Eclectic: Diane - The Purpose of Speech Therapy

Diane - The Pink House OTC

I think the hardest thing for me to deal with post-stroke is aphasia and Bob's inability to speak. That's saying a lot, since most of you know, I have quite a bit to deal with, in fact, you would not have wanted to be at The Pink House yesterday, when there was not one, not two, but three (count them) bowel movements and the last two were complete surprises: one all over the bed and the other landing smack dab into a pair of real underwear. GAA! I tell you, right now, there is a perfectly good pair of real underwear headed to the local landfill because I could just not deal with it. You'd think my gag reflex would be better by now, but alas, it is not. But I have digressed. I was talking about speech therapy.

Since those first post-stroke months, when Bob could not utter a word, only make sounds--sort of garbles and gurgles, I knew he was trying to speak. To get the words out. As a writer, the ability to communicate is far more important to me than, say, the ability to use the bathroom. And so, since those first days, it has been a long and constant struggle to find Bob's speech, to unlock his words.

For a long time, I've been searching for that magic key that would unlock those words. Pretty much I've been trying every type of therapy technique I could get my hands on. Certainly since the "professional" speech therapists have given up on Bob saying that his "prognosis was poor" or he was "functional" enough, I have been trying harder than ever to prove those saps wrong.

This morning, I woke to the sound of rain on the roof. And I thought, well, I won't be taking the dog on a long walk in this weather, so I rolled over figuring I had bought myself a little nap time. When I heard Bob, from the next room, call to me:

"Hey? um, hey?"

That's me he's calling for. I am sometimes known around here as "Hey? um, hey?" But I figured I'd just ignore him, pretend to be sleeping and catch a few more winks. But then he said,

"Hey! The sun is up!"

I nearly bolted upright in bed, not because the sun was up and that meant I should have my butt out of bed by now, but because that was a very good, spontaneous sentence. And Bob's main problem area now is saying anything spontaneous, i.e. those type of sentences which just express what's on his mind.

I recently ordered a copy of the book "The Teaching of Talking" by Mark Ittleman, who is a speech pathologist. Though I haven't even finished reading this book, the one thing I gleaned so far (though the author never really states it) is that the whole purpose of speech therapy is this: keep him talking. However you can, just keep him talking .....

See the full article The Purpose of Speech Therapy in The Pink House at the Corner.