Aphasia Group

The initial meeting of the Aphasia Group happened today - or not!!! Bev took us to the meeting but unfortunately the only people there were us, Jane (the organiser), a gentleman called Bob and another gentleman who has Parkinson's disease (he is a friend of Bob so I'm not really sure what he was doing there) and 2 other speech therapists. As only the people with Aphasia will be attending the next meeting in two weeks, that means Jane, Pete and Bob! They had been expecting 3 others to come but one has moved away, another wouldn't come because of the weather and the third had fallen out of her wheelchair. The weather was really atrocious, gale force wind and lashing rain - I had to really hold onto Pete in the wind as he was just using his stick and the wind was so strong. Anyway, the meeting was held in a pub and went off alright, but I'm not so sure about the future ones. Both Bob and Jane have speech which rather leaves Pete out of it. Jane said that really they all meet just to let each other talk, one at a time, about anything they want. This is obviously not going to work for Pete as when they asked his name he really tried so hard to say it, but nothing came. We have talked about the next meeting since we got home and I know he doesn't really want to go to another meeting - and I can fully understand why not. Personally, I think he should probably go, just to see how he gets on, but I am not going to force him by any means. We will continue to discuss it and see how he feels over the next couple of weeks, then make the decision.
My main disappointment is that no other carers were there - I really thought this was my opportunity to make contact with some and be able to chat about our situations and how we deal with problems. But that opportunity has now gone - so it seems carers really do want to be on their own. Unfortunately I am the exception in that I want to meet, or even just know about, other carers. (the other two that didn't come were coming with speech therapists). So there we are, it is indeed a very isolated position I find myself in.
On the other hand, we have had a very serene day today in that we haven't crossed swords at all.
Pete has been quite calm today with no angry episodes.
On the whole, a quite disappointing day for both of us - Pete hoping to meet others just like him and me hoping to meet other carers.