Communication Barrier

With todays technology you would think that communication barriers would be a thing of the past. However they do still exist and no matter what we do I think they will always be a part of our lives in one form or another. When deciding on what to write about for my communication barrier, my daughter suggested I write about something close to heart, my dad. Eleven years ago, before I became a nurse, my dad suffered a very severe stroke leaving him very dependant and very aphasic. The first time I saw him after his stroke which was maybe an hour,he was lying in his hospital bed. I knew from the doctors that he had suffered total left paralysis but he still looked like my dad, and he looked happy to see me. And I thought well this is not too bad, we can deal with this,that is until he opened his mouth to speak to me and all that came out was garble. I don't know who was more shocked, him or me. He tried again and again to talk and still nothing came out but this garble that made absolutely no sense. The harder he tried to talk to me the worse it got and then all of sudden he exploded with one explosive word - SHIT -. We looked at each other stunned and then together we laughed. Over the next few days we attempted unsuccessfully to communicate with each other only to get more and more frustrated. Not having the nursing skills I have today and not having been exposed to anything like this before, I was at a complete loss as to what to do. I approached the nurses there for help. They suggested cue cards and hand motions. So I set to work and made cue cards for just about every emotion and expression I could think of that would help us communicate. Surprisingly, my dad was able to use these cards to answer almost any of my questions.And made him feel like he was participating in the conversation. It's amazing how much you can say with so few words. We also developed some hand signals to aid us in our conversations, our favourite being one hand over the heart and the other hand pointing at the other person. I love you. Although in my dad's case, his signals were all one handed but the message came across loud and clear. We carried on this way having some great 'talks', happy that we had conquered our communication barrier, until one day my dad suffered another stroke and I had to say goodbye.
Being a nurse now, I often think of my dad when faced with a new stroke patient who is aphasic and know I will be okay with the communication barrier.