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800 Vinial Street, B408
Pittsburgh, PA 15212
Phone:
724-494-2534
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Note from Sharon Rennhack: This month's Aphasiatoolbox - Consumer Edition, is Part 3 of a 3 part special focus on-
Aphasia: What's that?
The previous editions included:
The current edition is
June 2016 - Part 3: EMPOWER.
//
June is National Aphasia Awareness Month.
The word - awareness - refers to "having a knowledge of." Personally, as a person recovered from aphasia, I would rather talk about empowerment rather than awareness.
A few weeks ago, I saw
Amy Edmunds at the FLASHA/Speak Out conference in Orlando, FL. Amy is a stroke survivor and is the founder and Chief Executive of
YoungStroke.org. Her energy and passion makes me think that we need to have that kind of sustained energy to move from awareness of aphasia to empowerment and change- both individually and collectively. In fact, the
YoungStroke website identifies three main ideas:
EDUCATE - Raising Awareness;
ADVOCATE - Uniting Voices;
CHANGE - Driving Change.
These three words help empower people with aphasia - no matter the age. The word "empowerment" includes the word "power"; Synonyms include: might; mightiness; force. My hope is that PWA will become a force for change with our "united" might - just like Amy and her young stroke and aphasia survivors.
Let's be aggressive in terms of our recovery - not silent, not passive; let's raise our collective voices for more effective treatment leading to maximizing our recovery. Let's push for more research and treatment funding, more treatment options, like Amy mentioned in her speech. Aphasiatoolbox is leading the charge in aggressive, affordable, and effective treatment of aphasia; our clients know and demand this for their recovery.
Aphasiatoolbox®: Where Real Aphasia Recovery Happens Everyday.
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Aphasia recovery takes time.
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Did you know that you can work in an intensive aphasia treatment and recovery program for less than $ 700.00 per month?
The value and effectiveness of intensive aphasia treatment has been well researched and documented.
Aphasia recovery demands frequent treatment and rigorous practice.
An online, intensive program at aphasiatoolbox.com® like the one mentioned above includes:
- 2 sessions a week with an aphasiatoolbox® expert speech pathologist
- access to the tools; materials; and practice software on the aphasiatoolbox.com website
- the opportunity to participate in as many as 20 online conversation, practice and support groups a month
- training for your family, caregiver or friend to become your practice coach
- collaboration with your current speech pathologist if you are in treatment
- ...and most importantly, the tools, knowledge and techniques to allow you to practice 3-5 hours a day with your coach and by yourself outside of groups and treatment session
With the Online, Intensive Aphasia Program at aphasiatoolbox® you can continue to receive treatment as long the program adds value to your recovery and all from the comfort of your home.
Aphasiatoolbox®: Where Real Aphasia Recovery Happens Everyday.
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Bill Connors discusses:
"Empower the person with aphasia"
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n this video, Bill discusses six ways that the aphasiatoolbox® treatment program and its community helps people with aphasia be empowered through their recovery process.
Time: 05:00
For information on how Bill and the staff of Aphasiatoolbox can help you and a person with aphasia, contact us.
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Neuroplastic Tip of the Month
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In his Neuroplastic Treatment Tip and Practice Activity of the Month, Bill Connors discusses the Mindful Sentence Patterning technique for people recovering from aphasia.
Time: 06:08
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Bill Connors will be presenting on the topic of "Mindful Neuroplastic Aphasia Treatment".
This highly interactive course will discuss the importance of incorporating evidence-based practice by extracting clinical and intellectually useful information, knowledge, and tools from science and research in order to assist clients in their pursuit of improvement and recovery with the goal of speech and language restoration and overall functional independence.
The discovery of mindfulness and its incompatibility with stress has been a crucial element to success in client recovery. The presenters will address upcoming research being conducted on mindfulness and rehabilitation as well as what they have learned about the power of being mindful and how it has quickly made powerful, drastic changes in the recovery of their clients with aphasia and apraxia.
The bulk of the presentation will focus on the five simple, yet smart and truly therapeutic treatment approaches which turn people with aphasia into people recovering from aphasia. The presenters will explain and demonstrate how clinicians can take advantage of neural plasticity and most efficiently and effectively maximize their clients' recovery of communication and cognitive skills by replacing learned non-use, learned non-attention, and learned helplessness with propositional communication.
Schedule:
Saturday, August 27 @ 8:00 am - 5:00 pm, Birmingham, AL
Saturday, October 1 @ 8:00 am - 5:00 pm, Houston, TX
If you would like to discuss a
presentation
at your facility or in your state conference, contact us.
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Video: What does the word EMPOWER mean to you?
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Coach and cafe leader Sharon Rennhack interviews two members of the online Wednesday Conversational Cafe on the words -
Power, Empower and Empowerment.
Why are those words so important for people with aphasia? It's because aphasia, if allowed, steals their independence. Aphasiatoolbox therapists and coaches work with our clients to restore and reinforce independence - ie, their feeling of empowerment.
In this short video, you will meet our clients Gil and Laura; they discuss some tools for empowerment.
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| Wednesday Cafe Members discuss: Empowerment |
Time: 05:28
Aphasiatoolbox®: Where Real Aphasia Recovery Happens Everyday.
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1. Woody Durham, longtime voice of the Tar Heels, diagnosed with language expression disorder
Woody Durham, who for 40 years served as the radio play-by-play voice of the North Carolina basketball and football teams, has been diagnosed with a neurocognitive disorder that affects his language expression.
2. One Area of Brain Sees Familiar Words as Pictures, Another Sounds Out Words
Skilled readers can quickly recognize words when they read because the word has been placed in a visual dictionary of sorts which functions separately from an area that processes the sounds of written words, say Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) neuroscientists. The visual dictionary idea rebuts a common theory that our brain needs to "sound out" words each time we see them.
The adult brain has learned to calculate an image of its environment from sensory information. If the input signals change, however, even the adult brain is able to adapt − and, ideally, to return to its original activity patterns once the perturbation has ceased. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried have now shown in mice that this ability is due to the properties of individual neurons. Their findings demonstrate that individual cells adjust strongly to changes in the environment but after the environment returns to its original state it is again the individual neurons which reassume their initial response properties. This could explain why despite substantial plasticity the perception in the adult brain is rather stable and why the brain does not have to continuously relearn everything.
Mindfulness-based meditation is now firmly established as a valid stress-reduction tool and is backed by a growing body of solid science illuminating its effects on the brain and health. It is being applied to an ever-growing list of conditions and life situations, including keeping kindergarteners calm, boosting job satisfaction, overcoming addiction, and beating back pain. Mindfulness meditation, as Fortune magazine reported in March, has become a billion-dollar business.
5.
Stroke, the most common medical emergency, is a cerebrovascular accident that can cause death and long-term disability. Over 80 percent of all strokes are ischemic strokes, when a clot lodges in an artery supplying blood to the brain and the blood flow is reduced or blocked. A small percentage, caused by rupture of brain blood vessels, are called hemorrhagic strokes. Stroke risk factors are well known and include high blood pressure, elevated lipids, diabetes, smoking, heavy drinking, coronary artery disease, heart diseases, etc.
As many as one million Americans live with some form of aphasia, according to the National Institutes for Health, and a
growing body of research
suggests that continued speech therapy can help people recover some of their communication skills. But options for therapy can be limited, even if a patient has health insurance.
After years of big promises, telemedicine is finally living up to its potential.Driven by faster internet connections, ubiquitous smartphones and changing insurance standards, more health providers are turning to electronic communications to do their jobs-and it's upending the delivery of health care.
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Connect To Us
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Contact Us
724-494-2534
information@aphasiatoolbox.com
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