Hi everyone. My dad had an aneurysm rupture on december 2nd, we have been in this process for over 4 months now. He is pretty stable at home but no talking, eating (just trough gastro) or movements on his legs and arms yet. He has started to make some sounds. Need advice if any has been with a large process to know when start speaking therapy, we are only providing since day 1 passive physical therapy. Would help some guideness of how to help him as well as family.
Thanks!!
Good morning Andrea! I think the most important thing is for your family to be able to take breaks from caretaking, even for a little bit. Caretakers have a tremendously difficult job and if you and your family don’t rest and get in some “me time” enjoying life, it will be that much harder for everyone involved including your Dad.
For speech, that’s a tough one. I could speak after I ruptured but not very well, I was diagnosed with aphasia and ataxia I think it was. I couldn’t remember the correct words, didn’t make the words sound correctly, stuttered really bad, repeated simple words in sets of three, etc. Went to Speech Therapy three times. BH learned to keep sentences very simple. If you can get a Speech Therapist to assess him, that would be fantastic. But his starting to make sounds seems like a great start. Have you tried playing his favorite music and encouraging him to hum along? Maybe sing songs to him that he would sing when you were a young child that he enjoyed. Music connects to our brains differently than words do I think. One of my Speech Therapists was a music major as well and helped me keep my words through music. They both had me working very hard and gave me what felt like a lot of homework to do several times a day. Looking back, it wasn’t so much but at the time it was a lot.
I found these articles
There are a lot more but I would really recommend him seeing a Speech Therapist if he can. I hope other members reply, they probably have a lot more ideas than I can come up with. Best of luck and please keep in touch!