Introduction: A Life Forever Changed by Stroke
Twelve years ago, everything changed. I was a small business owner, working long hours to keep things moving, trying to raise two teenage boys with my wife Christine, and managing all the stress that came with it. Like many people juggling life and business, I thought I had to do it all myself. I didn’t sleep enough. I smoked. I drank a little. I didn’t eat well. And I definitely didn’t ask for help.
The First Signs: Ignoring the Warning Signals
One Friday morning in February 2012, I woke up with a numb sensation in my big left toe. It didn’t seem like a big deal, so I ignored it. Over the next few days, the numbness spread—first to my foot, then my leg, then my hip. Still, I pushed through. I had work to do, clients to manage, a team to lead. I chalked it up to a pinched nerve and visited my chiropractor.
Hospital Admission: The Diagnosis That Changed Everything
By Friday night, I was in the emergency department. A CT scan revealed a shadow on my brain. Doctors weren’t sure what it was, but they suspected a bleed. I stayed in the hospital for seven days as they ran tests. I went home with strict orders not to work or exert myself. But I couldn’t sit still. I returned to work against medical advice and soon suffered a second brain bleed.
The Second Stroke: New Deficits, New Challenges
Six weeks later, the second hemorrhage caused increased deficits. I couldn’t think clearly, speak properly, or manage daily tasks. My cognitive fog deepened, and the world felt disorienting. I had to accept help. I had to let go of control.
The Third Bleed and Brain Surgery: Facing the Ultimate Fear
In November 2014, the third bleed struck while I was driving. I felt the numbness return and drove myself to the hospital. This time, I was told surgery was necessary. My neurosurgeon, Associate Professor Kate Drummond, explained that the blood vessel had to be removed.
Amidst this crisis, my wife’s mother passed away, compounding our grief. Surgery was scheduled for November 24th—Saint Katerina’s Day in the Greek Orthodox calendar. I went in prepared, physically and emotionally.
Waking Up Paralyzed: Beginning the Journey to Walk Again
I woke up alive but unable to walk. My left side was numb. I collapsed the first time I tried to stand. But instead of despair, I felt determined. I entered rehab, hung from a ceiling harness, and began the long journey of learning to walk again.
Neuroplasticity and Imagination: Rewiring the Brain
During rehab, I studied neuroplasticity. I learned from experts like Dr. Michael Merzenich and Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita. I discovered that visualizing movement could activate the same neurons as actual movement. When I couldn’t move, I imagined myself walking and using my arm. This mental training became part of my daily practice.
A Bittersweet Christmas: Returning Home After Rehab
Just before Christmas 2014, I returned home. Although my mother-in-law was no longer with us, my family was relieved to have me back. I was on my feet, using my arm again, and slowly regaining independence.
Finding Purpose: The Birth of Recovery After Stroke Podcast
Homebound and unable to work, I asked myself a big question: What now? A conversation with a friend sparked an idea. I had learned so much—could I share it with others? I remembered a hospital room called “The Transit Lounge,” where I had waited between hospital and rehab. That became the metaphor for my first podcast.
By episode 20, I realized my true audience: stroke survivors. I rebranded the show as the Recovery After Stroke Podcast, and the rest is history.
Sharing Stories of Stroke Recovery Around the World
Since then, I’ve interviewed nearly 350 stroke survivors, neuroscientists, and rehabilitation experts. At episode 70, I said something unexpected: “Stroke was the best thing that happened to me.” My guest said the same.
That moment sparked the idea for my book: The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became the Best Thing That Happened. I identified 10 common traits shared by thriving survivors—those became the chapters.
A New Identity: Life After Stroke with Purpose and Meaning
Today, I am living proof that recovery is possible. I found a new identity, a new purpose, and a voice I didn’t know I had. This journey has taken me from rock bottom to global impact. I’ve spoken at conferences, appeared on radio and TV, and built a global community of stroke survivors who support each other.
Final Thoughts: You Are Not Alone
If you’re recovering from a stroke, know this: you are not alone. Recovery takes time. It takes support. It takes a mindset. But it is possible.
Your story is still unfolding. Your purpose can still emerge. And your life can take on new meaning, just like mine did.
Explore More
- 📘 Read the book: The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became the Best Thing That Happened
- 🎙 Listen to the podcast: Recovery After Stroke Podcast
- 🌐 Visit the community: recoveryafterstroke.com
Let’s keep going—together.
Bill Gasiamis
Host, Recovery After Stroke Podcast
Surviving Stroke Was Just the Beginning: A Story of Recovery, Growth, and Purpose
A stroke survivor’s raw and inspiring story of healing, resilience, and discovering purpose after three brain bleeds and brain surgery.
Support The Recovery After Stroke Podcast Through Patreon
Grab A Copy Of The Book
Highlights:
00:00 Life Before the Stroke
02:18 The Progression of Numbness
05:53 The Chiropractor’s Advice and Hospital Visit
16:19 The Second Bleed and Hospital Stay
24:18 Preparation for Brain Surgery
30:30 Rehabilitation and Recovery
36:07 Discovering Neuroplasticity
43:19 Starting the Recovery After Stroke Podcast
51:55 The Unexpected Way Stroke Became the Best Thing
59:37 Final Thoughts and Community Building
Transcript:
Life Before the Stroke Recovery Journey
Bill Gasiamis 0:02
12 years ago, my life changed forever. So I was working in my own business, and while doing that, my wife and I were raising two young kids, one of them was teenager. One was almost about to become a teenager. I was about seven years into my business, and I had a lot to learn, and I was doing things the hard way. There were a lot of problems. There were a lot of challenges that small business owners face, getting paid, the work, the quoting, everything that anyone who’s had a small business understands.
Bill Gasiamis 0:45
But I didn’t know that I should reach out to other people to help me out, to perhaps give me a little bit of an insight into what to do to solve all those problems that new business owners tend to have. And I tried to work it out, work it all out myself. And as a result of that, I was extremely stressed out. I wasn’t enjoying my life. I was having a lot of trouble with the amount of hours that I was working with, no downtime, with just work, work, work.
Bill Gasiamis 1:18
I was totally stressed. I probably wasn’t eating well, I was smoking, I was drinking a little, and things were just pretty terrible. And then one day in the morning, I woke up and I noticed a numb sensation on my big left toe, and that was an interesting time, because I ignored it, because it’s just my big left toe. What’s the big deal? When you wake up in the morning, your entire body feels well, your bigger left toe feels numb. I still was able to walk, put my shoes on, go to work, so it didn’t really mean anything to me. It was a Friday and then when I went to work that day.
The Progression of Numbness
Bill Gasiamis 2:06
Everything went well as far as work was concerned, and I got stuff done. And then at the end of the day, I went home, and we went about catching up with some friends and family, which we tend to do on a Friday night, and had a few cigarettes, a few glasses of alcohol to drink. And then the next day, I noticed the numbness had spread a little to my foot. But again, I didn’t have much to do that day, so I continued to ignore it. And the following day, which was a Sunday, I woke up in the morning to go to the gym, which I used to do every Sunday.
Bill Gasiamis 2:42
And I would go for a run on a treadmill. And this particular day, while at the gym and running on the treadmill, I noticed that I couldn’t put my foot down onto the right path in the treadmill. It was becoming really difficult to it was becoming really difficult to run in a rhythm that was conducive to safe and comfortable running on a treadmill, and I had to look down a lot and notice my foot and trying to understand what was happening. Nonetheless, I pushed on and I got the run finished, and then went home. Thought nothing of it.
Bill Gasiamis 3:28
And then the next morning, on a Monday, I had decided that I was going to go and see the chiropractor about it, because when I woke up on Monday morning, the numbers had spread to my knee roughly about my knee, and I went to my chiropractor, who was on speed dial. He was always the person who I made responsible for fixing my for fixing all my ailments with regards to my back, because sometimes I would bend over incorrectly, pick up things incorrectly, and I made him responsible for fixing me, getting me back to work.
Bill Gasiamis 4:10
So when I went to the chiropractor, he had a look at it, and he said, it doesn’t look like it’s coming from your doesn’t look like it’s coming from anywhere that’s related to your back, and what you should do is just go and grab some anti inflammatories, keep an eye on it, and if it changes, get back to me and let me know. Now by this stage, I told my wife, and another two days elapsed, and by Wednesday, it had spread. The numbers had spread all the way up to my hip, basically.
Bill Gasiamis 4:51
And my wife noticed I was walking funny, and she said, Why are you walking funny? And I said. I’m not walking funny. Leave me alone. I’ve got stuff to do. I’m fine. I’ll make another appointment to see the chiropractor. So that Wednesday, I rang the chiropractor to make another appointment so he can check me out and fix me up. And then what I realized was that they were not going to be able to see me until Friday, and the first appointment was at the beginning of the day, but on that day, I was going to be in a position where I had a lot of work to do.
The Chiropractor’s Advice and Hospital Visit
Bill Gasiamis 5:32
And I didn’t want to miss out on going to work. On Friday morning, I had to set up my team at one site, and then I had to meet a client at another site, so there was no way I was going to miss that. So I told the receptionist to make an appointment for me that was going to be at the end of the day on Friday, so I could finish my day’s work and then go to the appointment. And see the chiropractor, which all seemed like a good idea at the time, except Friday morning, things had escalated, and when I tried to show the guys what to do on a particular building that we were working on.
Bill Gasiamis 6:21
I had to get up on the ladder, and my left leg wouldn’t go up on the ladder. It wouldn’t stay on the bottom rung for me to climb the ladder properly. And because it wouldn’t stay on the bottom rung, I looked down to see what was happening. And what I thought was happening was that, because there was some water on the ground, I’d stepped on the water, that made my shoe slippery, and then as I tried to climb the ladder, my shoe slipped off. Well, we know now that that wasn’t the case, but at the moment, what I did was I grabbed my leg from both my knees.
Bill Gasiamis 7:05
I beg your pardon, grab my leg with both my hands from my knee, and I began to lift my foot onto the first rung of the ladder. I know what you’re saying. Now. There should have been so many warning signs I should have done something about it, but it just didn’t cross my mind that I needed to do anything more and climb on the ladder and show the guys what I was up to. So anyway, I did that. Got down, pretty non event. You know, nothing really happened. And we went to the client and saw my other client at the other site. We had the conversation. Everything went well.
Bill Gasiamis 7:50
The day finished, and then by the time the day finished, it was time for me to go to the chiropractor. I got there, and as soon as I got there, put me on the table, and he asked me what the issue was, what was happening. And I said to him that I have numbness now down my entire side, my entire left side, and that I’m not sure what it’s about, and that he needs to sort it out for me. He put me on the table, and within a minute he said, whatever’s happening is not happening to to you because of your back. It’s something else.
Bill Gasiamis 8:26
And I think he knew what it was, but he didn’t want to alarm me, so he said I would go to the hospital. Now, when he said that, I argued with him. I said, Look, I can’t go to the hospital. I’ve got work. To do tomorrow. There’s 20 guys relying on me. I think it’s 20. There was heaps of them. I don’t think it was 20, but it may have been less. The story has changed somewhat in my memory.
Bill Gasiamis 8:56
So there was, we’ll call them, 15 guys relying on me, and that day, we had to get into this building first thing in the morning, begin the job, finish the job by the end of the day, because we had no window of opportunity to do it otherwise, and that’s what I was going to do. I was not going to miss out on work. So instead of going to the hospital like he told me to I went home. And then when I got home, my wife asked me, What did the doctor say? And I told her that he told me to go to the hospital.
Bill Gasiamis 9:37
And she said, Well, what? Why are you at home? Then? Well, I told her, Look, I’ve got to go to work. There’s potentially 15 guys relying on me to get there. It was definitely more than 10, and I can’t miss out on that particular pay day. There’s a heap of work that needs to do. It’s a great opportunity. We’re going to get it done, and we’re not going to miss it. And I can’t go because. If I go to the hospital today, you know what’s going to happen? They will see me. By the time they see me and discharge me, it’ll be the next day.
Bill Gasiamis 10:11
I’ll be really tired, and then I won’t have had the opportunity to go to work. And that can’t be my wife, being a little smarter than me, said, why don’t we do this? Why don’t I take you to the hospital and they’ll tell you there’s nothing wrong, and then you can go to work tomorrow. Now, when she said, it sounded great, and I thought that was a great idea, so it’s exactly what we did. And when we got to the hospital, she left me behind, because I told her to go mind the kids.
Bill Gasiamis 10:48
They were at home alone, and it was around dinner time, and I would update her as soon as there was some information. And then from there, what would happen was I would get the scans, they would give me the details, and then I would go update her over the phone to tell her to come and pick me up. Now what happened was, as soon as I went into emergency and gave them the details of what was happening to me, well then they gave me the red carpet treatment.
Bill Gasiamis 11:22
I was in a ward immediately, and then very quickly, I was getting scans, a CT scan, blood pressure checks, the whole lot, but it did take a little while for the doctors to turn up and actually give me the news, and it was really late. We think it was around 11:30pm on the Friday night, and when I received the call and when I received the news, I sent a message to my wife and told her not to wait up for me. They haven’t got back to me. I basically lied. They haven’t got back to me with any news yet, and come and see me tomorrow morning.
Bill Gasiamis 12:12
And the reason I said that was because the doctor had come to see me and told me that there was a shadow on my brain, and that the shadow was something that they weren’t sure what it was. They didn’t know the cause of it, and they wanted to do further tests to find out what it was. So that was a seven day stay in hospital, where they continue to do all the tests that they could possibly do to determine what the cause of the bleed was. And at the end of seven days, I went home with no definitive answer, but I was told when you go home, you are not going to work.
Bill Gasiamis 13:00
Do any physical activity, nothing strenuous whatsoever, and then you’re going to come and see us in six weeks so we can do a follow up scan and work out what’s going on. So it’s exactly what I did for the majority of the time, until just before the six week appointment, I was bored at home. After being at home just dealing with all the dramas that we had just been through and not being allowed to do anything strenuous, and not being able to walk to work, anywhere, or do anything, I was going stir crazy.
Bill Gasiamis 13:38
So I decided that what I’m going to do is ring the guys to take me to work. They were going to pick me up so I don’t drive, because I wasn’t allowed to drive, and they were going to take me to work, and I was going to go and hang out with them for a day while they worked. I was going to watch them work, not fun for the employees, but nonetheless, I wasn’t going to be critical. I was just going to go and be there, because they were managing really well. Without me for six weeks, they were doing a great job, and I needed to get out of the house.
Bill Gasiamis 14:11
So somebody did come and pick me up, and they took me to work. And they were painting this massive wall. It was the wall of a hotel. They needed to use the room very quickly, this particular client of ours gave us short notice, and then when they gave us the work, we would go in, get it done within a day, and then go home and hand it back over to them. And then this particular day, the guys were doing well, getting the work done, and I was sitting on a chair just watching them and chatting to them.
Bill Gasiamis 14:43
And I noticed the room started to spin again, and I felt like I needed to throw up, and I couldn’t orient myself. And I was on the chair that I was sitting on. I was starting to lean in one direction. I was starting to kind of like i. Just fall away. And I couldn’t write myself. In order to write myself, I started to slap my face a couple of times, which didn’t really work, but the guys hadn’t finished the job yet, so I didn’t want to rush them, and I did say to them, I’m not feeling well, hopefully you’ll finish pretty soon, and then you’ll be able to take me home.
Bill Gasiamis 15:23
And I waited for them to finish the wall, which seemed to be the most important thing to me, and that’s exactly what they did. They finished the wall, and it took about another hour or so after I started feeling strange, for them to finally pack everything up and have me in the car. And then the idea in my mind was we’re going to drive home, and when I get home, I’m going to tell Christine, my wife, to take me to the hospital. And it was a great idea. On the way home, we passed by one hospital. Nearby, there was another hospital.
The Second Bleed and Hospital Stay
Bill Gasiamis 16:03
It didn’t occur to me that we should stop at the hospital. We passed by, but I did stop outside that hospital to throw up on a tree, which was in the park across the road. So instead of going into the hospital, I jumped back into the van and told the person who was driving me home to continue taking me home. So that’s what they did. Now, for some reason, it was extremely busy that day, and it took forever for us to get home, and I think we were in the car for about another hour, hour and a half, something like that.
Bill Gasiamis 16:40
And by the time we got back home, way too many hours had elapsed after I’d started feeling the room spinning, nauseous and not being able to orient myself. Christine was warned. I called her and told her be ready to take me to the hospital. So she got me and was ready to take me to the hospital. And then when we got to the hospital, which from my house, again, is about another 15 minute drive, she dropped me off an emergency we were chatting in the car. Everything was fine, and when I got to emergency and she left to go and park the car.
Bill Gasiamis 17:26
She was just going to come back quickly and meet me in the waiting room, I remember going to the nurses station to check myself in and to let them know what was happening. And I got to the window, and that’s about all I remember. I don’t remember anything else after that. I didn’t remember my name. I couldn’t tell them what I was doing there, and that’s the last thing I remember. Then I blacked out, and I think I got my wallet out and potentially gave them my ID so that they could identify me, and so they they knew who I was.
Bill Gasiamis 18:06
And then I don’t know how much longer later I woke up in a bed with all the machines connected and all the monitors running and everything. And at that time, there was this strange lady waiting for me at the end of the bed, when I wake up, she asked me, Do you know who I am? And I didn’t know who it was. I bet you guys know who it was. And she’s never, never let me forget it that I forgot who she was. I didn’t remember her or recognize her. It was my wife, Christine. When she told the doctors that I couldn’t recognize her, that was it.
Bill Gasiamis 18:47
They went mental again, and the bed that I was in was being moved at a rapid rate of knots to get me into some area where they were going to further assist me and saved my life, I imagine, and that’s exactly what they did. That was a three day hospital stay. And when I went home, I went home with a whole bunch of deficits. I couldn’t remember how to begin and finish a sentence. I couldn’t write an email. Had a lot of cognitive issues. I had a lot of trouble just doing the daily tasks that I needed to do.
Bill Gasiamis 19:40
And I felt spaced out a lot like I was some some kind of other plane, some kind of other planet. And it was the weirdest time of my life. They’d given me some medication so there was no numbness, but there was a lot of strange sensations for. Things I couldn’t make sense of, a lot of forgetfulness and anger, personality changes the whole lot. There was so many issues that I had to live with and deal with, and so did my wife. And I did my best to manage that, but I didn’t have a lot of success.
Bill Gasiamis 20:20
What had happened was the blood vessel that they finally discovered had that had bled in my brain the first time, had bled again, and this time the size of the bleed went from being about the size of a in Australia, what we call a 10 cent piece, which is probably the size of a dime, to about the size of a golf ball. And because of the position that it was in, they weren’t going to operate and remove it. They just left it in there. And because it was impacting a lot of area, what that did was it created the situation where it was impacting a lot of my brain negatively.
Bill Gasiamis 21:08
So that whole journey started to get better. After the blood clot started to decrease in size, and things started to come back online. And as they came back online, I started to get more and more active. Now, the first bleed was in February 2012 the second one was in March 2012 and after doing really well from March 2012 to about November 2014 the blood vessel burst again, and that meant that I needed another state hospital. But let me tell you the story of what happened when it burst.
Bill Gasiamis 21:57
When it burst, I was driving my car in the city, I was going to see a client, and I felt a burning sensation down my entire left side. And I thought, Oh, that’s a bit weird. So I parked the car, I got out the car, I walked around the car to see if I could shake it off, and it went away. And then I got back in the car. And then as soon as I got in the car, I realized that the numbness was back, the burning sensation, and the numbness was back. It was like I had been in the sun, and half of my body, right down the middle, got burned by the sun, and the other half did not. And it was a very bizarre feeling.
Bill Gasiamis 22:44
Now, yes, I did realize that I was probably having another bleed. So I did what everyone would do when their blade is brain is bleeding. I drove myself to the hospital in the city this time, and when I got there, I parked my car in a no standing zone, straight outside the hospital, walked to emergency, rang Christine and told her, I’m on my way. And then when I got to emergency, I went to the nurses and said to them, I am having a bleed in the brain. You need to get me into a CT scanner right now. Now they knew that that was a bit strange.
Bill Gasiamis 23:34
Nobody who’s having a stroke normally walks in to say they’re having a stroke and that they need a CT scanner. They asked me for my details. I wouldn’t give them my details because I was saying there’s no time for that. Get me into a CT scanner. And eventually I gave them my details, because that had been the hospital that I had moved all my records to after the second bleed, they found my details and confirmed that I wasn’t a crazy man, and they admitted me into hospital, where a little while later, I was met by my neurosurgeon.
Preparation for Brain Surgery
Bill Gasiamis 24:15
My neurosurgeon was the one and only back then, Associate Professor Kate Drummond, now she runs neurosurgery at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in Melbourne, and she is considered to be one of the best neurosurgeons in Australia. In my mind, she’s the best. Kate came to see me and said, the blood vessel has burst again. It is bleeding now, and what we need to do is take it out. It has got to the point where this thing is not going to stop bleeding.
Bill Gasiamis 24:51
And what you need to do is make a decision as to whether or not you want to take that risk, or whether you want to prepare for brain surgery. Do, and that’s exactly what I did. I told her, we are going to prepare for brain surgery. We’re going to get this thing out, and we’re going to somehow or another, whatever comes after that. We’re going to deal with it and move on. So that was early November 2014 and then a little while later, we went and did all the paperwork, all the pre checks, etc, for surgery.
Bill Gasiamis 25:31
And in that time, just about two weeks before surgery, was booked in, my mother in law passed away, and things got really dramatic and intense, and then we got scared, and we didn’t know what the future holds. So then we have to deal with a funeral, and all of the emotions that go along with my mother in law passing away, not to mention all the emotions associated with the fact that my blood vessel in my head is bleeding. And I’m not sure how you prepare for that kind of thing, especially when you’ve been through nothing that dramatic before, and my wife was beside herself.
Bill Gasiamis 26:25
It was a very difficult time for us, the entire family, and at the funeral, I wasn’t allowed to be a pallbearer, for obvious reasons, so we attended the funeral, we did all The things that we needed to do, and then we had about a week to prepare for brain surgery, and it was such a difficult time, and that’s what we did, though we prepared. And after we prepared, we attended the hospital where I met with my surgeon again and her team. It was first thing in the morning on the 24th of November, and it was a significant day, because in Greek Orthodox tradition.
Bill Gasiamis 27:16
That’s the name day of st Catarina. And some people had mentioned that to me, they told me that everything will go well because they’re going to pray to st Catarina for me so that she can look over me during surgery and give strength to the team and to me to make sure that we have a great outcome. And first thing in the morning on the 24th of November, went into brain surgery, woke up some hours later, and was quite relieved that I woke up and things seemed to be okay, until I noticed that my left side was numb and it felt a little bit strange.
Bill Gasiamis 28:01
But I didn’t know how serious it wasn’t or what it meant, until my family came to visit. They all came to visit me. We had a little bit of a chat at the bedside in recovery. I don’t really remember seeing them. I just remember hearing them. I was quite out of it, as you can imagine. But in that time, a nurse came in as well, and the nurse asked me if I had been to the toilet yet it’s one of the things that they want to do is make sure that every patient gets to the toilet and starts moving their bowels as soon as possible after surgery.
Bill Gasiamis 28:41
And I said I had not, and she said she would help me in the to get to the toilet. And all I had to do was step off the bed on the left side, and she was going, and I was going to put my arm around her, and she was going to help me get to the toilet, because she knew I was a little groggy from surgery, and she wanted to make sure that I didn’t have a fall. Now, what she and I didn’t know was that the numbness on my left side meant that I couldn’t feel my leg, and I actually couldn’t walk, and as I got out of the bed and put my weight on the left leg.
Bill Gasiamis 29:21
I collapsed from the bed onto the ground just hours after brain surgery with a fresh scar on my head, and I screamed my lungs out. And then you can imagine what happened after that. Then there was a massive rush to get me off the ground back onto the bed, and they quickly determined that I cannot feel my left side, and they started doing more tests to try and work out what extent of numbness I had, what that meant, and how bad was the situation. Could I, Couldn’t I walk?
Rehabilitation and Stroke Recovery Journey
Bill Gasiamis 30:01
When they determined that I couldn’t walk, it was a little while later that Kate come in and arranged to have me booked in to two months of surgery, to two months of rehab so that I could learn how to walk again and regain the use of my left side. So I was alive, but I was fairly injured. My wife was definitely relieved, but then was a lot of concern about what the future had in store for us. I remember while I was still in hospital, and they wanted to get rehabilitation started.
Bill Gasiamis 30:46
They sent a rehab team into the ward, wheeled me out in a wheelchair and took me to a room and hung me up from the ceiling in a harness to help get my walking starting again. It was so strange. Anyway, I’m hanging from the ceiling. Basically, what they’re doing is they’re putting weight on my leg with my body, but just enough so that obviously I can’t fall, and that I’m completely safe. And then they’re using their hands to move my leg for me at the beginning so that I can kind of get the movement back the way that the leg moves, the mechanical part of the movement back.
Bill Gasiamis 31:32
And that’s exactly what we did for a little while. And then that had me in hospital for about another seven days. Then they moved me to the rehab ward of the hospital, the rehab section, and I was in the rehab section for the next month. I got out a little earlier than I expected, which was really big deal for me, because it was just a few days before Christmas of 2024 and I didn’t want to be in hospital over Christmas, so I was really pleased to be able to get out and go home for Christmas.
Bill Gasiamis 32:06
Now, in rehab, things started slowly. They assessed me, and then I had to go and do small amounts of rehabilitation on a daily basis because the fatigue was killing me. We’re talking about doing half an hour of recovery exercises and Neuroplasticity training of my arm and my leg, and then I’d be wiped out for that entire rest of the day as I was in hospital, the longer I was in there, the more rehab I could do without being so fatigued, but I don’t think I ever did into rehab where the fatigue didn’t kick in and then wiped me out.
Bill Gasiamis 32:48
So because of the level of fatigue at the beginning, the sessions weren’t so frequent, but then later, the sessions started to increase, and I started doing two sessions a day. I learned how to use my left side again. I learned how to use my left leg again. I learned how to use my arm. One of the exercises I did for my arm was to have my arm in a box of rice where the task was to reach in and grab all the little duvallies and knickknacks that they had in there. There were some pen lids, there was some there was some paper clips, there were some ball bearings, there was some marbles.
Bill Gasiamis 33:32
There was whole bunch of different things that I had to find, identify them before I pulled my hand out, and then put them on the table and then go again. With regards to the walking, I remember getting to a stage where I wanted to try walking on my own without anyone coming with me. So what I did was I asked the nurse who would pick me up every morning, instead of coming with me and helping me walk back, I felt I was strong enough to walk on my own. I said to her, Can I walk to the rehab room, which would have been about maybe 100 meters away?
Bill Gasiamis 34:15
Can I walk to the rehab room on my own tomorrow? And if that’s okay, that’s what I want to do, because I had the confidence now and I felt like it was the right time for me to try my own reluctantly, she said yes, but I’m sure she would have got it authorized and ticked. And I remember that day walking back to the rehab room where we were going to do some training, off on my own, off my own steam, holding on to the rail the whole way, obviously, because I didn’t want to fall over. But nonetheless, without anybody else next to me was a big deal as a big milestone moment.
Bill Gasiamis 35:00
Yeah, it was a pretty cool time to realize that you’re back on your feet. Now, my left side didn’t feel fantastic, but I was back on my feet. My knee would buckle every so often, and it still does very rarely, but sometimes it still buckles. And I got myself home in a few days, just before Christmas in December 2012 and it was a bittersweet moment, because I was home, but my mother in law wasn’t there, and we couldn’t celebrate Christmas like we had the previous years, because there was somebody missing, and we still marked the occasion.
Discovering Neuroplasticity
Bill Gasiamis 35:47
But it was different. It wasn’t the same as the years before. There was a lot of happiness to have me around, and a lot of sadness because my mother in law wasn’t around, and I think it would have been so much sadder if I wasn’t there for my family, but we worked it out I got there. I now this is really important, something I want to share. So one of the reasons I believe that I got out of hospital a month earlier was because I had prepared myself a hospital, and I had done a lot of research into Neuroplasticity and how that works.
Bill Gasiamis 36:28
And whether or not I could use that in my favor in case I needed to. And what I discovered was the work of Dr Michael Merz and the kids, the doctor who I interviewed in the podcast. I can’t remember which episode, but I will put details on this video so you can find it. And he’s considered one of the world’s first authorities in Neuroplasticity, because of the work that he did in the 90s to prove that the brain was not fixed, that it was malleable plastic, and that could be retrained in different ways. And his team was part of the first team that invented the world’s first cochlear implant.
Bill Gasiamis 37:11
The bionic ear, that restored hearing to people who had lost their hearing. I bumped into Michael one time at a Melbourne event, and I asked him if he would be on the podcast, and he agreed, and what I learned from him was that I could do some things to help me in my recovery that didn’t take any Time or any effort, especially when I am sitting down because I am so fatigued all the time because of my brain injury. And this was a game changer.
Bill Gasiamis 37:50
And that thing that I learned was that if you imagine yourself doing something that activates the same part of the brain as if you’re actually doing it. So when I couldn’t do anything in my bed at rehab, I was imagining myself using my left arm and walking again, and I was doing that for hours upon hours every day, so that when I got to rehab, not only had I done the physical part of it, of rewiring the brain, I had also done the software upgrade of rewiring the brain, if you like.Yeah, that makes sense.
Bill Gasiamis 38:40
The software upgrade, and if you just imagine yourself doing something that’s rewiring that part of the brain, and when you do that task, it fires off the same neurons that you were firing off when you were imagining it. So what that means is that you can do way more rehab than you’re doing just by imagining something. So that’s one of the things that I believe to help me get out of, get out of hospital or rehab a month early.
Bill Gasiamis 39:19
Now, one of the other people whose work I looked at was a guy called Paul Bucha reader, and Paul Bucha reader was the scientist who kind of discovered Neuroplasticity, the way that we talk about it today, kind of discovered it back in the day when his Father, I believe, had a stroke, and he and his brothers decided to rehabilitate their father based on some research that they had read from many, many years ago, way back in the 1940s I believe, or even before that, and they decided to help rehabilitate their father.
Bill Gasiamis 40:00
Rather than just let him sit in a state after the hospital after his brain injury that most patients would have sat in when they were going through stroke recovery, back in those days, they did not give into the narrative, which was that, take your father home, there’s nothing you can do for him. You need to just look after him and that be about it. So they rehabilitated their father quite successfully. And then they started looking into the research about Neuroplasticity. And what they did is they devised some tools that helped blind people see again.
Bill Gasiamis 40:58
They also devised a tool that would eventually lead to restoring the balance in a lady called Cheryl Schultz, using her tongue as the balance mechanism that replaced the inner ear of Cheryl, which was damaged due to a medical situation where they gave her some medication, and that medication damaged her inner ear, and she could not Stand up on her feet after that particular intervention, the medication damaged her inner ear so much that she was not able to restore her balance. She was always in a state of vertigo.
Bill Gasiamis 41:52
The Room The world was always spinning, and she could not participate in regular life until she came across Paul Bucha reader and his team, and with a probe, with this thing that they put on the tongue, they taught the tongue to take over the task of the inner ear and restore balance to Cheryl Schultz. Now I’m going to have the details of that episode, because I interviewed Cheryl Schultz to get a first hand account of what happened to her. And I can’t believe that these are the things that I had stumbled across to help me in my recovery. And that’s what I did. I implemented them.
Bill Gasiamis 42:38
Now there are a couple of things that I should say and that depending on the severity of the damage, that might not be possible for all people. However, I don’t want to be the person who tells you something’s not possible. I would rather you work that out on your own than me tell you it’s not possible. I’m just sharing my story and the story of some other people that helped me in my journey to get from being in a wheelchair and not being able to walk and relying on other people to drive me around and pick me up and get my things done to walking to walking.
Starting the Recovery After Stroke Podcast
Bill Gasiamis 43:19
So that’s why I’m sharing this. I’m sharing this for that reason, and also to update people on who I am and how I came to be in the situation that I’m in, and why I’m the host of the recovery after stroke podcast, and why I wrote the book. The unexpected way that a stroke became the best thing that happened. I mean, stroke wasn’t the best thing that happened, but it’s the thing that I learned the most from.
Bill Gasiamis 43:51
It’s the experience in my life that taught me the most and that galvanized me to find information, to help myself, to seek out other people, to make sure that I was going to be able to have some sort of a regular life after all of this stuff that I was going to go through. So I hope you’ll continue listening, because I want to share some of the rest of the story. Now check out this little Wildlife Reserve at the park I’m walking in not far from where I live. So man made lake, but it’s amazing. This used to be a tip, what we call a tip, a garbage dump.
Bill Gasiamis 44:43
For many, many years, there was a hole in the ground that was so deep because it used to be a site where they would make bricks, so they had good clay here, so they would dig out the clay. They made a massive, massive hole. And. Over, I don’t know how many years, how many decades, and then after that, they refilled it, and this is where we would come to dispose of rubbish. Over the years, all sorts of different rubbish would get disposed here. And then after the decades of filling it up, then they’ve turned it into a park for the community, and it is quite massive.
Bill Gasiamis 45:23
That’s where I’ve been walking today in the park where all of the rubbish has been laid. Okay, let’s see if I can go find a shadier spot. So when I got home in 2014 we had Christmas. It was a very chilled time for New Years. We got through New Year’s 2015 and then soon after, my wife started to return back to work, because she had taken a lot of time off work, and I found myself at home alone. And while I was at home alone, I was trying to work out what I’m going to do with myself, like, what was the point of going through all this stuff? I wasn’t working yet.
Bill Gasiamis 46:10
Didn’t have the ability to go back to work. I still wasn’t allowed to drive. I was still going to regular follow ups with my surgeon to check my condition, scan the brain, see where it’s all at. And I remember being at home one day and falling over because I got up to take a plate that I had used to hold my sandwich, to take it back to the sink, and as I took the plate back to the sink and took the first step on my left leg, my left leg collapsed, and I found myself on the ground. Before I fell on the ground, I hit my chest on the couch, on the on the end of the couch, and I bruised my ribs a little.
Bill Gasiamis 47:04
The plate fell on the ground. I smashed the plate. And it was quite a fun time, as you can imagine. And I had a few more falls after that. Anyway, I digress. So then I was catching up. Had a lot of downtime. A lot of my friends would come to visit me. I was catching up with them during different parts of the day, and while they visited me, one of my closest friends, an amazing guy, the guy who wrote the forward of my book, Michael, asked me that question, you know, what are you going to do with all this information that you’ve learned about your recovery.
Bill Gasiamis 47:45
And how are you going to put information out there? Had this big desire to share what I had learned to make a life a little easier for other people, so that they wouldn’t have to go through the kind of recovery or the kind of dramas that I went through, and so that they could also reach out to me if they needed, and I could reach out to them, and we could create a community. Because in 2014 even though I had met a lot of stroke survivors, there wasn’t a massive community in the area that I lived. And I needed to find people who were like me.
Bill Gasiamis 48:23
And he sort of suggested, how would you do that? And I told him, I could do coaching. I could support people in my local community. And he he smiled and threw out at me this idea. And he said, like, you know, there’s this thing called the internet, and if you have something to share and you reach 10 people in your local area, maybe you can reach 10 times that on the internet. And it was a little daunting. I didn’t know exactly what to do about that. I didn’t know if I was ready to put out so much information about myself online in that kind of way.
Bill Gasiamis 49:06
But in around 2015 I decided that what I was going to do was put out some episodes of some podcasts that I was going to record, and it was for the first iteration of my podcast, and that first iteration came from an idea that I had, believe it or not, when I was going from hospital to rehab and they were wheeling me out in a bed to an area where I was going to wait for transportation, and that area where I was going to wait for transportation had a sign at the door as I entered. It was just a waiting room, but it said the transit lounge.
Bill Gasiamis 49:49
And I don’t know why, but that that title of that particular room stayed in my head, and I created a little metaphor about it, like. It’s the transit lounge where you go from where you are in hospital, where you can’t walk and things are a little bit difficult to where you want to be in an area where you’re going to learn how to walk and get back on your feet again. And that was the first name of the podcast, the recover, the transit lounge podcast, and the tagline was helping you go from where you are to where you’d rather be.
Bill Gasiamis 50:27
But I didn’t know yet that my audience was meant to be stroke survivors, so I started interviewing people from all walks of life who had recovered from any kind of serious situation, and I was just sharing inspirational stories, just to see whether or not I could begin a conversation, meet people, learn from them, maybe they can learn from me. And at around about episode 20, I had the aha moment that my audience and my podcast should be called the recovery after stroke podcast, and my audience should be stroke survivors, because I have way more in common with stroke survivors.
Bill Gasiamis 51:10
They are the people that I’m looking for, after all, and that’s what I did. I renamed the podcast the recovery after stroke podcast, and that’s when the podcast really took off. I started interviewing stroke survivors exclusively, and people started to notice, and they started to tune in, and I started to get a lot of good feedback, which is not why I started, but it was very useful to get it. And I met some fascinating people who I interviewed, and they were just so amazing. I learned so much from them, all different types of stroke from all over the world.
The Unexpected Way Stroke Became the Best Thing
Bill Gasiamis 52:00
And it was at around episode 70 when I said one of the strangest things I’ve ever said in my life. And I referred to that earlier. It’s the title of my book, I said to the other guest, I think that strokes the best thing that happened to me. And what was even weirder than that is that she said that back to me, and then it’s like, okay, why? Why is this the case? Why is there another person on the planet saying the stroke was the best thing that happened to them? I think that I’m the only weird one that would come up with such a phrase, and that got me curious.
Bill Gasiamis 52:40
And again, it’s something that I just sat with for a little while, and I did nothing about until I went to a course with one of my mentors, who was doing a course to teach people how to model excellence, for example, or how to model the behavior of somebody else that you want To teach to someone to another group of people. It’s modeling is something that helps you shorten the time to getting a result, similar to how using imagination helps you create Neuroplasticity, just as actually doing the task that you want to achieve creates Neuroplasticity.
Bill Gasiamis 53:25
While modeling helps you model how one person does something so that you can decrease the amount of time it takes to get to the same outcome. And in the modeling course that I was doing, I learned that I might be able to, in fact, model how. Stroke is the best thing that happened. How do people get to be able to say that I didn’t know how it was that I got there. All I knew is that I was there and I needed to unpack how.
Bill Gasiamis 54:01
And then what I did was I put out a post on Instagram to ask people if they were willing to share with me how they got to the stage in their life where they were able to say that stroke was the best thing that happened to them? Well, firstly, I wanted to know if, in fact, there were people that thought that. And to my surprise, there were heaps, and they reached out, and then I reached out to them, and I interviewed them, and they helped me unpack. How does somebody get to be able to say that stroke was the best thing that happened to them.
Bill Gasiamis 54:41
And what we discovered was we had these 10 things in common, which became the chapters of my book. And then before you know it, I’m in the process of being in lockdown in Melbourne during COVID In 2020 we had the longest lockdown in the. World, we were locked down for the best part of two years, and we didn’t come out of lockdown till the end of 2022.
Bill Gasiamis 55:11
So I thought, I’m going to put all this information that I learned at this course about modeling, all the information, the commonalities that I discovered in people about how they got to be able to say that stroke was the best thing that happened to them. I’m going to pull all of that into a book, and I’m going to call my book The unexpected way that stroke became the best thing that happened. And it’s ridiculous that I, of all people would, a, have a podcast. B, have a book and C, recording a vlog about the whole situation.
Bill Gasiamis 55:51
Not that recording a vlog is the actual C, but you know where I’m going with that. Basically, this is just unbelievable, that I’m in the situation that I am in, that I’ve achieved the things that I have meant, I really can’t explain what it means to be, to be in a position where I get to speak to almost 350 stroke survivors from around The World on my podcast, including medical professionals, rehabilitation professionals, all sorts of people from all around the world. I have presented and done public speaking on the topic.
Bill Gasiamis 56:32
I’ve been on the radio because of it. I’ve been on TV because of it. And it’s just not who I was before stroke. I wasn’t that guy. They’re not the things that I used to do. They’re not the ways that I would go about my life. So I love this journey that I’ve been on. You’ll see in my previous vlog, it’s not all roses, it’s not all amazing. I don’t feel great all day, every day, but I don’t let that get in the way of me doing the things that I need to do. I found my voice through stroke. I found an audience. I created a community, and I want to encourage you guys to become a part of that community.
Bill Gasiamis 57:18
Even if it’s just by commenting on the YouTube video, even if it’s just by hitting the like button, even if it’s just by subscribing, just see what goes on in that community. You don’t have to do it the way that I do it, but you do need to find your meaning and your purpose after a stroke and your new identity, because they’re the things that I lost, that I was missing, that I needed to find and restore. And I think that’s what I’ve done. I’ve done that really well. I’ve found a way to create purpose meaning, and to move beyond all of the terrible parts of stroke.
Bill Gasiamis 58:06
It’s cost me a lot of money to have a stroke. I haven’t earned a proper income for more than 10 years, but I’m not going to let that stop me doing this thing that I love. I found it. I’m not letting it go, and I want to record 1000 podcast episodes so that no stroke survivor has to ever find themselves in a situation like I did in 2012 where there was no information about stroke recovery. There is a story for everybody on my YouTube channel, I encourage you to go through and look at them, and if you’re still listening to this particular vlog after all that time.
Bill Gasiamis 58:51
I really want to thank you for being here and doing so, and I want To tell you that you’re not alone and the recovery is possible in some way, shape or form, and it might take years. It’s taken me 12 years after my brain surgery to get this to this point, 13, in fact, to get to this point, not after my brain surgery. It’s taken me 13 years to get to this point after my stroke. Journey started. Anyhow, that’s it for me, for now, if you want to check out my book, go to recovery after stroke.com/book, or search my name, Bill Gasiamis on Amazon.
Final Thoughts and Community Building
Bill Gasiamis 59:38
And subscribe to the show on iTunes, on Spotify, leave a comment. Give me a review as well. Let me know what you think of this type of content. Every interaction helps the podcast find more stroke survivors, and it’s amazing.
Bill Gasiamis 59:57
Because today I had a stroke survivor reach out onto one of my YouTube channel videos and tell me that they are in hospital, lying in bed after they’ve just had a stroke, looking at videos on stroke recovery, and one of the first videos that came up was mine. So I really appreciate all the interactions, because that makes it easier for other people to find the content See you in the next episode.
