About 15 months ago my mother (62 yrs., very active and independent) suffered a severe bleed on the left side, leaving her without speech and writing abilities. She is now in a nursing home, cannot communicate, read, eat (still has peg tube) or walk. She is very alert and expressive, responds with nodding yes or no, and has her old sense of humor — we can get her to laugh quite a bit with all of our “inside” jokes. But she cannot make her wishes known, which I know frustrates her very much. She does receive speech therapy in the nursing home, but with minimal results.

Recently I have come across a program through strokefamily.org, that claims with their methodology and a great deal of practice, the dormant speech center on the other side of the brain can be activated. Since Mom was ambidexterous and also bilingual (she responds appropriately to questions in her native language), I am inclined to believe this might have some benefit for her.

Has anyone had any experience with this program? It is quite expensive and I would like to get as much feedback as possible before purchasing.

Any other suggestions for helping my Mom would be greatly appreciated.

Dear Sherry,

I did some more checking with a few colleagues — none had heard of nor tried the strokefamily program. Again, this is not a negative response, just an “I don’t know.” The therapist working with your mother might try using some similar materials and setting up a program for your family to follow. The focus and intensity of practice with various forms of communication will likely be quite helpful.

Good luck,
Anne

My mom had a stroke in March and I ordered one of the kits from StrokeFamily. org. Unfortunately, mom has not wanted to work on it. She has worked like a trojan on PT, but seems to have given up on the speech. The kit has some good stuff, but after I rec’d it I thought it was very pricey for what you actually got in materials…not that it wouldn’t be beneficial, I just felt like I could have put together the same things myself. I have seen through some other internet searches that there are websites that you can download the most commonly used words for free (don’t remember the site address though). If you have additional questions about the kit, feel free to email me.