Sandy: Bruce has a total command of language by education and experience. It was just a matter of trying to tap into it. Getting it to rewire, so I had an easier time of it.

He often goes to the obscure, so there are days when even Speech and I have to ask his grad school roommates if something makes sense. It usually does.

Early on his journals were much like Bob's - off into a lala land only they understand. One of Bruce's caregivers was also a BA in English, so that helped. By making Bruce read the few sentences out loud, even Bruce recognized most of them made no sense. If Bruce was adament, we called the roommates. But for the most part, if Bruce recognized the writing was nonsense, he had to rewrite to make sense. By making him acknowledge that the writing was not correct, like Bob, he could then reference it and rewrite it, finding the proper wording. This could take hours, but eventually he would get there. Keep it up. Debbie

sandy --- wow you are dedicated....

Debbie, on a previous entry, I had a page written by him, that he wrote straight thru with no trouble, and as soon as he finished he read it and said, it was all garbage. That is why I started the exercises in this post. He needed to not try to get so much info out, that all ran together, and learn to work on the one sentence he is writing, until that sentence is done, before letting his mind just keep running onto more sentences. Also, to keep the sentence simple, looking to see that it has a subject, verb and whatever comes at the end (direct object or more verb action, etc).

NANCY I hope it all makes a difference! It was surprising to me how long it took him to decide how to make a sentence from the 3 words. Some sentences came out weird, like "The baby is running", but I told him to consider the 'baby' to be our dog Bella, because he always called her the baby!

Sandy, you are doing great. No matter that the sentence sounds funny it is the fact that the structure of the sentence is correct! He is getting it together slowly but slowly is better than not at all! Keep up the good work and keep us up to date! Mike askes me about him all the time so I love telling him about good things! As always you and Bob are in our thoughts and prayers!!

Cat, when I gave him the first 3 words at the top of the page, I was very surprised to see he made a 2 line sentence (The mice are coming to a fallen cat to less lind-Lind to is the fallen), instead of just using the 3 words. So, that's how I realized I needed to make the 3 lines for him to insert the words onto. We have 5 days off in a row, and we need them! Now we will be able to concentrate a little more on speech.

Sandy: I think Bob is a lot like Bruce. Due to their education and use of language at work, they tend to embellish - wax poetic, so to speak. Bruce, to this day, can not do yes or no. He is going to give you a dissertation, regardless of what you want - LOL. But that is Bruce. Writing out the grocery list is a real hoot - even gives me the aisle and shelf.

You learn to love their creativity, impatient with the answers - I just need Milk - OK, I got that! But I find that he is more comfortable getting to the answers his way. We may laugh later at his presentation, but there is not the pressure to find the "right" word, because there are many alternatives that also work. Bruce will never say "book" again. That I know. But he will say "volume of literature, tome, Classic writing". Today he was searching on his Nook and only wanted "fiction".

As to his writing, he gives me line after line of phrases - at this point, he can read back and realize that he didn't get me anywhere. So keep up the work. Bruce has just started working on his most current (pre-stroke) manuscript and that is a wonderful positive. It will pay off. Debbie