‘Reba’ Star Christopher Rich on His Stroke and Road to Recovery: ‘I’m Feeling Really Good’
Learn why the actor says having a support system is so important
If you’re like us, you love when an actor on your old favorite show pops up on your new favorite show. So when Christopher Rich—who played Brock Hart on Reba with Reba McEntire and Melissa Peterman—guest-starred on Reba’s current hit Happy’s Place, it was a happy reunion indeed. In a powerful example of art imitating life, Rich played a stroke survivor whose mobility is affected on his left side. Here, everything you need to know about Christopher Rich’s stroke recovery, along with a neurologist’s insights into common symptoms, treatment options and why stroke survivors should remain hopeful.
Chistopher Rich overcame a major stroke
The 71-year-old actor recently opened up to Us Weekly about suffering a stroke the night before Easter in 2018, telling the magazine, “After my stroke and having a brain injury, it is like I got hit with an atomic bomb. So… it is a hard reset.”
Woman's World Answers
He described the challenges he faced in more detail in a 2019 video interview for the Centre of Neuro Skills (CNS), a stroke rehabilitation center in his home state of Texas. “I had complete left-side paralysis, no use of my left arm at all. My voice sounded abnormal to me, and a lot of saliva was running out of the left side of my mouth.” Rich added that he also experienced “memory issues” and had a hard time “setting tasks and achieving them.”
“With a brain injury, everything changes…But there’s hope—this, for me, is where the sun shines.”
—Christopher Rich
All of these symptoms are consistent with a blood clot on the right side of the brain, confirms neurologist James C. Grotta, MD, Director of Stroke Research, Clinical Institute for Research and Innovation, Memorial Hermann – Texas Medical Center and Director of the Mobile Stroke Unit Consortium. “The two sides of the brain have different functions,” he says. “Damage to the right hemisphere often leads to more spatial and cognitive problems, like memory loss, while damage to the left side causes more language impairment.”
Christopher Rich’s stroke recovery
The road to recovery is very rarely a straight line, as Rich revealed in the US Weekly interview: “When I finally got out of the hospital, I was moving around again. Then I threw a bunch of blood clots and ended up in the hospital with lung embolisms and debris on my heart,” he recalled. “After surviving all of that crap, I’m feeling really, really good.”
Unfortunately, such complications are not uncommon. “When patients are recovering from a major stroke, they’re relatively immobile in bed, which predisposes them to two main health problems: pneumonia and blood clots in the legs or deep vein thrombosis (DVT),” reveals Dr. Grotta. These blood clots can break loose and travel up to the lungs, potentially causing a pulmonary embolism.
While Rich has been open about the challenges his stroke has posed, he remains a testament to the adaptability of the brain. “Putting on deodorant one-handed has always been interesting,” he told CNS with a laugh, “but you learn a lot of techniques [to accomplish daily tasks].”
Therapy is key
Indeed, thanks to physical and occupational therapy (and a lot of grit), it is possible for stroke survivors to regain much of their mobility and function. “Though the most progress typically happens in the first few days and weeks after a stroke, you can continue to improve over the course of years,” shares Dr. Grotta. Rich is living proof of just that, revealing, “I came into CNS in a wheelchair, now I’m walking and I’m driving my car.”
One treatment to help restore movement in affected limbs—and that stroke survivors like Rich often undergo—is constraint therapy, explains Dr. Grotta. “It basically entails inhibiting or constraining the normal arm so that the patient is forced to use the affected limb to speed recovery.” In fact, a study in the Journal of Clinical Medicine showed that constraint-induced movement therapy helped 80 percent of stroke survivors regain movement of their arm in three weeks and 95 percent of patients achieved maximum recovery in nine weeks.
“The structure of the leg is such that you don’t need a lot of strength to use it like a crutch to support your weight as you walk, but it typically takes longer for the limbs of the upper body to recover, ” notes Dr. Grotta, adding that the fine motor skills in the hand and fingers are among the last to come back after a stroke.
He had stem cell therapy
In a 2019 video for a Texas regenerative medicine clinic, Rich shared that he underwent therapy designed to “redevelop neural pathways”: “It has been a major struggle but part of my treatment is coming here [to the clinic] to get a stem cell treatment to heal the right side of my brain where the blood clot happened.” He went on to reveal that stem cells were injected into his shoulder, which improved his mobility and got his “pain down about 80 percent.”
Though clearly promising, stem cell therapy is still in its infancy and remains “unproven,” per Dr. Grotta, who instead points to a tried-and-true treatment: Botox. “When the arm loses flexibility, the fingers can become involuntarily clenched, causing what are known as ‘contractures,’” he says. “Botox, a muscle relaxant, is often used to try to relieve that muscle tone.”
Christopher Rich’s new perspective post-stroke
Stroke survivors often carry the invisible pain of mental health challenges, a struggle Rich touched on in the CNS interview, when he admitted that it’s natural to wonder “Why me?”. In fact, post-stroke depression (PSD) is often “undertreated,” says Dr. Grotta, who adds that multiple studies, including one in the journal European Psychiatry, have shown antidepressants are effective at easing depression in stroke patients.
A different type of “medicine” that doesn’t require a prescription is the healing balm of social connections. Rich noted just that when describing the invaluable support of his wife Eva Halina Rich. “Treat your significant other nicely because you’re going to be relying on them, and don’t forget to ask other people for help because you can use all the help you can get.”
Rich continued that such compassion is a two-way street: “Also, be generous out in the world. I used to honk at people driving too slowly; now I think, I wonder if [the driver] is someone who’s had a brain injury. So maybe give them a break.”
If you are one of the 7 million stroke survivors in the U.S, give yourself a break, too, because there is hope at the end of the tunnel, as Rich told CNS: “At first it’s like lying at the bottom of a well, and you start trying to climb out. And there are people along the way who say, ‘Put your hand here and put your foot here,’ and up you go—and gradually, the sun starts shining again.” And if you’re a caregiver for someone with a stroke, consider joining a support group or reading Second Lives: The Journey of Brain-Injury Survivors and Their Healers, which Dr. Grotta highly recommends.
Conversation
All comments are subject to our Community Guidelines. Woman's World does not endorse the opinions and views shared by our readers in our comment sections. Our comments section is a place where readers can engage in healthy, productive, lively, and respectful discussions. Offensive language, hate speech, personal attacks, and/or defamatory statements are not permitted. Advertising or spam is also prohibited.
