Help Steve Find HIs Words Again

I’m Tim and I’m trying to help my friend of 40 years, Steve Flynn. He needs speech therapy. His aphasia (resulting from a stroke) means he’s got to learn to speak, read and write all over again. Speech therapy can help him regain the ability to communicate, which will open doors for him to live a more normal life.

Steve walked into work one day and couldn’t speak. He was weak and dehydrated, making weird sounds. Co-workers took him to a hospital where they heard the devastating news: Steve had had a stroke.

He still looks like Steve. Physically, he seems fine. But the stroke injured his brain, and as so often happens with stroke victims, he’s now got aphasia. Basically it means he has trouble communicating, has memory issues and can’t do everyday things like drive.

Things you and I take for granted to live normally.

The communication part is the hardest. Say you ask him something. There’s a lag time while he processes information. Then, he knows what he wants to say, but there’s a disconnect between that thought and what comes out of his mouth. He’ll say the wrong words, numbers, or even unintelligible sounds.

I spent a week with him shortly after his stroke. One morning we were sitting in his back yard. He was looking at a noisy sparrow. Because he can recognize photos better than words, I showed him a Google shot of the bird and said, “That’s a sparrow." He responded with, “Twenty four.. good for yellow.” Then he bit his knuckles in frustration.

This is my good friend of 40 years - a quick, bright, super-funny guy. “Heartbreaking” doesn’t come close to describing this.

While he’s taken some small steps since the stroke, he’s basically got to learn to read, write and speak all over again. Of course, he’ll have many other special needs as life goes on, but right now, he needs Speech Therapy.

That may sound like just help for pronouncing things correctly, but the therapy goes really deep with techniques and procedures that can help Steve think and communicate in a more normal way. And this will take a long time.

Speech Therapy is also not covered by his insurance, and it’s not cheap.

We're basing our monetary goal by "averaging" google research for cost per hour, per session, and the actual cost at the limited places we could get Steve in for therapy so far (there are waiting lists like you can't believe). And multiplying that by the amount of time we anticipate Steve will be in therapy. The doctors say probably a year or two, so we'll "average" that to a year and a half. But just being completely transparent, we’re starting with a conservative goal of $12,000 and making it a “sliding goal” that may increase based on how Steve does in therapy and what the doctors say as time goes on.

The good news is, he’s still Steve Flynn. He’s still got his positive, can-do attitude which is SO important. I mean, it would be so easy to give up, right? His entire world got trapped between what’s in his head and what you hear. But, he really REALLY wants to fight this thing. So we’re asking for your help. Thank you.