Stroke rehab improves recovery. So why aren't Hispanic survivors ...

Stroke survivor Joe Granados on a recumbent trike.
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Stroke rehab improves recovery. So why aren't Hispanic survivors ... American Heart Association News

Joe Granados was slumped in a chair when his wife – alerted by their children – came to check on him. He didn't seem like himself.

Alba Patricia Granados, a nurse, quickly realized her husband was having a stroke. "He couldn't speak, and he couldn't move the right side of his body," she said.

Joe had experienced similar symptoms earlier that morning but had recovered by the time he told his wife. Neither was too concerned because eight months earlier – the first time he had trouble walking and felt weakness in his right arm – doctors had attributed the symptoms to a possible migraine. After undergoing medical tests, he left the hospital in July 2021 with a clean bill of health.

But on that day in March 2022, doctors at a hospital near the family's home in Tucson, Arizona, said Joe was having a stroke. Complications emerged during surgery to remove a clot from a large vessel in his brain, but Joe survived. He was less than a month from his 52nd birthday.

After a couple of weeks in the hospital and six weeks at an inpatient rehabilitation center for speech, physical and occupational therapy, Joe returned home. He still attends outpatient rehab for three hours each week.

"He recently started riding recumbent trikes, and it's like the whole world opened up to him," she said.

While Joe has regained partial movement and ...

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