For Michel Hookimawillillene, 63, one of the most meaningful milestones in recovering from a stroke wasn’t measured in a clinic or a lab. It was the moment he could pick up a guitar and play again.
Hookimawillillene is from Attawapiskat. After his stroke, he was transferred hundreds of kilometres from home to Kingston for inpatient rehabilitation. When he was ready to leave hospital, the next stage of recovery brought another challenge familiar to many people living in Northeastern Ontario: how to access specialized rehabilitation closer to home.
Through Timmins and District Hospital’s (TADH) Community Stroke Rehabilitation (CSR) Program, Hookimawillillene was able to continue his recovery in Timmins, where he had a place to stay. There, he began working with occupational therapist Stephanie Cheng.
As Cheng got to know him, their conversations moved beyond what movements were difficult to what Hookimawillillene wanted to be able to do again. He told her he used to play guitar.
“Because of what I learned while in the program , I have the skills and knowledge to get the movements back and I have gone back to playing guitar again,” says Hookimawillillene.
That goal became part of his rehabilitation plan. Over five weeks, Hookimawillillene worked with Cheng three times a week, rebuilding the fine motor skills he needed to use his hands on the instrument. Eventually, he was able to play again.
For the CSR team, that is the purpose of community-based rehabilitation: helping people work toward goals that matter in their everyday lives.
“Rehabilitation is most meaningful when it connects to what a person wants to get back to doing,” says Cheng. “For one patient, that may be preparing a meal or safely getting around the house. For Michel, it was playing guitar. When we understand what matters to someone, we can build therapy around that goal.”
TADH’s interdisciplinary CSR team includes physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech-language pathology, a rehabilitation assistant, clerk and program coordination. Patients typically participate for about eight weeks, with the frequency and type of therapy tailored to their needs and goals.
Whenever possible, care is provided where people live. Team members can travel to patients within approximately one hour of Timmins, allowing therapists to see the physical environment a patient is returning to and adapt rehabilitation accordingly. If transportation is a barrier, home visits can also make care more accessible.
Working with patients in their own spaces can also reveal practical challenges that are difficult to predict in a clinical setting. A task that seems manageable in a therapy room may look significantly different when a patient tries it in their own kitchen, bathroom or living room.
“In a clinic, we can teach and practise a skill, but being in someone’s home can show us challenges that might never come up in an appointment,” Cheng says. “We can work with the space they actually have, answer questions as they arise and help make the transition home feel more manageable.”
For patients who live farther away, the team looks for other ways to provide support, including education and, where appropriate, virtual speech-language pathology services.
That flexibility is especially important in Northeastern Ontario, where geography can create significant barriers to follow-up care.
For someone from a remote community such as Attawapiskat, Timmins is still far from home. But it can offer access to specialized rehabilitation much closer to home than a centre such as Kingston, while creating opportunities to practise skills in a more familiar, real-world setting.
The CSR program at Timmins and District Hospital has supported approximately 60 patients so far this year and currently has about 15 active case files. As patients move from hospital back into the community, the team also provides a point of contact during a period when new questions and challenges often emerge.
For Hookimawillillene, that support helped turn a personal goal into a tangible sign of recovery.
Stroke rehabilitation meant more than improving movement in his hands. It meant regaining the ability to do something that had long been part of his life.
By the end of his rehabilitation, the guitar was back in his hands, and he was able to make music again.
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we proudly celebrate and recognize the incredible Timmins and District Hospital team at our St. Mary’s Garden site.
