Posted on October 11, 2012 · Posted in TBI Voices
This entry is part 7 of 28 in the series Lori

Speech Pathology Post Severe Brain Injury: Lori Part Seven 

We discuss Lori’s speech pathology post severe brain injury in Part Seven and how much of a role in her recovery this played.

Tell me about the speech pathology post severe brain injury you got while you were an inpatient.

I remember when I began with speech, well, when my memory began with speech pathology – I was, we were playing games.  I’ve always loved to play games, and we were playing adult kind of games.

With an adult kind of theme?

I guess we were playing, maybe child kind of games with adult words, maybe, okay?  Words with more than four letters, I guess I could say.  And it seemed like it developed pretty quickly into that I was able to work on a computer in therapy. Not that I was able to do it properly, but in speech pathology I could start using a computer.

I learned in speech pathology, I’m sure that I learned in speech pathology, the English language better than I did when I went to school the first time.  So I learned, um, I learned, I learned how to learn, I guess.  I learned, I was learning things that I didn’t know.  If that’s clear, I was learning how to find out what I didn’t know.

So I started, watching game shows on TV which helped me learn.  I was learning that I didn’t, that I had lost a lot of words and that I didn’t understand how to describe things, or that I didn’t understand colors.  And I decided probably through having speech pathology that I would read a dictionary from the first page to the last page, which helped me.

Was that a little dictionary or a big dictionary that they used in your speech pathology post severe brain injury ?

Big Webster’s Dictionary.  And I did the same thing with the Thesaurus.  It just seems to me that I got those ideas from speech pathology.  My speech pathologist was a very appropriate business kind of person, and I just remember looking at her and thinking that she was so intelligent.  So I liked to model after her, I remember thinking I want to be as intelligent as she is.

Now you are in Michigan while getting your speech pathology post severe brain injury .

Yes.

And historically, Michigan has been one of the leading places in the country for ongoing intensive care for someone with severe brain injury.  Was that true in your case?

I had, I had ongoing intensive care when I was an inpatient, which was I’m, I’m thinking from April until about June.  Then I had outpatient therapy from June, I don’t know.  I remember seasons but I don’t remember dates and times, and I know I had outpatient therapy in the fall and in the winter and it seems like in the spring and into the summer, so that’s a long period of time.

What do you remember about your outpatient therapy and your outpatient speech pathology post severe brain injury ?

I remember that more clearly than I remember any of the other therapies.

Would you have gotten speech, occupational therapy, physical therapy?

I had neuropsych therapy also from the beginning.  So I had neuropsych, speech, PT and OT, three days a week?  Maybe five and then decreased to three.

 

Next in Part Eight –Treatment Overcomes Survivors Fears of Neuropsychologist

About the Author

Attorney Gordon S. Johnson, Jr.
Past Chair Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group, American Association of Justice
g@gordonjohnson.com :: 800-992-9447