Stroke survivor in France - Aphasia

Share your story
1

Hello,

My Dad had a severe stroke a couple of weeks ago, which has left him with Expressive Aphasia. We are desperately trying to find him a speech therapist to help with this.
The problem is that my parents live in France - in the Tarn region - and we are struggling to find an English speaking SLP within our local area.

They have been living in France, full time, for 30 years and Dad spoke good French, which he has now completely lost. Fortunately my mother speaks very good French. However, regardless of French or no French, his rehabilitation therapy needs to be in English, for obvious reasons.

What to do now?
Moving back to England isn’t really an option at this point due to financial reasons and Covid. Frustrating.
Online therapy? Should we go down that route?
We are fully aware that he needs to start speech therapy as soon as possible. Our local doctors are desperate that they cannot find anyone to help.
Any advice, help or information would be hugely appreciated.

Thank you all very much.

warmest wishes,

M

4

Definitely using a computer via the skype program is the way to go, but I’m having difficulty understanding why he cannot use the speech therapy in French. My belief is that it is just keeping muscles active that is the main requirement.
I’m in New Zealand and for a while after my stroke I considered learning Maori since it is regularly taught on ‘free to air’ TV. I’m not sure why I did not continue but covid restrictions have had a bad effect on my speech and I’m again considering trying it out .
Deigh

5

Have you considered using apps on an ipad? There are loads eg Cuespeak. I watched one of my husbands SlT sessions and recognised a lot of the exercises they were using. Plus lots of facetime. My husband had only single words to start with but every 5-10 min conversation is a bit more practice. He can answer how are you, how was your day and do on although naming objects is still impossible

1 Like