After Developing Expressive Aphasia Speech Therapy Ends After Only One Month. Should I be Concerned?

by Petros Kourtakis

My mother (80) is at a medicaid approved nursing home in New Jersey, and I have a question regarding her need for speech therapy after she had a stroke and developed expressive aphasia:

My mother has had only about 1 month of speech therapy after developing expressive aphasia due to a stroke, and the speech therapist at the facility is claiming my mother has plateaued in therapy and continuing sessions with her is no longer justifiable. I find this to be outrageous given I have heard significant progress after a stroke takes 2-3 months. Consider these dates:

May 3, 2017: date of the stroke, which caused serious and sudden expressive aphasia

Two weeks then go by and my mother received no speech therapy.

May 17, 2017 Date speech therapy starts at nursing home. She receives a total of 8 sessions before she is transferred to another nursing home. I noticed a profound change in her speech by the end of the last session.

May 29, 2017 Transfer to new nursing home. Note: A period of TWO WEEKS goes by with no speech therapy at the new facility. My mother's speech sounded less coherent during this time, like she was declining.

April 13, 2017 Speech therapy begins M-F, most days my mother complies. She receives 12 sessions at most for the month, but again, not every day was a completed session.

May 1, 2017 It is decided that my mom will stop speech therapy May 8.

Note that if you add this time up, you get a mere one month of speech therapy at most, which was not continuous (it was interrupted in the beginning by two weeks of no therapy due to transferring to a new nursing home).

My mother still sounds the same to me as when she first transferred as if nobody actually worked with her the way the speech therapist did at her former nursing home. Should I be concerned that she's not really being given a chance to improve?

They may say that if she improves on her own, she can be re-evaluated for more therapy, but if she can improve on her own why would she need therapy in the first place? In a mere one month she's plateaued???