Sarah Scott is a well-known young person with anomic aphasia on Youtube. Thousands have watched her progress since her stroke. Her parents relate their positive experience coming to the intensive aphasia program from the UK. Watch her videos at https://www.youtube.com/user/SymphUK.
It’s five years since Sarah had her stroke and I think it’s the right time for her. I think it’s an individual choice, but I think for Sarah five years is about right. She got over the initial shock and trauma of the stroke and made some recovery, but I think now is the right time and she’s really committed to it. It’s a really nice team here, nice sort of young team, really positive, and I think that’s made a difference too And it’s not a miracle cure, I don’t think we were expecting that anyway. It’s really put us on the right path I think and we will continue when we get home.
It’s been really a good experience and I think for somebody young it’s also quite good to come to Florida, it’s a nice environment. It’s a nice place, and the accommodation was really nice as well. We were quite pleased about that. Six weeks we were here and I think you sort of make it your home and I think it’s really comfortable and nice and I think that was quite a big part of it really.
Anaka and Brittany are both fairly young girls as well which helped. Sarah build up a good rapport with them. That certainly helped, as I said earlier about making it fun. They could all have a laugh together so it wasn’t just head down work all the time. They could have a bit of fun while they were doing it which makes the time pass more.
I think that was something we didn’t want. We didn’t want a hospital environment in a clinic, we’ve had enough of that through the years. And I think this was a nice sort of supportive environment. Sarah still had to work really hard every day and homework too, but we could see her progress and it’s been brilliant.
I think in the UK we were, if we were lucky getting one hour of therapy a week, and I don’t think that was enough to keep the progress going and keep the momentum going. I think intensive therapy has been really good for Sarah. And having the brain stimulation as well is something that we don’t get in the U.K.