Jamie’s husband, Kory, was left with very severe apraxia after his stroke. He was discharged from therapy with nowhere to go and no one to help them. Intensive aphasia therapy helped him become more his old self and gave him hope and something to look forward to each day. He didn’t want to leave, even after 8 weeks. But The Aphasia Center gave them a means to keep making progress and to know that “the possibilities are endless” instead of limited by discharge.
Our insurance was so limited when we were at the rehab hospital last summer in 2015, my sister did some research. And she googled ‘Speech Therapy with no insurance’ links, because insurance was the reason we were discharged. They limited us, they tied our hands. And she came across the Aphasia Center here in Saint Petersburg. And she told me about it right away and we made contact last summer via email and different things. And so I already had that thought process going in my head. “Okay, we have something we can look into”.
I wanted to hear Kory’s voice again, that was one of my goals. I wanted to be able to hear him say some words. I think the biggest goal for me to be very honest, even above and beyond, was to give him some pride back. Because he has so desperately wanted to communicate and that has been the biggest area of frustration. And so I think one of the biggest goals for me was to help him have the opportunity to get some words and some speech and some conversation. And then in the long run, earn his pride back because this has been hard on him.
You know, when we first started, the sounds. They were just working on sounds, producing a variety of different sounds. And when that first started to click for him and we were doing them in homework and he was moving on and he was getting new sounds and new sounds and then those sounds turned into words. And then in my opinion over these eight weeks, Kory has become more of himself again. More affectionate and smiles, and his orneriness. And he’s always had that even at the rehab hospital. But it just shines, it just comes out. And he’s up and at ‘em early every morning and we do his homework at night and we do his homework in the morning before we come back. And he wants to come and he watches that clock in the morning and he wants to come here because he knows what he’s doing. He knows, and he can hear himself. And now, besides producing words whether it be with cuing from a therapist or he can be able to do it on his own, he can hear and differentiate whether he’s saying it correctly or not. Things are just starting to click and he’s just continuing to work. He has that drive and he loves it here.
After seeing what was happening with him, and then, watching his demeanor and watching him in that last session and then helping him with homework. I guess in my mind, I felt that we did above and beyond what I really thought. It’s humbling to watch this whole process. How the therapists interact and jump in to help him. And how they’ve trained me to help him. In my opinion I think we’ve met and done beyond because not only do we have a springboard to work from now, we have hope. And we can take that and our action plan, and we can take it home and we can keep progressing. And Kory over the last few days, and even the last week, has been getting more jittery and communicating to us and the therapists that he wants to stay. And he knows that we have to go home, we have our children. But he also knows that we can continue the progress. We’ve just started. We’ve just cracked, we’ve just made a dent in the possibilities of what can happen. It’s gonna be a long road, it’s going to not happen overnight. He has to continue working hard but I believe with everything after coming here that we just have that foundation set. And the possibilities are endless.