Table 4.

Representative participant responses.

Quote	Theme/Topic	Participant Quote
1	Acute Recovery	“So when I had my stroke, um, it was pretty shocking. I knew what it was, I’ve had enough first aid training to know the signs. I knew I was having one, though I was still surprised … I was in the (first) hospital for five days, and had absolutely no motion in my arm, my hand, or my shoulder, on the left side.”
2	Inpatient Rehab	“The thing about rehab is you, you start to learn that it can become pretty routine. And they can actually set you up for doing a lot of stuff on your own. So you have to be very motivated to do that. Motivation was not a problem for me. Early on, because (I) had the time, and I had the drive to want to use, particularly, my arm and hand much more than I could … I told (the second) hospital that I wanted two plus weeks of rehab. By the time I left, I could walk on my own with a cane … I didn’t have, I had very, very limited motion in my arm, and my shoulder, and my hand. But their goal was to make me self-sufficient.”
3	Recovery at Home	“The arm took a long time, a frustratingly long time. When I went back to work, I still had to get help via software to type. I couldn’t use my hand … I could lift my arm and shrug my shoulders but the fingers itself wouldn’t work. And I was given a lot of home exercises, I would start my days doing all that. At least an hour or two of home exercises, um, pretty religiously too. And for the most part I tried to do normal things. I tried to do dishes, fold clothes, mow my lawn, clean the house … we played a lot of board games, and I would totally use my left hand for everything, which wasn’t normal for me, but was good for that … recovery. And it got better and better, you know, to the point where for the first time I could cut a piece of meat with a fork and a knife. It was pretty exhilarating, that was a big celebration, even though (laughing) my hand would still dip, like, into my horseradish sauce eating prime rib!”
4	Recovery is Ongoing	“(When people ask me how far I’ve come) I usually answer that in three ways. Totally, about 70%. My leg, about 90%, but there’s still differences and weakness in my knee. Arm … probably 60%. There are days it feels like 90%, and there are days, or times in a day, where it feels less. I know I’m not 100%, and I may not be either, and I’m okay with that. You know, cause I can walk. I can run, I can talk. But the things that I notice now, they’re subtle… subtle to most people, but they’re very noticeable to me.”
5	Perceptions of sEMG Use	“I was intrigued … however, I don’t know what all the readings tell you, I mean, so that is of interest, what you all were seeing … I didn’t dislike anything though, but what I thought was compelling about it was everybody told me that this (hand function return) would be slow. Well, guess what? Eight months later, this is still recovering. So I was, I was hopeful that it would show signs of things that are occurring when I couldn’t physically feel it … if you had other scientific evidence that things were happening, even beyond their notion that it would, it gives you a lot of hope. You just have to be patient, and it’s harder to take when someone tells you, but easier to understand if someone actually shows you.”
6	Limitations of sEMG Sensors	“When you and I got together, it was a lot to take on and off. That’s kind of a pain, right? I’m wondering if there is a way to do kind of both. That … that has multiple individual muscle sensors where you pull a sleeve on, for example. As long as you align it correctly, it’s getting a, a number of muscles.”
7	sEMG as a Motivator for Improvement	“For the most part when I was at my, my worst, I couldn’t tell if things were really going differently, but maybe it was cause it was so subtle. Cause I want big changes or I want big improvements. But again seeing some improvement, whatever scale, scientifically with your data, could be a big boost. Because there were times where I can tell no difference at all, but I’m sure there was something there. And at home, you’re doing this on your own, that’s the longer-term harder stuff. If you have a way of telling that at home, it’s kind of nice to get that affirmation through any means you can.”