, the quicker you’ll be in, you’ll find peace, the quicker you’ll be comfortable in your life. And know, okay, that’s the cards I’ve got. And that’s what I’m dealt. And I’m going to make it the best life I can. I’ve got some great support systems, I’ve got some great things I can do. And it’s not all bad. I mean, if there’s any positive to it, I was in as in medical sales, she is running the sprint every day, right holding on for dear life.
Jim Moody 22:11
My life changed, right? It’s not all horrible. I mean, at this point in my life, okay. I’m not doing it anymore, my income went down, certainly. And my health is different. But I’m more peaceful. Now. In my life, I have more of a feeling of appreciation for just quiet time and peace and time with family. Stuff that I didn’t really value before I was just hanging on for dear life with trying to make the income, it was all about the money and the title and all that.
Jim Moody 22:43
And that’s not me. I have a whole new sense of living and giving back. That’s my focus, I focus on me, my physical health, my mental health and trying to give to others if there’s anything that somebody can take away from what I’ve learned over my 11 years, then great, I try to pass it on.
Jim Moody: Controlling The Controllable For Stroke Recovery
Bill Gasiamis 23:04
The passing on is really important, too. I find that strange still, but I’m also doing so I observed myself, and I still think it’s strange. That all made a stroke survivor who, who will contact me by email and say, Hey, I’ve had a stroke literally, a month ago, four weeks ago. You know, six months ago, whatever. And I want to share my story, I hope that it helps people.
Bill Gasiamis 23:31
And that’s crazy that I want to share my story, I hope that it helps people is one of the first things that comes into the mind of a lot of stroke survivors. And it did for me, and this is what the podcast is, it’s totally I want to help people. And that’s what it does all the time. And I think it’s a very critical part of stroke becoming the best thing that happened to me because we’ve already you know, we’ve touched on a couple of things already.
Bill Gasiamis 23:58
One of them was relationships and a healing of those and getting your family relationships and all that sorted. We spoke about already helping other people we already spoke about getting your emotional and mental health. There’s already four chapters of my book that we’ve spoken about. And that’s what the other people that I’ve interviewed to make my book possible, that’s what they did, I didn’t invent this, we all defaulted to these things.
Jim Moody 24:31
And just so you know, I just got your book Monday. So I’m only 40 pages into it. So I you know, I haven’t read it all. So I, you know, I just got it so all this stuff that I’m trying to work on and deal with that I have been for quite a while is what I’ve been doing. I have yet to probably read any of that in your book, but I saw the chapters I saw what the chapters are about. Just right in line with kind of my thinking on it.
Bill Gasiamis 25:03
Yeah that’s fine. I mean, it will be familiar to you. And it’s going to be familiar to a lot of stroke survivors, even if they haven’t embarked on the journey yet. Because they’re going to be things that they recognize, you know, when I wrote it, I thought, this book sounds like every other book I’ve read, that’s about personal development, or that’s about, you know, self help, and all that kind of stuff.
Bill Gasiamis 25:30
And I thought, man, it’s just the same old same. And it’s the reason, there’s a reason why it’s the same old same is because it’s the default, it’s where people go instinctively, and know what they need to attend to. And that might take ages to attend to all of those things. But they know to go there, and they do improve their nutrition, they do improve their sleep, they do improve their relationships, and they do help other people, and they do find their purpose.
Bill Gasiamis 25:58
Because, you know, purpose isn’t something that you start, it’s not the, it shouldn’t be the first chapter of the book, where I know, I’m going to work out what my purpose is. And that’s not how you work it out how you work it out, is by taking steps to improve your health, your well being your emotional state, your relationships, other people’s health, and well being mental well being emotional state.
Bill Gasiamis 26:24
And then all of a sudden, what they do is, you look back and you look at how far have I come. And even if the change has been, you know, incremental, and your change has been only five or 10%, further along, physically in some areas, and then it might be when you’re 30%, better in emotional state, it might be, you know, 30 or 40% better in your nutrition. And all those wins, make you feel like you’re in control of your of your recovery, they make you feel like you’re in control of your, of your future and what’s going to happen down the road.
Jim Moody 27:06
I mean, that’s exactly right. I mean, something I’ve said for years, is you go to the doctor and I tell my doctor, all I can do is control my controllables I can’t affect the genes. I was born with my defective heart valve from birth, whatever. But I can control my side, weight, nutrition, I’m huge into nutrition, that’s huge. sleep, exercise, no alcohol, no smoking, no drugs, all that stuff.
Jim Moody 27:39
You know, all you can do is do that. And that will certainly provide you with the best healthy physical self that you can you can do. I read something the other day, this is alarming as reading something on stroke. This this country, I don’t know about Australia, I can’t speak for that this country has obesity problem.
Jim Moody 28:04
And a lot of it goes back to sugar. And if you get diabetes, you have doubled your risk for a stroke, or a second or third or whatever stroke. So this country is just diabetes is just soaring. And people don’t realize that that’s a huge cause of it, you double your risk. Control your controllables.
Bill Gasiamis 28:28
Yeah, you double your risk of heart disease, you increase your risk of cancer. And, and it’s just easy. You know, you just stop consuming sugar, especially that refined stuff that you get in sodas. And it’s in processed food and all that type of stuff, you just get that out of your diet, and things start to improve by themselves immediately. You can lose weight just by cutting out sugar, you can improve your overall health, you can speed up the process of the healing of your brain during recovery from a stroke.
Jim Moody Managing Emotional Issues After A Stroke
Bill Gasiamis 29:04
It was one of the first things that I stopped doing. I stopped consuming sodas and then led to stopping to consume other things that had sugar in them. And that made a massive difference in reducing the fatigue and the fatigue in my head. And just and just making my body healthier and then providing a better vessel to heal my brain going forward.
Jim Moody 29:32
Yeah, it’s the modern day food supply that’s killing everybody. I mean, yeah, I’ve had a war on sugar for a while a very little sugar eat very clean, intermittent fasting keto diet, I lost 45 pounds and kept it off for about six or seven years. That’s the key to it. It’s not necessarily calories, it’s sugar and it’s preservatives and artificial sweeteners. So I eat very clean and that’s really key.
Bill Gasiamis 30:01
Yep. And it helps you sleep better, it helps you have a better mental state, a better emotional state, especially if you’re previously one of the people that has an emotional scenario and then has to have like some food to help quell the emotional discomfort. If you can stop having alcohol, and food, to quell your emotional discomfort, what’s going to come up is emotional issues that you haven’t dealt with.
Bill Gasiamis 30:33
And that makes it possible for you to be aware of where the emotional issues are, and then to tackle them, and then to go after them in counseling and to resolve them and to put them to bed and to leave them in the past and to move on. And I think that one of the biggest things for me in my recovery was getting rid of the emotional turmoil that I was in, because then it kind of takes the cloud away, that that heavy gray cloud over your head that exists when you have emotional issues that gets in the way of every other thing that you’re doing in your life. And it just makes space and energy to tackle something else.
Jim Moody 31:18
And it’s hard to, you know, we have this physical issue of stroke or brain bleed or major health challenge that comes up in our life. And, you know, we were living normal lives and then bang out of the sky. Right. So we have a physical issue. And then it causes emotional problems. I mean, we were good incomes, you know, providers breadwinners for the family, you know, or all that stuff, and then bang, and then we were challenged with what that resulted. So it will cause probably for everyone trying to deal with that. You know, that’s why I say the mental side is huge to get your head, right.
Bill Gasiamis 32:01
How old were the kids when all this happened to you?
Jim Moody 32:06
So this was what I say 11 years ago. So they were 20. And my kids are about 30, 32. So they’re about 20. Somewhere in there. And yeah, it was tough. I mean, they were basically told I would never live again. They weren’t expecting me to ever live. So you know, again, going back to the emotional thing, I think a lot of people that I see that I talked to and like support meetings or whatever, they’re still in that anger thing, and they’re still looking back at the past.
Jim Moody 32:46
And the problem of it is they define themselves as a stroke victim, still, I mean, they had come through it, they survived. And they might have I mean, there’s all kinds of range of problems, right? Some people have minimal problems, some people really have challenges. So I’m not trying to minimize that. But some people come through that, and they never get out of that they, you know, oh poor me and literally their whole life they define themselves. I’m a stroke victim, over and over. It doesn’t help you can’t you can’t define yourself as a stroke victim, when you know, you can’t, you’ve got to move on, you’ve got to move past it.
Bill Gasiamis 33:34
That’s why I like the word survivor. And that’s why it’s way better than victim. It’s empowering. And it makes you feel like you’ve accomplished something already. Rather than, you know, being beaten down by this thing that happened to you that you’d never asked for.
Jim Moody 33:52
Because I do see it and I think it’s sad. I mean, I do see people that will never get out of that they’re kind of stuck in that. And I do get it. I’m not trying to minimize it. I’ve been there. I’ve just been able to dig my way out of my way out of it to a good place. I mean, happiness is, is your choice, right? It’s everybody’s choice. You can wake up each day, and say the glass is half full or half empty. It’s your choice. And yeah, you may have some struggles and challenges. But you know, it’s how do you want to live the rest of your life? You know, you’ve got to make the best of what you got.
Bill Gasiamis 34:31
I saw this quote, about suffering, you know, and it’s like, it goes something like suffering is optional. I’m just typing it into Google Now, just to remember who said it.
Jim Moody 34:47
I think God for Google,
Bill Gasiamis 34:49
Oh, man. I think the Dalai Lama or somebody you know, is special like that. I don’t know who I’ll just type in who said that. Ah, okay. “Pain is inevitable suffering is optional”. This quote has been attributed to the Dalai Lama, Haruki Murakami, and Kathleen Casey. Now I know who the Dalai Lama is, and I know who the other two people are, but they must be the people that say the most often, or the ones that are the most memorable. But that’s really something I found early on, I don’t know how I stumbled across it was pain is inevitable.
Bill Gasiamis 35:44
Suffering is optional, because I feel like suffering is something that you do in your head. Whereas pain is something that’s happening to the physical body. And, and suffering is also something that you do to the emotion to your emotions, or, or you contribute at the emotional state. I think with the emotional state by not dealing with emotional turmoil and challenges, I think you make suffering worse in your head, I think it impacts the head bar more negatively when you have emotional turmoil.
Bill Gasiamis 36:18
And I think the key to the key to supporting mental health is to deal with the emotional stuff, you know, it’s hard, by the way, it’s not easy to go where it’s emotionally challenging and difficult, it’s really hard. But then there’s two types of hard, right, there’s the heart of, I’m never dealing with it, I’m never going to go there, it’s always going to follow me around my entire life, that’s bloody hard.
Bill Gasiamis 36:43
And then there’s the other heart, which is a good heart, which is I’m going to go there, I’m going to tackle it, we’re going to battle it out. And I’m going to persevere and I’m going to overcome it. And I’m going to have relief. And then I’m going to have you know, it’s like suffering with purpose, I’m going to go there, I’m going to get an outcome, and it’s going to be a positive outcome.
Bill Gasiamis 37:03
And that’s a good thing. Because you get a result for doing the hard work. And you need to do that with support. You can’t do that, necessarily on your own, you might go to a counselor, you might have a good friend, you might have a pastor, or a priest or somebody that you can go to and help you help you overcome that. But it’s really important. It’s one of the most important things.
Jim Moody 37:29
I mean, one of the things I you know, whether it’s whether it’s a physical challenge, as a result of what we went through, or emotional or whatever, I think I think it’s really important to go through and accept, like, what happened to you so that I was Googling some stuff. And I looked up, and there’s five stages of grief. And a lot of people are still stuck in that, you know, like I’m talking about, look, I’m not trying to minimize there’s some true challenge. But you’ve got to get to the final stage of grief, I just put this video out.
Jim Moody 38:10
So I don’t think you’ve seen it, it’s out on YouTube. Anybody wants to see it, I think it’s important. This can be applied to stroke or death in a family member, whatever it’s grief in general. But I think it’s true. So I went through this in this video, it’s about five minutes long, whatever it is. It’s the five stages of grief. And it’s really important to go through those first four to get to that last one because until you get to the last one, you’re not going to be a happy individual. You want to live your challenge to find you.
Jim Moody 38:40
So it’s denial oh my goodness, I can’t believe this happened to me. I’m totally healthy. Anger. A lot of people are stuck in anger. Right? Bargaining, oh my goodness, if I could just get better if I could just heal I’ll do this fill in the blank, whatever it is. Depression. So a lot of people again, they’ve they’ve kind of let this define who they are.
Jim Moody 39:07
They can’t move on. I mean, you might not be a you know, they whatever your income, but don’t don’t get stuck into depression because you’re not a big breadwinner anymore. Something. It’s a different life. It may be a better life, peaceful life, right? And the very last one, if you don’t get to this, you’re not going to you’re not going to be probably happy acceptance. The quicker you can get to acceptance, again, accepting your new normal. If you don’t get to that final acceptance and move on. It’s not good.
Bill Gasiamis 39:45
When you were in hospital, and was it 30 something days before you woke up?
Jim Moody 39:51
32 days in the hospital.
Bill Gasiamis 39:54
And then what was your rehabilitation? Like? What are the things that you had? toggle
Jim Moody 40:03
mainly, mainly it was I hated it was the worst, I was the worst patient in rehab, I hated it, I fought it, whatever. So mainly, it was losing the functionality of my left arm. You know, like I said, when I first woke up, and after that eight or nine days, and then a few a week or two later, whatever it was, you know, I really losing fucking button, my shirt, I couldn’t use much of this left arm and, you know, going and moving something from the left to the right.
Jim Moody 40:36
And, you know, this kind of thing of working with the therapist, to try to see what the mobility function of my arm was. And I mean, it didn’t get better within that hospital. I don’t think within that hospital stay, but then it it healed. I mean, that’s where, you know, amazing that most, most of my physical stuff healed. I mean, I’m pretty athletic today and enjoy. You know, I’m very thankful for that. I was thankful individual on this earth for what I have, at this point, not what I lost. I have, you know, good physical life. You know, I’m still suffering with some of the other stuff, you know, that we talked about. It’s really not everything came back.
Recovery From Vision Loss And Focusing On Gratitude
Bill Gasiamis 41:23
Yeah. How does the vision of affect you now.
Jim Moody 41:28
My vision is, that’s the thing I was going blind in this right eye because the brain bleed or whatever blew out the affected the optic nerve in the back of this eye I was losing vision in it. I’m like, I don’t have contacts or glasses on now. I mean, my vision is almost 20-20. I wear contacts or glasses for distance way, way out. Other than that. Vision is pretty normal. Yeah, I’m very thankful. I’m still shaking my head, how I healed through some stuff, I should never have healed through.
Bill Gasiamis 42:05
Yeah, it is cool. It’s just really cool to hear it. I mean, you had like the triple like it’s a it’s a heart issue. And ischemic stroke and a hemorrhagic stroke. It’s just, I know why the doctors were so concerned early on, you know.
Jim Moody 42:25
My neurologists that would come in and visit with me and my family’s in the in there. And he would look over at me, and he said, what a shame he’ll never leave here live out of this hospital. And when I followed up with him, after all this, he said, I’ve been a neurologist for 25 years and I’ve never, ever seen anybody in your condition, with the pressures in your skull and what it was doing to your brain live, and come back. So again, don’t ever give up hope. Don’t ever give up hope and health though some of this stuff.
Bill Gasiamis 43:04
I agree, I agree. And the recovery keeps happening decades later. And if you heal your emotional state, that’s a massive part of healing. And that makes you feel so much lighter and better and easier. And then that makes way for other healing. And it just keeps going. Like if you’re, I remember the old me, I used to focus on problems. Look at all my problems. Here’s another problem, there’s a problem.
Bill Gasiamis 43:31
And the more I focused on problems, the more problems I had, right. And then I started focusing on solutions. And then the more I focused on solutions, the more solutions I found, the more problems I solved. And I was able to get everything to bed, so to speak, and to rest and move on and just keep going forward. So that was really, that was really a big shift in the type of person I was before stroke.
Bill Gasiamis 43:58
And after stroke, I noticed a significant and I think I couldn’t I mean, because I really had problems after stroke didn’t I like I had a ton of things that I had to overcome. Imagine just focusing on the negative side of it, and how easily they could just get you down and mess with you and get in the way of every recovery and not having gratitude that I was able to take advantage of the medical system, the technology, the rehabilitation, and all that stuff. Like imagine being the guy who has all that available to him and then focuses on the problems instead of the gifts. But it’s just crazy.
Jim Moody 44:44
I mean, I tell people, everybody that I talked to everybody friends, family, people, I mean, don’t waste a day when you’ve I was dead. I was literally being kept alive for eight days on life support and came back and I get to spend my kids live. both my son and daughter they live 10 minutes away. I get to spend time with them. I have a great life. It’s not perfect, right? But it’s a great life.
Jim Moody 45:10
There’s nobody on earth more grateful and thankful and happy to be back. When you’ve had what I went through, essentially died, lost everything as a result and then came back. cherish every day, man, don’t waste a minute. You know, one of the one of the things I say, again, is if you’re lucky enough to get a second chance in life, don’t waste a minute of it, man. Don’t waste a second cherishing Starcross and some crap off your bucket list. Yeah. You’re selling this on my bucket list. Yeah, I’m gonna come dive the Great Barrier Reef. You have to do that bucket list for a long time.
Bill Gasiamis 45:59
I haven’t done it. But you have to come. I’ve been up to that part of our amazing country. I’ve been near there. But diving is not my thing. And I’ll take your word for it that the Barrier Reef is beautiful when you when you do it.
Jim Moody 46:13
That’s one of the things that I hate about what happened to me if there’s one thing, I was a huge scuba diver. And because of my mechanical heart valve sitting in there, I’m on blood thinner for the rest of my life. And I can’t dive to any kind of a depth. So if that’s the worst of it for me, all right, whatever.
Bill Gasiamis 46:32
You can snorkel it.
Jim Moody 46:34
Oh, yeah, I can snorkel all day long.
Bill Gasiamis 46:39
And even if you don’t dive and you snorkel it, and you’re just in that part of the world, that’s a win, man.
Jim Moody 46:45
I’m gonna get over there one of these days.
Bill Gasiamis 46:47
That’s a win. Get over there. Get over because you’re the American dollar is quite good against the Australian dollar. You guys come down here it’d be cheap.
Jim Moody 47:00
Yeah. It’s dirt cheap.
Jim Moody 47:05
You don’t know how many days you got left? I’ve been dead once.
Bill Gasiamis 47:10
I agree, you don’t know when it’s gonna happen.
Bill Gasiamis 47:11
You don’t know when the next one’s coming.
Dealing With The Relationship Breakdown After The Stroke
Bill Gasiamis 47:16
How far into your release from hospital did the relationship breakdown? Was it in the very early days? Or was it a few years after you got home? When did that happen?
Jim Moody 47:30
That was like, so that happened in 2013. And then everything fell apart for me in 2015. Yeah, I lost everything.
Bill Gasiamis 47:43
It’s common. I hear a lot about it. I spoke to the literally the previous person who I interviewed, the interview hasn’t gone live yet. This guy he was this guy’s like a cat. Like he’s got nine lives, he’s had already he’s had two it hasn’t gone live yet. But anyone listening to this, by the time you’ve heard this, it will have gone live. So it was the interview before this. The gentleman’s name was Ritesh.
Bill Gasiamis 48:22
So he’s had two kidney transplants, he’s had type one diabetes his whole life, he’s had a brain hemorrhage. And the second kidney transplant and brain hemorrhage all happened around the same time. And for him, the brain hemorrhage happened as a result of getting hit in the head. Because of the I don’t know what they call it. He was sailing.
Jim Moody 48:53
The mass, the boom in the sailboat? Yeah, him across.
Bill Gasiamis 48:57
And whacked him in the head. So in that time, he lost his relationship. He had a hemorrhagic stroke, and he had to have a second kidney transplant. And it was all before the age of 38.
Jim Moody 49:14
Now it’s really funny, almost started laughing. So when you say like a cat Nine Lives, there’s a guy at the gym that I go to, and he knows my story all too well. And I was supposed to have died at birth. I weighed three and a half pounds at birth in 1964. So that’s about a 0% chance of living, right? And then 11 years ago, I had about a zero chance of living again. So when I walk into the gym and see that guy, he goes, Hey, it’s nine lives. That’s what they told me at the gym. As I said, all right. I’ve burned up two of them. I got seven left.
Bill Gasiamis 49:55
Man that’s a lot of lives left.
Jim Moody 49:58
I got seven left. I’ll try to get through them slowly.
Bill Gasiamis 50:03
Yeah, go easy.
Jim Moody 50:07
No diving on 180 feet anymore on on scuba.
Bill Gasiamis 50:16
And thin blood doesn’t make for a good type of condition to dive what does it do? How does diving affect the blood?
Jim Moody 50:28
Well, I can dive probably 30, 40, 50, feet doesn’t do anything but dive into depth going down 100, 150 feet, the pressures at that depth, because my blood has to be thinner than normal blood just to make sure flows through the heart valve perfectly. You know, I monitor it’s simple, I keep it in normal range all the time. But if I don’t have to depth like big depth, it can push it across into the brain because it’s thinner. Just just that’s really for anybody if they have any kind of a blood issue or whatever. Shouldn’t be diving 150, 160 feet, whatever. It’s a deep dive.
Bill Gasiamis 51:10
What’s down there at 150 feet? What’s the point of going down there? I don’t understand it. So tell me.
Jim Moody 51:17
There’s some awesome stuff down there. I’ve been diving all over the Caribbean, Grand Cayman, Cozumel. And I mean all over the place. There’s amazing shipwrecks go over the edge of the wall in Grand Cayman. And I mean, you just can keep going and go on forever and ever and see every type of giant fish and sharks and colors of the rainbow of the corals. I’ve been doing it for a long time. And I haven’t done it in a long time.
Bill Gasiamis 51:48
At 150 feet can you see anything?
Prosopagnosia, Challenges With Navigation, And Time Management
Jim Moody 51:52
I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you the water. I’ve got a picture I took I took a picture at 165 feet, which is deep right in Grand Cayman just over the edge of the wall all the way down. Some corals and some fish, I took a picture down there, and you think you’re in two feet of water in a swimming pool. The water is so clear the sunlight penetrates hundreds of feet. Whereas some of the ocean, it’s churned up. It’s you know, it’s murky. You can’t see two feet in front of you. It depends on the dive site. I mean, there’s some of the clearest waters in the world in the Caribbean, you can see forever. It seems like.
Bill Gasiamis 52:37
Do you feel the actual pressure on your bones on your body? Do you feel the squeeze? How does that work?
Jim Moody 52:45
You do a little if you get down. I used to go down I think the deepest dive I’ve been to is like 175 you get down around 140 150 somewhere down there. You feel it in taken breasts off your regulator. So it’s harder a little harder to you know, to breathe, you don’t really feel you feel a little bit. But the water column think of the water column 178 feet deep pressing in your body is not your it’s pressing in from all angles.
Jim Moody 53:21
So you don’t really feel it. I mean it at 100 feet or something, it’s five or six times the atmospheric pressure at at sea level. So, you know, up here, it’s like 14 pounds per square inch. Like where you’re sitting. The pressure on your body is like, I think it’s 14 pounds per square inch of, of pressure. You don’t feel it right. But you go down to 100. And I’m guessing you get down to like 140 feet. You’re at five times that so now you’re at what 100 I don’t know what it is. I’m 70 6080 pounds of pressure per square inch. Yeah. you know, it’s a significant increase every 33 feet you go, you add another 14 pounds, so you can do the math on that.
Bill Gasiamis 54:18
So what is the hardest thing about stroke for you?
Jim Moody 54:29
I just at this point, I let it roll off my back. I have a sense of humor. There’s not much that really bothers me too much. It is frustrating. Short term memory. You know, Hey, honey, you didn’t take the trash out. Memory loss. You know, you know something that I talked about earlier in the day or the day before? You know that’s kind of frustrating and navigation, I mean, I’ve gotten lost within, you know, a couple of miles or you know, two or three miles from my house.
Jim Moody 55:08
It’s amazing to me. Somewhere where I grew up and have lived nearby for 20 years, I have no idea how to get around. I mean, people don’t understand that all my navigation is gone. I mean, I can get around mainly through the interstates, and I know most of the exits and stuff here. But it’s amazing that it really stripped away navigation. So I have to drive by either Google Maps, or reference points like, Oh, that’s right. I know it’s near that whatever, restaurant.
Bill Gasiamis 55:43
But then do you know how to get to that whatever restaurant? But that’s the thing about it, right? You know, where it’s nearby? Which part of it? Have you lost what part of the navigation?
Jim Moody 55:54
Especially the side roads, like any of the, once I leave the interstate, and I get off, like going to a neighborhood or getting off into the smaller streets, if I don’t have a reference point, or whatever. And you know, somebody that’s with me might go, you don’t know how to get to this. This is your doctor down, you know, 25 miles where I’ve had the same neurology practice or whatever.
Jim Moody 56:23
Since this happened 11 years ago, I’ve been there 100 times. And they’re going, you don’t know how to get to that. And then once I’m getting there, you are having to put that in Google Maps to get home. So that’s kind of frustrating. And that’s embarrassing to, you know, think that, you know, somebody’s asking you. We just came from home to here. And you haven’t put in Google my spec to get home and like, hey, memory loss.
Jim Moody 56:57
Amazing. So that’s what I say. I mean, people that haven’t gone through what we have, they wouldn’t understand they don’t. And that’s what’s good about your book in your podcast is we can relate, I mean, people some of the deficits, you know, that I would have, or whatever with navigation or confusion or whatever, they would go, what I’m going, Yeah, you got taken down you’re not taken out.
Bill Gasiamis 57:21
What about north, south east or west? Do you have that?
Jim Moody 57:25
Yeah I’ve got basic navigation, but.
Bill Gasiamis 57:29
But intricacies of streets and how to navigate, which turn to take and all that type of thing. That’s the part that’s not there.
Jim Moody 57:37
And I’m good with like I said, I know where to turn, oh, I’ve got to turn it the baseball field or whatever. So I kind of have these certain reference points. And I know okay, there’s my turn. And time is another thing, time is really bad. I don’t have a good reference of time.
Bill Gasiamis 57:55
Before we go to time, what about finding your car in a car park at the mall.
Jim Moody 58:02
I was going to mention that. Disaster so when I was a medical rep, I’m parked in the parking decks in the parking lots and stuff, right? I come out, and I’m going to, there’s a six or seven storey parking deck. I have no idea where I parked. I’m walking in the parking deck for 30 minutes trying to figure out where my car is right? And at the mall, or whatever. So okay, I got really smart with that.
Jim Moody 58:30
So with my cell phone, when I go somewhere, I either put in my phone notes, like my car is directly across from the whatever, I take a picture of the number of the spot, or I take a picture of my car with what’s in back of it, oh, there’s a whatever store. So I know where my car is, or I’ll put a note in my phone, level five, facing the hospital, whatever, right? I use, that’s another thing I was gonna say I rely on my cell phone.
Jim Moody 59:03
And that is the one tool that has has enabled me to have a pretty normal life. I use my phone for everything from Google Maps, calendar with recurring alarms and alerts for everything, notes on everything. screenshots on tons of stuff to reference later. I mean, I’m huge on that huge on the cell phone.
Bill Gasiamis 59:33
I remember one time going to the we call them shopping centers. We went to the shopping center. And it’s only a three level car park. And I parked the car. And this was just after I’d started driving again and was kind of at home preparing some ingredients for dinner. Nothing to do for the rest of the day. Any of that stuff didn’t have anything to do before that. So I went to the I went to the local shopping center to pick up some stuff, parked the car. And then I had zero recollection of where the car was.
Bill Gasiamis 1:00:13
And when I say zero, like it just wasn’t, there was nothing there to see if I had never taken the car and left it there. And I remember walking out and going. And this particular Shopping Center has got about four car parks on either side of the building. And I knew which one I was in, at least which which one to go to, but I couldn’t tell you at all where the car was. So I remember walking around the whole thing to find the car. And in the middle of it, my brother Frank says, Hey, where are you ready to join us? I’m just walking around the car park at the shopping center. So I don’t know because of parked my car. But I’ve got no idea where.
Jim Moody 1:01:00
After you’ve done that a couple of times like I have you when you park it, I can park in a sea of a million cars now and go right back to it. Because I’ll make sure I’ll have notes or pictures or something on my phone. That’ll get me back to it. Because that’s a scary thing. All right. I got a very quick, quick story. You ready? This is really frightening. It’s one of the scariest times of my life.
Jim Moody 1:01:23
So right after my stroke, it was even worse. My confusion, my navigation, right after it. Like within a year, probably when I got out of the hospital soon, right. So I went to go meet somebody. And in my confusion, my navigation issues are really worse at night. Because it’s dark. I don’t have any reference points, right? That really makes it worse. I can find my way around during the day because I’ve got reference points. At night I’m out, I don’t know, anything.
Jim Moody 1:01:55
This is a really bad this is just one of the scariest points of my life talking about this. I went downtown Atlanta, real downtown, right. I went downtown. And I was meeting somebody down there in the heart of Atlanta. And I parked my car in a parking deck. Probably five, six storeys, right. It’s raining, it’s dark. I go in have dinner. And I really came out really late for me. It’s raining, it’s dark, I come out of the restaurant.
Jim Moody 1:02:25
And I wasn’t paying attention where I parked it. I just take off from the restaurant walking, walking, walking, it’s raining. It’s probably 10 o’clock at night. And I walked several blocks into a really, really bad part of Atlanta. And I’m dressed up nice, and I’m thinking I’m gonna get killed. Right? I look like a lost puppy. Listen to this, I walked and I said oh, well, I’m walking in every wrong direction. I see. Oh, there’s some lights down there. I walk up there maybe that’s it? Because every parking deck looks the same. There’s a million of them. Right?
Jim Moody 1:03:02
And I’m really lost at this point. I walked up with these lights. And these two guys come out at me with rifles, automatic weapons. What are you doing? You stop right there. We take you down right now. I walked up on the Federal Reserve building in downtown Atlanta, one of the most guarded buildings. I walked up on the guard tower. They said I don’t know who you are, what you’re doing.
Jim Moody 1:03:29
But if you don’t take a step back right now. It’s gonna get ugly. And they’ve literally got the rifles out. There’s two guards in front of me. I said, I am lost. I had no idea where I am. I parked in a parking deck. I’m literally walking around lost. I have no idea. When you have the fear for 40 minutes thinking you’re gonna get killed. And then you walk up to the Federal Reserve building one of the most guarded buildings in Atlanta.
Jim Moody 1:03:34
And then it’s a good guy is gonna take you out.
Jim Moody 1:03:53
So they called the police and they helped me I mean, they called them to help me find the car and it was like, three blocks. three blocks away. That’s really confusion when it comes to there’s a million parking decks. It’s raining, it’s dark, right.
Bill Gasiamis 1:04:22
You’re disoriented and people look at you and they think well this guy looks normal. You can’t see anything wrong with him.
Jim Moody 1:04:30
There’s my scary story. So since that point, you bet you bet. I’ll know where I parked.
Bill Gasiamis 1:04:42
What’s a few things that stroke has taught you?
Jim Moody 1:04:44
I think it’s just taught me to cherish some of the smaller things in life. I mean, I cherish time. I cherish Simple things, walking on the beach time with friends and family vacation. I don’t I’m not a materialistic guy. I am the least materialistic guy there is it doesn’t bring me happiness, it’s time and experiences, you know, mean when you’ve lost everything and not expected to live when you come back, you just want to, you just want to do stuff. You know, it’s taught me to cherish every day. And that’s the most important thing.
Stroke Recovery, Self-criticism, And Patience With Others
Bill Gasiamis 1:05:32
Perfect. What would you say to somebody who’s listening? Who’s a stroke survivor? Who is coming across this, they might be going through the tough part of it? What do you say to somebody who’s listening and needs some support advice?
Jim Moody 1:05:53
I would say. And I’m thinking about putting a video out on this, because I think this is important. Because I’m even like this sometimes don’t be so critical of yourself, right? You had this happen to you, you’re doing the best you can with the resources and support that you can don’t be so critical. You’re not perfect yet, right? You’re not? You’re not where you’d want to be.
Jim Moody 1:06:23
But you’re a work in progress, right? Don’t be so critical of yourself. And then I would say don’t be so critical. of other people, like we kind of talked about already. Your stressful situation is stressful to you. But it also has put stress on the marriage, the kids, the family, the co-workers all of it. So you can’t always think and sometimes it’s easy for us to think, oh, they think I’m stupid.
Jim Moody 1:06:52
Oh, they whatever, right, and you get short with them. Right? So I would say Have patience with yourself and have patience with others. That, you know, they don’t get, you know, understand they’re, they’re going through this right there with you. It doesn’t, it doesn’t help you or them to get annoyed and frustrated with them when they don’t understand. They haven’t been through it. They don’t understand.
Bill Gasiamis 1:07:18
We don’t want them to go through it. Because it’s the only way they’re going to understand. Jim, Where would people go and find your YouTube channel? What’s it called? What should they expect to find the I know, it’s just something that you’ve just started. So it’d be good if people come across and supported you. Tell me a little bit about that.
Jim Moody 1:07:40
So I mean, a lot of the stuff that we kind of talked today about, I’ve got four videos out there. So I put three out. And I just put a fourth one out there. And you just if you just go to YouTube, and you just search and just put in Jim Moody Stroke, all four will come up. And like I said, I’m about to put another two or three out there in the next month. And I think they’re helpful.
Jim Moody 1:08:06
I mean, I think this is kind of some of the things that I talked about. Doing a stroke presentation, I’m doing one next week at a large hospital in Atlanta, and I’m doing one in a month at another large hospital. So I’m trying to, and those are the things that are in the videos. So I kind of took about a three minute presentation that I would get up and do in front of the group. And I chopped up four parts of it. So that’s what the four videos are. So I think they’re helpful. I mean, did you get a chance to see them?
Bill Gasiamis 1:08:39
I have I’ve seen them, they are helpful. They’re always helpful. The reason they’re helpful is because they’re another perspective on things regarding the stuff we’re all going through. And that’s what’s really good to hear everyone’s perspective. And that’s why, ultimately, with the book, I was very comfortable after I wrote the book, because I realized that yeah, it all seems similar people default to all the same things. You’re doing similar things, but it’s my perspective.
Bill Gasiamis 1:09:10
And that’s what your videos are, the more content that we have out there for stroke survivors, the better because when you and I were going through this at the very beginning, there wasn’t a lot of stuff on stroke out there. And it was hard to come by. And there wasn’t a lot of different perspectives, different thoughts, different views. And that’s really why I wrote the book, it was the book that I needed when I was going through stroke, right. And that’s the videos, all my videos, all the things that I needed. So it is helpful.
Jim Moody 1:09:43
And it’s kind of frustrating to me because I film the four videos and I don’t know where to put them actually, I don’t know where to even send them to be helpful. So I filmed the four videos and they’ve had like very few views on them. And I’m like, I just don’t know where to send them to put them out. So I think that the Brain Injury Association of Georgia just kind of shared them shared the links to them. So maybe some people will see them. I just don’t know where to go to put them out to let them get seen. So if you had, if you want to share them?
Bill Gasiamis 1:10:18
Yeah, well, people will go and find them now. But that’s the best place to share them.
Jim Moody 1:10:21
But they don’t know to go to find them, they don’t even know that there’s any out there.
Bill Gasiamis 1:10:26
YouTube is full of them now. So it’s okay. But the reason why yours haven’t had a lot of use is because when, when, and this is something that I try and do is encourage stroke survivors to do any version of this, that they can, whether it’s on a podcast or whatever, at the beginning, you get very little traction, because the algorithm, and YouTube doesn’t really know what to do with your videos and who to put them out to.
Bill Gasiamis 1:10:52
And they have to capture a certain amount of attention before they kind of go off. And I’ve got to say that my YouTube channel has been around since 2017. And only now is it really started to take off, like, only now is it just got above 2000 subscribers, like that is a long time to have a YouTube channel without any subscribers. And YouTube just seems to have now figured out what to do with all my videos.
Jim Moody 1:11:21
I’ve seen a lot of your videos I you know, watched a bunch of them before I’ve prepared for this.
Bill Gasiamis 1:11:27
But we’re not getting any traction at all Jim.
Jim Moody 1:11:30
I mean, unless somebody is going out there searching like, I don’t know, going out on YouTube and hitting in the search, they wouldn’t even know that any of my stuff’s out there. But if I could put it out under stroke, support groups, podcasts, whatever, YouTube, you know, if I could put it out there to where people within that population, you can know that there’s a resource out there. I mean, right now, and you just throw it out on YouTube, and nobody’s searching for that. I don’t think on YouTube, I don’t know.
Bill Gasiamis 1:11:31
They are 100% they are. But what’s good about YouTube is that it’s, it is a place to catalog it and store it there. So you can easily send people, they’re somebody who you come across in your presentation, you can easily say, like you just said to my audience, you know, go to just search Jim Moody stroke, and they’ll come up, and that’s the perfect place to have them because it’s central and everyone can go there. So you’re doing it the right way. Just keep doing it.
Bill Gasiamis 1:12:27
And I think you know what, realistically, what you? I think why you’re doing it is it’s less about? It seems like it’s there’s this two pronged approach is this about the fact that they’re not getting views, although it’s clearly a beneficial thing, but other people if they get views, but it’s more of a, getting it out there creating the content and making it available, and cataloging it in this place. So that it’s accessible to anyone for free, who might want to watch it. And you’re just starting out. So don’t, don’t let it kind of don’t look at the numbers. Just keep doing what you’re doing. And then and then it’ll grow.
Jim Moody 1:13:09
I’ve gotten to a point where I just like, there’s nobody watching them. So why bother to film anymore? It’s like, nobody sees them.
Bill Gasiamis 1:13:16
I didn’t, if I had that approach, if I had that attitude, then this podcast would never have happened. The curves starts with being flat for a long, long, long time. And then eventually it starts to go up. But it’s flat for a long time. And then, and then it changes. And for me, I’m at 300 episodes. And like I said, it’s only just started to, you know, to go go north. But before that, it was a struggle.
Bill Gasiamis 1:13:50
But nonetheless, the few people that were finding it, were starting to share it, the few people that were finding it, were appreciating it, were reaching out and saying thank you leaving comments telling me how impactful it was. And you and I, back then we didn’t have any of that. So now that amount of stuff has proliferated. And that’s really good. And we need more, so you gotta keep doing it. Because you’ll get better at it. And then look at the views get about the views.
Jim Moody 1:14:26
Well, I don’t really care. I don’t care that’s one view or million if it’s helpful, great. If it’s not, I’m not going to continue doing it. So kind of my view on it. I’m doing it to waste my time, if it’s helpful, great. You know, whatever. If it’s not, it’s not.
Bill Gasiamis 1:14:43
It is helpful, but that’s the thing. It’s like you’re judging whether it’s helpful based on how many times YouTube has put that in front of other people. And that’s not the judge of being helpful. It’s helpful to stroke survivors of all shapes and sizes from everywhere around the planet.
Bill Gasiamis 1:15:01
The thing about it is Google are the ones who and YouTube are the ones who determine whether or not your videos go to the audiences. And then that’s where we kind of get a little bit disheartened, because we think that nobody wants to see it. But it’s actually Google is not sending it out. And, then that changes later, somehow. I don’t know exactly how but it does.
Jim Moody 1:15:29
I don’t know how the Google thing works with that relationship. But I just know, I mean, the only, like I said, the only people that have really viewed it was some of the Brain Injury Association of Georgia, they put it out there. So that’s, that’s the only place that you know, to get started.
Bill Gasiamis 1:15:46
That’s a great start. I really appreciate you reaching out, getting a copy of the book, sharing your story, doing the stuff that you’re doing. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Jim Moody 1:15:57
It’s great. It’s good to be here. And I think you and I share the same desire to just try to give back and that’s what I’m trying to do is just try to give back. I’ve got so much now in my life, and there’s a feeling of gratefulness and I can help one person out there. Great, you know.
Jim Moody 1:16:14
Thanks, Jim.
Bill Gasiamis 1:16:15
Well, thanks again for joining us on today’s episode. I hope you guys enjoyed Jim’s story. If you’re interested in my book about recovery, you can grab a copy on Amazon, or by visiting recoveryafterstroke.com/book. To learn more about my guests, including links to their social media, and to download a full transcript of the entire interview, head to recoveryafterstroke.com/episodes.
Bill Gasiamis 1:16:40
A huge thank you to everyone who has left the review, it means the world to me, reviews are crucial for podcasts to thrive, and your feedback helps others to find this valuable content, making their stroke recovery journey a little easier. If you haven’t left a review, please do so. Consider leaving a five star review, and a few words about what the show means to you on iTunes and Spotify.
Bill Gasiamis 1:17:06
If you’re watching on YouTube, leave a comment below the video, like the episode and subscribe to the show on your preferred platform to get notifications of future episodes. Now, if you’re a stroke survivor with a story to share, come and join me on the show The interviews are not scripted, you do not need to plan for them. Just be yourself and share your experience to help others in similar situations.
Bill Gasiamis 1:17:30
If you have a commercial product that supports stroke survivors in their recovery, you can join me on a sponsored episode of the show. Just visit recoveryafterstroke.com/contact fill out the form with your category. And I’ll get back to you with details on how we can connect via zoom. Thanks so much for being here and listening. I truly appreciate you see you on the next episode.
Intro 1:17:56
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Intro 1:18:26
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Intro 1:18:51
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Intro 1:19:15
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