Today was the last day of the Intensive Aphasia Program - my clinical practicum placement for this semester. It was a really good experience - kind of like a summer camp, where everyone comes together everyday for three weeks and works really hard and even meets others like themselves, and then it's suddenly over. So, I just feel the need to process it and write a bit about it here.
Anyway, the program is for stroke survivors with
Aphasia (a language disorder involving production and/or comprehension of language). It is one of about 5-10 in the country, so I feel pretty lucky to have been able to participate in it.
Participants (some of whom came from out of state) came to the clinic every weekday for three weeks and had one hour of individual speech therapy, one hour of therapy at a computer with language programs, 30 minutes of social time and one hour of therapy in a group or in pairs. Each student clinician (like me!) was paired with a speech-language pathologist (SLP), and we were in charge of two patients. My SLP and I would trade off patients - I'd see Patient #1 one day and then we'd switch the next day.
Patient #1 is really young (under 40) and had a stroke about 1.5 years ago. He was really good at getting his point across and even making jokes, even though he mostly communicated using one- to two-word utterances. Patient #2 is just a few years older than my dad, and he had a stroke about a year ago. At first glance/listen, he really didn't seem impaired at all. He has recovered really well and just has some word blocks here and there. We are doing post-treatment evaluations next week, so I'm really looking forward to seeing if either of them made gains at all. The average gains made for the past 7 years of the program has been about 12% improvement on a standardized test. We'll see where my patients fall next week...
So today, Patient #2 (who had kind of been grumpy about some therapy tasks, and I never really knew if he was happy to be there or not) thanked us all for the entire group of stroke survivors and told us that all the survivors had chatted that morning about how they all feel like they've improved during the past three weeks. Then they all clapped and thanked us for our help - it was nice and warm and fuzzy. Then some of the survivors shared some of their stories about the challenges of going to the grocery store or a restaurant and having to communicate with others who don't know about their stroke. It was really sad to hear about how hard it is sometimes and how rude some people can be to them. But it was also really encouraging to hear them talk about what they do to cope and how determined they are to get better. What an emotional morning - it was really touching.
I'm still undecided on what I want to do after I graduate in May. I have really enjoyed working with adults this semester, but I also kind of miss working with kids. I think ideally, I'd love to work in a hospital or clinic where I could work with both adults and kids, but I know the medical setting is hard to get into. And right now many hospitals are on a hiring freeze and may even be cutting staff. So, we'll see....
Maybe I can fit in some more observations at different sites to help me figure it out.
After doing this practicum, I am now inspired to read more about stroke survivors, especially biographies, such as:
Another good read (and movie) that I've already read:
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
