End of course

Went to the university as mentioned in my last blog to speak in front of 20+ professional speech therapists about how using my iPad has helped me with my Aphasia.  These were speech therapists who are out in the field and not familiar with what can be achieved with an iPad. It has certainly helped me and given me some independence, I have come a long way from when Liz had to read all my emails and tweets to me.  The session was led by Fiona who asked me various questions and my answers were directed to the delegates. This was things like using the speech function so I can listen to emails, news items etc and also how I use to microphone to speak to the iPad so I can reply to emails.  I told them how my iPad now recognises me and how I speak which I think is really clever.

The session seemed to go really well and hopefully they will encourage aphasia sufferers who have an iPad to use it to help them communicate.

When I went back down to the coffee room to meet Liz I was grabbed by Rose who asked if I would go into one of the iPad sessions at NETA  one Thursday and show people what the iPad can do. I agreed to this and we arranged I would go the following week.

The final week of my course consisted of Tuesday and Wednesday doing more assessments and on Friday the session with Eleanor which was a questionnaire on how I had found the course.  We finished off with a party for us all and our partners. This ended up with 3 teams having a quiz.

Then that was the end of the course!

I would like to thank all the tutors and students but especially Dominique, Emma S, Eleanor and Emily who have had to put up with me for 12 weeks, they have helped me enormously in the 12 weeks and I am now able to read from the newspaper and also read and reply to emails and contribute to twitter.  This may sound trivial but if you suddenly find you can't do it you will find it is a major thing so I am grateful to the 4 of you for helping me do this. Good luck with your exams and future placements! 

Thank you to all the tutors for giving me this second opportunity (I take it a third go is out of the question!).  The small groups and large group have been really good fun to take part in.

I would also like to thank my fellow clients,

David Fettis - who I failed to convert from a caravaner to a motor home owner.

Ian Hardy -  for showing us you don't have to have a stroke to have Aphasia 

Ian McCoullouch (Flint) -  the musician of the group, hope you will be strumming that guitar soon.

David Fulton - my fellow compatriot from the last course.  

Looking forward to seeing you next Friday do you think St James' knows what is coming!