The physio is also trying to get movement in her right hand by getting her to clasp it and hold it in front of her. If she is too tired to do it during the sessions I repeat it when she is more alert after dinner in the evening.

30 minutes after physio is speech therapy. She has absolutely no problem with speaking –  apart from the actual words! The stroke has taken her ability to recognise nouns. So a book might be a cloud, or a comb might be an umbrella. But the frustrating thing is she KNOWS what she says out loud is wrong, she just cannot yet connect the brain to the mouth.

Having said that her general conversation is steadily improving. She comprehends perfectly what is said to her and can also iniitiate conversation which apparently is a good sign.

It might sound basic but her brain has already recovered enough to count from 1 to 10, say the days of the week and the months of the year. Basically while her intelligence and intellect is that of an adult, her learning age is around 18 months. For those of you who have had children, do you remember their attention span and ability to take stuff in at that age? That’s what we are dealing with, but with the additional benefit of being able to explain to the ‘adult’ part of the brain why the tests and exercises seem so basic.

So at the moment every day is ‘groundhog day’. After 2 weeks the call button for the nurse is still new to her and has to be re-learned each day.