Marita had always considered herself an active person and never expected to experience a stroke. So, when she woke one morning unable to move, it came, in her words, "out of nowhere."
"I went to bed fine and then I woke up and just thought I had a cramp and went to move and there was nothing there," she says.
It took an MRI to confirm the stroke. For a few days, she and her family didn't know exactly what they were dealing with, and the experience left Marita with many questions about what lay ahead.
"At least it gave us answers and a path and a direction," she says.
That path led her, a few months later, to Albury Wodonga Health's Life After Stroke group - an eight-week community rehabilitation program that Marita describes as one of the most valuable parts of her recovery journey.
How the Program Came Together
The program grew out of a pattern the community rehab team kept noticing. Occupational Therapist Rochelle Shackleton explains that, in the years before COVID, they saw a run of working-age clients come through with strokes - people who'd been well beforehand, with mild symptoms, whose journeys through the hospital system hadn't always been straightforward.
What these clients had in common wasn't obvious on the outside: fatigue, sensory overload, difficulty concentrating in busy environments. Invisible symptoms that made work, driving, parenting, or grocery shopping harder, but were easy for others to overlook.
"They're still able to function, but it's difficult, and they get fatigued quickly," Rochelle says.
The team began bringing these clients together. What started as a "young stroke group" has since grown into the Life After Stroke program, now open to anyone with mild symptoms following a stroke or transient ischemic attack (TIA) who is otherwise high-functioning, regardless of age. The shift, Rochelle explains, reflected reality on the ground: stroke is often seen as an older person's condition, but the program was drawing people well outside that assumption.
Inside the Eight Weeks
The group meets for 90 minutes a week, with a different focus each session: understanding stroke and the hospital process; neuroplasticity and brain recovery; fatigue management; nutrition; exercise; emotional health; returning to work; and, in the final week, goal-setting.
A break is built into the middle of every session, a deliberate choice given how quickly these clients can become fatigued or cognitively overloaded.
But it's not the content participants talk about most – it's the conversations around it.
"The big part of what the clients always say about it is talking to each other and feeling like they're not the only one who's got those issues," Rochelle says.
For people whose symptoms are largely invisible, who hear "you look so well" while privately struggling with mental fog or exhaustion, simply being believed can be its own form of treatment.
Marita found this to be true in her own experience.
"You have your family, but no one understands unless they've had a stroke," she says.
Marita initially focused heavily on her physical recovery, but found that the less visible aspects of stroke recovery presented their own challenges. The "mind fog" was something she hadn't expected, and she found the sessions focusing on mood, anxiety and emotional adjustment particularly valuable.
"Just to know that you're not alone… the mind stuff was probably the most important thing for me," she says.
Why It Works and Why It's Needed
The program's design reflects years of trial and error. Telehealth alternatives haven't matched the impact of meeting in person, and while a national telehealth service exists for stroke risk management, Rochelle notes Albury Wodonga Health's group fills a different role which is genuinely rehabilitative and peer-connected, not just informational.
“The multidisciplinary approach to running the program is unique to our service, and such an important part of what makes it work well,” Rochelle says. The program is co-facilitated by an occupational therapist, social worker, and rehabilitation nurse, in addition to an exercise physiologist and a dietitian who come in for specific sessions.
“There is also access to other disciplines like speech pathology and physiotherapy, whom we refer to if needed during the program.”
Feedback has been consistent: people are surprised by how much they learn each week, even when they arrive assuming they already understand their condition. That surprise points to a broader gap. Referrals largely come through hospital and allied health teams, but Rochelle suspects a wider cohort - particularly people with milder symptoms or a TIA - never make it to the program, sometimes because their GP doesn't think to refer them.
It's a gap the team is hoping to close by getting the word out.
For Marita, the value of the program comes down to knowing that you're not alone in the journey. "It was one of the best things I could have done," she says. "I would recommend anyone who's had a stroke to do it."
Know someone who could benefit from the program? For referrals or further information, contact the Wodonga Community Rehabilitation Centre on (02) 6051 7400