What Happens After Rehab Ends? | #215

I want to tell you about Joey, a former client of mine.

And Joey found me through the internet about a year after his stroke.

So he was at least six months past therapy.

His main concern was the ability to find words.

He felt like he couldn't express his opinion.

He couldn't argue with his friends and family the way he wanted to.

He was very passionate about baseball and politics.

So when I asked Joey what he wanted to work on, he said, I just need to talk better.

But then Joey dropped his head.

He was feeling ashamed and sad that he couldn't talk like he used to.

And this is what got me.

He says, it's hurting my relationship with my wife, and I don't know how to make it better.

Joey wasn't asking for word drills.

He didn't want to just improve his ability to find words or say sentences.

He wanted to reconnect with his wife.

And this is why he sought something different, why he wasn't going to the rehab down the street, why he wasn't going to the hospital for speech therapy because he needed a shift.

His quality of life depended upon his relationship with his wife.

And so that's exactly what we focused on.

We worked in the context of speech therapy, but in relationships, in starting conversations, in asking questions, in How does he show that he's listening to his wife and that he understands so that they can get back to that back and forth conversation and reconnecting and talking about the things that were most important to them.

We didn't treat his speech like a checklist of impairments.

Instead, we focused on the connection that mattered most to him.

When you leave rehab, Therapy doesn't end.

It changes.

But nobody tells you how it changes or what to expect.

You get a packet for sure.