Starting of Speech Therapy

Randy had a very busy day today! He has his evaluation to start speech therapy at Valley Medical Center today. Randy said the speech therapist asked him a lot of the same things that all of the others did ~ she had to get a baseline of where he is currently at. She had him name objects within a box and he got all of them correct. She had him repeat words and phrases and he did alright with that ~ just had with "l" and "s" in words. She had him name all of the animals that he could name ~ he named 8. She asked him questions such as "where do nurses work", "where do you buy stamps", and "what color is snow" and he got all of them correct. She then had him identify pictures, shapes, letters, numbers, and colors and he was accurate on all of them. He had to name things within the room and his body parts. He got caught up on index finger and he struggled with left vs right. She then tested his ability to follow directions. He did well with even those that had were 3 steps.

She then tested his cognitive ability with questions and organizing of pictures into categories, picking out a word within a list that didn't belong, stating how pictures were alike and different, arranging pictures from smallest to largest. He did well with all of those activities. He also had to state 4 or 5 things in sequence that you do to change batteries in a flashlight.

Things he needs to work on: delayed memory skills, memory for detail, and short-term memory skills.

The therapist also asked reasoning questions about opposites and had Randy complete analogies such as "river is to boat as highway is to....". He did quite well with all of that.

For occupational therapy, his therapist asked him if he had been writing in his journal as she had told him to, and he admitted he has not. She then asked him if he remembered what he had done yesterday and he did okay with recalling what took place. The therapist worked on multi-tasking today by doing things such as working with cards on a table by picking them out and putting together stories with them and then whenever a timer went off, Randy had to walk to the sink, turn the water on and off and then return to finish the task. He did quite well with that.

Next, the therapist had to put numbered cards in numerical order and periodically that therapist would interrupt to have Randy answer random questions and then he would have to return to the task with the cards. She said he did quite well.

For homework, he had to pick a task, plan it out and follow it through. He also has to practice multi-tasking.

We also went to a seminar tonight. It is the first of 3 on chronic pain. Randy just started medication that we are hoping will alleviate a lot of his pain, we are going to the seminars just in case the medication doesn't help. One thing that was said during the seminar was to not enable the person ~ not to over help them. This goes right along with what Randy has been asking for. Over the last few days as I start to do something for him, he has been stopping me and asking to do it himself. He said he feels like we treat him like he is in a bubble and he really wants out.