My heart is melting because my patient, who is discharging home tomorrow, just brought me a bag of chocolate, clasped my hand between both of his hands, said "thank you" and "bye." I have been working with him daily for four weeks now - he has severe global aphasia and apraxia - and has made improvements only on trained stimuli. He's been such a trooper, despite having been in Vancouver since September after his stroke in August. He isn't even 60, he walks on his own, and otherwise looks normal - which sometimes can be more difficult, because others can't understand why your speech-language is so impaired. The fact that he brought me a bag of chocolate tells me that he went upstairs to the canteen BY HIMSELF and chose and purchased chocolate BY HIMSELF. This is progress, my friends, that can't be measured by my silly data collection on matching verbs or spoken nouns.
A day like today is why I love my job.
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