Nearly a year and still not much improvement with speech

About stroke
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It will be a year at end of Nov since husband had major stroke.

his speech is still poor. Someone on here suggested getting his hearing tested which we did and he has had hearing aids for a week but speech has not improved. He says when he talks it sounds normal to him but to me it is all muffled and sounds like he has something in his mouth! I usually have to ask him to repeat himself and he gets really annoyed.

The Speech Therapist is visiting tomorrow but it may be the last one of 4 sessions. She will keep saying she can understand him OK but the rest of us can’t and we are with him 24/7. Last visit she brought a gadget which measures decibels and she was trying to get him to talk louder.

He also still cannot use his dominant hand at all and can only walk a few steps in the house with a quadstick. He gets totally fed up very often. Sometimes I don’t know what to concentrate on with all these problems. :cry:

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Keep on practicing, it took me almost two years before I stopped shuffling and could take a proper step but I Just kept on exercising. I’m nowhere near perfect five years on, still use a stick to walk if I have to go to the shops or out and about. I imagine there are quite a few online resources for speech rehabilitation. Singing out sentences I have heard is beneficial. My speech was not affected in so much as forming words or sentences, it was the brain fog that got in the way of my speech.

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I recommend this site, it’s free:

The idea behind it is it measures how loud you are like you describe.

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@Trisha2

I had a stroke last Nov and its a very slow process for any sort of recovery. The speech therapist can understand your husband as she is trained to understand all sorts of sounds. I remember when my eldest daughter was 2 yrs old and only I could understand what she was saying, its the same with stroke patients. Don’t get frustrated as this will only hold your husband back. Be so so patient. Be grateful to have him and make the most of what you have :four_leaf_clover: :folded_hands: :sparkling_heart: He is the same person inside and you will never understand how he feels that he was the one who had the stroke. It eats at you

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Keep going. Stroke recovery often takes years not months. I know it won’t seem like it but your husband has made progesss & that should continue if he works at it. It is so frustrating when things aren’t going as we would like.

Ideallyyou need to keep working at all of it byt if you need to prioritise what to rehab first then pick the thing that will have the biggest positive impact on your lives. Rehab can be a full-time job but perhaps work on different areas each day so you aren’t trying to do too much.

You are doing an amazing job with your husband. I take my hat off to you.

Best wishes

Ann

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Thanks everyone. One physio told him he would never regain use of his dominant right hand. I was cross at the time but there is no sign of any life in it even now. He hates being so limited with just one working hand.

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Hello Tracy - How are you?

How is your husband?

How are you two getting on with each other?

What’s with these crazy questions?

Let me see if this might help. Are you [still] trying to run before you can walk?

Thinking back to when you first joined us here on this forum and how you felt then, has there been any change in the way you (both of you) think?

I know it has been very hard for you because your husband simply has not had the support he deserves and should have had and would have had had he been living in another part of the country - this is down to the lottery effect of the NHS stroke survivor support system. Whilst this is true, there are things that we can still do ourselves, and no it is not easy, but it comes down to how badly do you want it.

I therefore ask, how badly do you want it?

The opinion of the one physio is totally meaningless in terms of whether or not your husband will regain use of his dominant right hand. It is one person’s opinion and I am guessing it is not even based on a through analysis and assessment of your husbands capabilities.

Being cross is OK, but being resigned to accept this is not! There is no sign of any life in it even now? So what? What has been done in order to bring life back into this dominant hand? You may have seen many posts on here where survivors say it took them years to get some improvements- years. Your husband is not one year into his stroke survivor mode and he has not been getting targeted rehab/physio.

Is he on this forum? Is your husband able to come onto this forum and see how he can help himself so that he doesn’t have hate being so limited with just one working hand?

Can he watch online videos that show you how you can exercise and build your strengths?

Can he spend just 5 minutes a day doing something that targets a specific thing he want to achieve?

Please do this - spend 10 minutes with your husband watching this.

This is just an example - there are many exercises that can be done depending on your particular condition and ability. There is absolutely no need to accept that you will not recover.

Now, I am no expert on this, but I know someone who is way more qualified than me and I am sure you have already met her and I am sure she will already have given you pointers, but she never gives up.

So here we go …

@EmeraldEyes - Lorraine, Any thoughts?

:pray:

Tracy - I note there have been several responses to you reaching out and all of them are saying time is key to this. This is absolutely true. Revisit these and discuss with your husband and see if you can’t get going :slight_smile:

My mother is in her seventh year of her stroke and her starting point was almost certainly worse than your husbands.

She continues to recover and make progress despite getting no help (worth mentioning) from OT/Physio etc.

It is her willpower and self belief and if I may say so “get up and go” attitude that has got her here. She too, could have sat there feeling sorry for herself and hating this and hating that and blaming this and blaming that, but instead she made a choice. She chose to help herself. This has been her lifelong philosophy and nothing will ever change that. She will not be beaten by stroke.

Her story is amazing and you can read snippets on this forum.

Wishing you and your husband all the best.

Here’s another one.

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Hello @Trisha2 i’k 4 years post-stroke and my stroke affected side, left is still weak. I use my right hand to control my left all the time. I do believe your husband WILL REGAIN THE USE OF HS STROKE Affected arm he needs tonreally focus on trying to use it even just small simple things like isolating each digit in time this will improve to eing able to lift it. I can’t lift. Mine straight up into the air above my uead, my right arm which was once weak and limp is near perfect. Persist never give up. I often say i’m a 14-month-old toddler in a 50-year-old body. So think of your husbsnd in these terms he jeeds to learn to do everything again. All the wiring that once connected his limbs to his brain have died. So he is in effect starting sgain. Be patient and encouraging as you would be to a haby who is learning to do all the human things he used to do as second nature.

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I’m in my tenth year of recovery and my speech is terrible. I worked hard on it but then Covid reared it ugly head and cut down on my ability to drop into all the local opshops where I could chat to the staff since they were not paid and I wasnt wasting the bosses time.

I’m still working on it by reading out loud for a while daily before the news comes on TV and I have time to spare.

Deigh

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I use the the term oppshops, it tickles my friends here, just to clarify for readers, it translates to charity shops :joy:

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