~ Ken T.
My husband, Ken, suffered a massive hemorrhagic stroke on 11/24/2014. He stayed in the ICU for a month in a coma. He woke up on 12/24/14. During his stay in the ICU, the doctor tried to tell me to give up, but, I knew that our Heavenly Father was in control, not the doctor. A few days after he woke up, he went to Duke Rehab Institute (part of Duke Regional Hospital) for a month of rehab both physical and speech, because his stroke also affected his language area, and he had aphasia. When he went home on 2/9/2015, he was on a wheel chair and did not talk much.
Before his stroke, Ken was very out-going, loved to interact with people, serving in our church, our Bible study, getting together with our sons and their friends over dinner and talked to them about life, God, and anything they wanted to talk about. After the stroke, with hemiparesis and aphasia, his life was totally different from before. He could not do a lot of things that he loved to do.
We went to TAP in the summer of 2015. At TAP, Ken not only received speech therapy, more importantly, he found friends that he could relate to. Every time at TAP, Ken is laughing, joking, singing, talking and having fun with his friends while working on his speech at the same time. He started to look forward to go to TAP. Through TAP, we also made some friends that we go out to eat some times. To Ken, TAP is a very important part of his life.