Melissa: Keeping around people who are positive and understand the drive to keep moving forward and hope. Because you are going to run into people who are either going to say something negative or who think you are wasting your time or wasting John’s time. I think you just have to cut that out of your life. You always have to with the positive, hopeful, forward motion.
Shari: My challenge is to remember to repeat things and talk slowly and give him time to come up with the words he’s trying to get and not to accept the word “thing” or “I don’t know”. Just to continue the policies and procedures that we’ve learned here at The Aphasia Center.
Tammy: As far as a caregiver, it is a lifetime. You know, marriage is for better or for worse. So I guess while you’re enduring the worst, you have to remember the best and go back and relate to those times because that’s what’s going to get you through. It’s hard. You have to remember that they didn’t do anything for this to happen to them. You know, it just happened. Bad things happen to good people all the time. And I’m going to start getting emotional and I don’t know why.
Patricia: From day one, the nurses and the doctors, everybody, they’re going to tell you to take care of yourself so you have to get the rest when they get the rest. You have to get exercise while they exercise. You also emotionally, it’s up and down. You have to retreat, have someone you can talk to. If you’re a believer, you can pray. You will be uplifted if you spend that time within yourself coming to grips with this. Nothing has changed with your feelings except for you find that you can care more about each other in a different way. And you have to rely on each other. So it’s a mutual care for each other. Although the caregiver has more of the burden, it can be a joy to see that person grow.