Hi @Babs03 and welcome to the community 
I’m sorry to hear of your husbands stroke, that is a traumatic experience you both and I’m sure it will take some time to recovery from the shock. While he is still in hospital you should take advantage of this time to take good care of yourself, eat well, take walks in this lovely sunshine while we still have it, and try to get a good night’s sleep. Easier said than done I know, but you’ll need your health and strength for when he does come home, so take advantage to build that up now while you can.
Time: give him all the time he need to hear, process and understand what you say. So don’t bombard him with a lot of information, just item at a time.
Patience: be prepared to wait for him to answer and don’t talk over him
Understanding: Tolerance! He doesn’t want to be this way any more than you do. He’s not being lazy or dismissive or thoughtless or fabricating anything because he just doesn’t have the capacity to do so. In fact, pay particular attention to any such fabrications:
Time, Patience and Understanding are what he needs right now.
Short term memory is one of the most common issues in early post stroke, difficulties remembering both with recent events and forming new memories. That’s because his brain has been damaged. And the first 6 months of stroke recovery all about healing and repair. The brain is doing its mop up and repair work, continually reassessing damage and gradually getting things back up and running wherever possible. So the brain is running a very reduced emergency service at the moment.
Because of this, your husband needs lots of rest throughout the day, resting is the best time for the brain to process and store all that it has taken in during the day. But it can only take in so much, and it’s not very discerning in what that may be or that just might be how it appears to be from the outside. His brain just doesn’t have the capacity or ability to store and recall, it’s too busy on the inside just now to keep him alive and functioning, and getting things back up and running as best it can.
I’m 4yrs post stroke and mine was minor in comparison to many on here. That first year post stroke was the worst for my short term memory. Just to retain a sentence to repeat was impossible. I’m just thankful for my very patient family because my memory was literally like sieve back then. I’d forget just as fast as a sentence was spoken. Appointment even written on a calendar were useless, even had notes dotted here, there and everywhere, but I had to remember to look at them, to read them, which I couldn’t.
So my family had to be my memory, my diary, my to do list, until gradually over a long period of time, I began retaining more information here and there, managing to hold bits of information for longer and longer. But I also had the additional challenges of not being able to read, write or speak. 4yrs on and I can remember an appointment 6mths from now, I can read a 6 digit code and retain long it in my memory long enough to key it in to a computer. Memory can still be a bit spotty but on the whole I’m happy where it’s at 
Time heals, you just have to be patient, tolerant and forgiving 
Regards, Lorraine