Coming Back from a Stroke: How Riverside Helped Gerardo Cahue Survive and Thrive

“Oh, my, I’m in the hospital. What happened?”

That’s what Gerardo Cahue wanted to ask his wife when he woke up in the intensive care unit at Riverside Medical Center. But his mouth couldn’t form the words. Cahue would later learn that he’d had a stroke.

Nearly two days earlier, Cahue had started his early morning supervisor shift at a manufacturing company when he suddenly collapsed.

“I fell, like a piece of wood, to the floor,” says Cahue, 64, of Frankfort, as he recalls the April 2024 incident.

An ambulance rushed Cahue to Riverside, whose emergency stroke team and a neurologist determined his stroke was triggered by a clot. Cahue received medicine to dissolve the clot that was blocking his brain’s blood supply. Giving this specialized medication quickly can help reduce permanent disability.

“All the team in the room at the moment did an amazing job,” Cahue says.

Road to recovery

After his stroke, Cahue began inpatient rehabilitation at Riverside. Over the next few weeks, he underwent extensive physical, occupational and speech therapy, provided by a “great team,” he says. He regained the use of the muscles he needs for speech, as well as other physical abilities. After his hospital discharge, Cahue continued rehab three days a week, from June to October, at Riverside’s Frankfort Campus Physical Therapy, just five minutes from his home.

“He still had a lot of deficits as far as his day- to-day function,” says Cahue’s Riverside physical therapist, Alex Denklau, DPT. “A lot of what we focused on, especially during the first part of his rehab, was trying to help him regain the movement and motor skills of his larger leg muscles. We helped him do the simple things that a healthy person may take for granted—even just getting up and being able to go to the bathroom. Those little things were very challenging.”

Steady progress

Cahue was motivated to get back to his active lifestyle, including playing soccer with his kids, working and completing household chores.

“Those things, you could tell, really drove him,” Denklau says.

After a stroke, rehab focuses on helping people overcome their deficits, often through repetitive exercises that strengthen muscles and “get them to fire again,” Denklau notes.

At first, Cahue used a walker. Over time, he was able to walk with a cane—though not yet on his own.

“He did a tremendous job throughout, pushing himself and often doing more than we even gave him as far as homework to do outside of therapy,” Denklau says.

“He’s doing wonderfully,” Denklau adds, noting that, although Cahue has completed therapy, he still stops by to see his team on his way to doctor appointments.

Feeling better, feeling grateful

Cahue appreciates how his therapy team challenged him to gradually increase his activity level, never forcing but always encouraging him. Cahue says he is about 80% recovered. He is able to perform activities of daily living, including cooking and driving. And he’s hoping to return to work.

Cahue expresses deep gratitude to his entire Riverside team—and to his family, including his children, Bianca and Andy, for their love and support and for taking him to and from therapy.

“Thank you, God,” Cahue says. “Now I can continue my life.”

His wife, Patricia Cahue, had this to say about the care her husband received in the critical first moments of his stroke and throughout his rehab journey:

“They acted fast when he was in the emergency room,” she says. “And while he was in the hospital, everyone there was just absolutely amazing. It is very noticeable how much he progressed in such little time.”

To celebrate, Patricia had T-shirts made for her husband with positive messages, like, “Nice try, stroke. I’m still here.”

“He had a stroke, but he fought,” she says. “He fought hard and he survived.”

Get back to your active life

To make an appointment for physical therapy or other outpatient rehabilitation services, call (815) 214-9023.