A patient who traveled from Vancouver, Canada, shares his experience following a stroke suffered at the end of 2020.
The patient and his wife describe his pre-treatment baseline—which included severe shooting pain in his fingers, an inability to hold utensils, altered vocal tone, and choking on liquids—and demonstrate real-time functional changes following Perispinal Etanercept (PSE) treatment.
Patient-Reported Changes Featured in This Video
- Severe Hand Pain & Spasticity Reduction: Prior to treatment, the patient experienced intense, crushing pain in his curled right hand (“like having fingers chopped off”). Following the procedure, he demonstrated opening his hand smoothly without shooting pain or resistance.
- Restoration of Utensil & Cup Handling: Previously unable to hold a spoon or fork without specialized adaptive grips, the patient demonstrated gripping a standard spoon independently and holding a cup normally to drink.
- Improved Swallowing (Dysphagia) & Drinking: Before treatment, the patient had been reliant on straws for months and routinely choked or coughed when trying to drink plain water. Post-treatment, he successfully drank water directly from a cup without coughing or spilling.
- Sitting Balance & Posture: His spouse highlighted that loss of core balance previously caused him to lean sideways and risk falling. During the post-treatment evaluation, the patient demonstrated stable, upright sitting posture without physical support.
- Vocal Tone & Speech Clarity: Both the patient and his wife noted a clearer, stronger vocal tone with improved speech resonance.
Read Video Transcript
*Transcript generated by YouTube
Where have you come from? I came from Vancouver, Canada. And when did you have your first stroke? 2020 end of 2020. And that affected your right side. Yes. Your arm and your leg. Yeah. He basically went from being a normal person and one day all of a sudden not even able to feed himself because having arm like this and arm like this, he’s no longer can hold a spoon. In the beginning there was no pain at all and it gradually started slowly more and got worse and worse and finally the pain was like somebody smashing my fingers or cut chopping off my fingers. And you can see this is curled up. If I open it then the pain will shoot up from there. Your speech is also affected. Yes. So I’m not able to do my financial transactions because my tone of voice has changed. Although I don’t recognize a change, the computer does. Have you noticed any difficulties with your vision, especially to the left? Yeah, sometimes. I try to read a paragraph and I reach the end of the line and then the right I find it hard to get back to the left. I cannot hold a fork. I cannot hold a spoon. I cannot take a fork and try to walk or pick up food and pick it up and have it. It’s very very hard for me to do that. But I must say you can ask me why have I come to Dr. Tobinick. I looked at all the trials and all that and I figured the trials that they did to disprove his treatment was incomplete and badly documented so that it did a disservice to people like me trying to figure out is there a way to shorten the the pain to get relief.
This one is definitely moving softer now. I don’t feel any pain. And I’m opening it quite a lot now, too.
No pain. Awesome.
Here is he. He comes up without pain. I Is this different than normal? Yeah, we wanted to get there. This is what we wanted from The physiotherapist was hoping to get this after your visit after visiting you. Okay. So that she can actually work with him without him screaming. [laughter] At least it’s stronger now. It’s got a little bit more resonance. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. And the reason they they didn’t want to send him to the rehab was because his balance was lost. His center is no longer straight this way. His center is like this and that’s why he falls down. Um but now he’s sitting in the chair and I’m not even there. We we we had problems with this before. Oh wow, look at you opening it now. Amazing. Um we always had to work on how to hold the cup. So now he can actually hold it and he can put it in his mouth. That’s normal. Wow. That’s a normal way of holding a cup. Amazing. Let me see. Wow, it’s softer. This Wow.
He can grab a spoon. He can grab a spoon. Before we had to have have fat to hold on to. I had to order something from Amazon to grab a a a hold of it, but now he can actually grab it. I’m impressed, Doctor. I really am. I’m not just saying it. Okay. Yeah, here’s something that’s opening. Yeah, you can open it yourself without screaming. That’s amazing. Yeah. And even your speech is clearer, more clearer now. Yeah? Yeah, it’s a lot clearer now.
Doctor!
He can hold it.
Okay. Slowly. It’s the first time after so many eating it on your own.
It’s been a straw for so many months. [laughter] It’s been a straw for you for so many months.
And you didn’t you didn’t even struggle. We had to have a straw uh to drink any kind of liquids. We could definitely not try the water. It was always I like chocolate milk, milk, anything but water or tea. it all on me. Yeah. Cuz it would just he’ll cough it out, you know. [laughter] Or just when you my hand would get [ __ ] all of a sudden. It’s the first time you took the water without spitting it out. Thank you so much, Doctor. You’re welcome. Yeah.
