Caregivers: How do you deal with a person who has had a stroke?

Do you have problems communicating and how do you deal with it? What did you do to make the relationship work? Did you ignore the wrong word use? Should I use cue cards? Any information about your dealing with loss of coordination, speech and memory would be appreciated.

Is it wrong to tell them that they had a stroke? It seemed to upset her because she did not understand what I was talking about. Thinks I am being mean. Also, having problems with pill-taking (BP). Will she return to normal without some kind of therapy?

we went through this with my mother in law 6 years ago.

medi care paid for the therapy, and the way that they described it, the stroke cause some breaks in her thought patterns.

and the therapist had to train her how to reroute these patterns.

it did take a while, but not that long.

and we would at times have to help her with some words.

you must realize how frustrating it is for them, and have some patiences.

my mother in law is now 83, and doing fine.

but she still confuses my wifes name with her sisters,

but then she has done that for as long as I can remember.

and we got married 40 years ago.

First off...no she will not return to "normal" without therapy. You need to talk with her physcian, and get some help. This is NOT something you can do alone. Get someone else involved, even if just to talk to you. Without therapy everything continues to deteriorate.