Frustration, thy name is aphasia...

J.J.'s speech is still getting better, but not by the leaps and bounds it was doing at first. He's still getting hung up on nouns (although, strangely, proper nouns are not nearly the problem they were at first. I was putting him through his paces yesterday and asked him who the members of his department at work are. He answered Brian, Jay, James, Carrie and Kevin, which is correct as far as I know). Worst are the names of objects he doesn't use every day. Profanity does not seem to be lagging in his speech--he's been know to toss a four letter word in when he gets hung up in a sentence! He is careful not to do this in front of the kids, though.

Conversing with the kids is the biggest problem J.J.'s encountering right now. He will pause to find a word and the kids will chime in to try to finish his sentence, which just completely derails him. Take this as lesson number one when dealing with someone with aphasia--be patient! Most of the time if I wait, J.J. can either figure out the word he's looking for or talk his way around it. If he's terminally stuck, after a minute or two I ask him, "Can I take a guess?" He usually says yes, then I see if I can supply the word he was looking for. If I find it (which I have about a 95% accuracy rate!) then I cue him to get him to say it. For instance, if he's looking for the word newspaper, after I've confirmed that this is the word he wants, I will say, "Newspaper. Nnnnnnn," which is his cue to try the word for himself. Since J.J.'s receptive language center was not affected by his stroke, he is extremely responsive to cues.

I cannot begin to understand how frustrating it is for J.J. to know what he wants to say and not be able to say it. He's likened it to that uncomfortable feeling you get when someone asks you a question you KNOW you know the answer to (i.e., who wrote the Star Spangled Banner?) and you can't quite find the answer but instead get the "it's on the tip of my tongue" feeling. Think of how annoying that feeling is, where the harder you try to find the answer, the farther away it gets. Then at 2:00 a.m. you sit up in bed and exclaim, "Francis Scott Key!" J.J. will sometimes do this as well, blurting out a word that has to do with a conversation we had a few hours earlier. But hey, this shows his memory is intact, at least!

We've got a low key day planned. I'm listing some stuff on Craigslist (everything that's not bolted down in my house right now is running the risk of being listed--just because I'm on an extended cleaning spree!), then I want to get a little bit of touch-up cleaning done. J.J. is wanting to go bowling later; his speech therapist has suggested this as a great therapy exercise for J.J. since it involves both the physical things we are trying to work on (like balance!) as well as involving a lot of higher level cognitive functions, like spatial planning, sequencing and problem solving. We didn't go to church this morning (this daylight savings time thing is sooo hard to get used to!) but I'd like to make it to evening service. And somewhere in there, I want to get some INHP stuff done as well.

Hope your weekend has been as relaxed and productive as ours!