monthly aphasia meeting

Last week my parents and Andie went to a meeting of people who have had or are still effected by aphasia that's held monthly at Good Shepherd. I'm not trying to be mean when I say this but when I think of a meeting of a bunch of people who can't communicate it sounds like a plot for a sit-com episode.
Anyway, apparently most of the people that were there were alot worse off than Andie is; comparatively, she's communicating pretty well compared to what things could be like. There was one guy at the meeting that has to use a box to touch pictures to say what he wants to say. They also had a speaker come in who had a stroke four years ago and can now speak well but it took him some time to get his brain re-wired to get the words out. As far as Andie, she's getting around pretty well physically and she can talk but it sometimes takes a while to get out the words that are in her head. She does stick with trying to say but also gets frustrated when the wrong thing comes out. She's aware that by taking so long and stumbling over words that she looks like she's not smart but her intelligence is still in tact, just not the verbalization.
We went to Mechaniscburg on Saturday to go to lunch with our aunt and then visit an uncle in the hospital there and it was strange to be walking into another hospital and thinking about all the families and friends behind all of those patients lying there who are now going through what we just did. Even then Andie didn't want to use her walker but I think she should since some walking surfaces can be uneven.
These days she's still going to out-patient therapy at Good Shepherd two days a week for Speech, Physical and Occupational therapies and once she's done with those she's pretty tired. She does take the bus over to Good Shepherd and that can be frustrating to work with their schedule but at least she can do it herself. She's still within the six month period where they expect lots of improvement before she'll reach a plateau where she's gotten about as good as things will be. The meds she's on and the fact that she's still in recovery from the brain injury make her tired pretty quickly. So on non-therapy days she just takes it easy.