In my last blog post, I talked about the difficulty some individuals who have had a stroke or TBI have accepting AAC. This time, I’d like to look at the issue of acceptance from the perspective of family members. For many individuals who have had a stroke or TBI, support from the communication partner is [...]
Finally! After two years of dropped calls and dead zones, my husband and I are going to be switching cell phone carriers! While I am excited about the thought of having conversations without apologizing 5 times for being disconnected, I am not looking forward to learning a new phone. I am not looking forward to [...]
One of my former patients, a man I’ll call Josh, knew exactly what he wanted to say. He also knew exactly how he wanted to say things—using as many words as possible. Why? Well, after his traumatic brain injury (TBI), Josh was unable to speak more than a few words so he used a DynaVox [...]
“Matthew” was in a car accident that resulted in a traumatic brain injury (TBI). He was in his early 30s at the time, was married, and had a young daughter. During his recovery process, Matthew spent a lot of time away from his family—either in while he was in the hospital for rehabilitation, a nursing [...]
At some point in your recovery from a stroke or TBI, someone may have mentioned going to a support group meeting. These groups can provide at least 4 benefits:
The opportunity to be around people who know what it is like to live with a stroke or TBI. No matter how much friends, physicians, nurses, or [...]
A member of my family, I’ll call him Jonas, recently had a stroke. While he is still able to communicate verbally, he does experience difficulty with vision, memory, word finding, use of his right hand, and mobility. As a result, Jonas has not been able to take care of all of the everyday things that [...]
A while ago, Bethany Diener wrote an entry in this blog called “Ah-ha.” In it, she talked about that moment when someone just seems to “get” the purpose of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). Sometimes, however, people seem to understand the purpose of AAC—they just don’t get the purpose of it for them. Or, a [...]
Both as a practicing speech-language pathologist and in my role at DynaVox, I have heard the following questions, or variations on the following questions, many times.
“He can meet his basic needs, either by doing it himself or telling me. He doesn’t need AAC, right?”
“I understand her when we are at home…and we are at home [...]
When I was in college and graduate school studying to be a speech-language pathologist, I learned about aphasia. I learned the definition of aphasia and the many different characteristics associated with it. I even learned a bunch of different tests that could be used to determine what type of aphasia someone had. After graduating and [...]
One of the patients I remember very clearly from my time as and SLP at a large rehabilitation hospital is a man I’ll call Arthur. Arthur was in his 50s and had had a brainstem stroke a number of years before I met him. As a result of the stroke, Arthur was unable to speak [...]
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