Joe had moderately severe anomia, which greatly affected his ability to have a conversation with his spouse, Gary. Gary learned effective strategies to help Joe communicate better and how to step back and give Joe more independence. Gary was surprised at Joe’s writing abilities and Joe’s increased confidence in speaking more loudly and more often.
The main thing was we were very dissatisfied with the insurance-controlled speech therapy. We were only given two hours max that insurance would cover. And it would end up being, they said an hour twice a week, but it would end up being 45 minutes, a lot of times 30 minutes by the time they’d get set up, they would run late. We were lucky to get an hour and a half a week. And we got tired of it and so finally we just quit. We went in and out and in and out for about two and a half years and then I found out about your program. And I said “Joe, we need to do this”, and that’s how we came here. We basically got fed up with the insurance industry controlling his cure, or not cure, but his help.
I wanted us to have more conversation. One on one, literal conversation, not me saying “say this say this do that do that” and I wanted him to be more fluent with technology because he loves technology.
He’s definitely more independent. And what he will do now is that it’s helped draw him out of his shell. He’s making more of an effort to actually talk and whereas before I felt like a lot of times I was talking for him. And that’s happened in, I could see it the first week. And now after the fourth week, he’s really, he’s bouncing back. And it’s snowballing. I’ve noticed, too, that he’s always had a very soft voice and his voice now is, the volume, is stronger. He was talking in a whisper when we came and now it’s, like today when he was giving the speech the volume was really right on. So that’s been the biggest improvement, his stepping up so to speak and our being able to talk more without having all the cues and my saying this.
I can see now things that I can do now to help him with the strategies they’ve taught him - turns out he’s very skilled with his writing. And now I know, if he stumbles over a word, don’t give him the word, write it out. Little things like that, all the strategies we’ve learned.
100%. We’ll be back.