Susanne Boestfleisch resolutely grips the handles of her rollator, looks up briefly and quickly makes her way with her walking frame to the communal kitchen at Bethel's Grünrockstraße home in Hagen. The fact that the 59-year-old is able to walk upright again and cook for herself is nothing short of a miracle after her stroke of fate over eleven years ago.
At the time, the respected employee of a law firm was in the middle of her life when she suffered a severe stroke while on holiday and her brain subsequently lost contact with the right side of her body. After a short stay in a retirement home, she was admitted to the Bethel centre for people with acquired brain injuries in 2013. Thanks to a high level of donations from her employer, friends and family, Susanne Boestfleisch was able to travel to the Ambulanticum Herdecke several times a week for two years and benefit from state-of-the-art therapy options there. With the help of the robot-assisted gait trainer, she learnt to walk again - and has fought her way back into life in an impressive way.
With many hours of speech therapy, physiotherapy and occupational therapy, good support and an irrepressible will, the patient has shown what is possible despite a severe stroke: "The progress she has made is extraordinary, I've never seen a client do that before," says the head of the house Karsten Raue, who is impressed. "We used to have big problems understanding her. Now she can not only walk better, but also talks a lot more, so we can understand what she wants better," adds carer Nadia El Hachimi.
