Nairda and her husband, Aldo, twice came from Puerto Rico to get help for his severe Broca’s aphasia. As a small business owner and very social person, it has been very hard to their family since his stroke. Since his therapy was limited, she helped him at home by learning what to do from their therapists.
He is a very dynamic person and he loved to have hobbies. Aldo’s 56 years old now, so when he had this stroke last year in March, precisely the 21st, he also owned a business. So he works very hard, but at the same time, I think that he knew how to have a balance in his life. He really enjoy not only to be with the family but with his friends and he is a very noble person. He really has a good friend that always were looking out for him.
He likes to help many people, so even enjoying life is through hobbies and with the family. He also like to help other people very much. Thank God Aldo is a strong person so he recover very fast in terms of physically related that he can walk, that he can use his arm. The fact that he really loses the ability to speak, to write and to read, it’s very hard because there is no way for him to communicate with others. It’s very frustrating for him doing that.
So what I did was to just to to look at all the things that we have in our home. I decided to put a schedule for Aldo to have to take advantage of the day of keeping learning and practicing even though it’s going to take a year, two years or three or whatever. We know that he is going to improve.
He found out that even though in Puerto Rico we have great therapist, it was only for 45 minutes. I understood that Aldo has a very severe aphasia, recognized and he has a very severe apraxia also but at the same time, having all day for him doing nothing or just 45 minutes of speech therapy was not enough. I just decided to try having like a schedule prepare by myself based on the experience that my daughter and I had while he was in the rehabilitation hospital. So we took all the therapist and learn so we were doing the same during the afternoon. He was taken in the morning so we repeated in the afternoon.
Then I put an alarm in his own phone, cell phone in order for him and for the person who is helping me taking care of him to remember, to remind them that they need to stop what they are doing in order for them to go back and to study. I noticed that definitely, if I find something that can be done by professionals for Aldo to do, to keep doing that in a way that someone who has more techniques and knowledge, I was sure that definitely he’s going to improve.