Strawberry Picking for Recovery – A Patient Success Story

Meet Alison! Alison came to our Home and Community program after experiencing a ruptured brain aneurysm mid-February 2023. Upon returning home, Alison had in-home physical therapy who performed evaluations, recommended she was fine at home, and then referred her to outpatient physical therapy. During her outpatient physical therapy they did a balance and vestibular evaluation which was extremely symptom exacerbating and the clinic did not seem like a good fit for Alison. She was not driving at the time so accessing a clinic would have been difficult. Both of these therapy options did not address the cognitive side of her recovery either.

After being referred to RWW, Alison was able to have her therapies in home, eliminating the stress of getting to and from rehab appointments. She started with occupational and speech therapies to help address her cognitive deficits, along with physical therapy for her balance, vestibular, and endurance deficits.

This model of therapies worked excellent for Alison, especially as we began to focus on increasing her community involvement and endurance for community outings. Pre brain injury, Alison was extremely active in the community with her son. Although she is still a ways off from her premorbid functional level, she has improved significantly from her evaluation, including, being able to tolerate more challenging community environments and participate in outings with her son again.

Pictured with Alison is Angela DePaola, PT. The community outing to go strawberry picking had many benefits for Alison’s recovery, such as:
• Improved vestibular function for positional changes such as bending and twisting
• Energy conservation strategies for improved functional activity
tolerance such as identifying the need for and taking breaks
• Increased endurance for future community activities