Concierge: Jonathan Hydar
Name: Sharon Romano
DOB: 11/8/1958
Date of Admission: 06/8/2021
Patient’s Age: 63
Admission Date: 6/8/2021
Admitted From: Mount Sinai/St. Lukes
Discharge Date: TBD
Discharged To: TBD
Length of Stay: 308 days
Reason for Stay: The patient required cognitive-linguistic therapy due to deficits from a stroke
Details of experience:
Before being admitted to the Riverside Premier Rehabilitation and Healing Center, Sharon Romano was a teacher and co-founder of a school. It was a job she was very passionate about. Outside the classroom, she enjoyed sightseeing, dancing, and photography. She is looking forward to getting back to these activities.
Unfortunately, Sharon suffered a stroke that left her with minimal speech and language deficits. As a result, she was admitted to the Riverside Rehabilitation in January 2021, where therapists were able to target her reading, writing, speaking successfully, and organization skills. She was then discharged in March 2021. In June 2021, she was readmitted to The Riverside after suffering a fall that caused a hemorrhagic stroke. The stroke left her with high levels of language and cognitive impairments. She was unable to remember personal information like her address and phone number, unable to write her name, identify letters and numbers and read familiar words. As such, she was in dire need of intensive cognitive-linguistic therapy.
For the duration of the next few months, Romano’s therapist had her review a memory book daily, which assisted her in remembering her personal information, she traced and copied letters repeatedly, used scrabble tiles to spell out 3-letter words, and used “word banks” of familiar words to fill out a daily log including the date, her location, the weather, her therapist’s name, her therapy goals and questions and or concerns she may have for her medical team. She was also taught compensatory strategies like; note-taking, underlining, and summarizing to improve her reading comprehension skills.
According to the patient’s therapist, one of her first signs of progression was when she began to write her name from memory and read familiar 3-4 letter words. Not long after, she started using her memory book and daily log without assistance and outside of her therapy sessions. After approximately five months of therapy, she insisted on reading a chapter book. She started slowly and with assistance, but as time continued, she was reading one chapter within a day and would reread the chapter the following day, underlining and summarizing key details in the chapter, so when she verbally recalled the chapter to her therapist, she was able to do so in a coherent and organized manner. With the help of her therapist and the rest of her medical team, Romano finished all 500 pages of the book and is now working on complex high-level organization, reasoning, sequencing, and writing skills. She is now able to remember multiple phone numbers, credit card information, and addresses, among other information using the strategies she learned in therapy.
In conclusion, Sharon Romano’s verbal and motor skills have significantly increased; she has overcome an obstacle in her life that seems nearly impossible. We wish her the best as her journey continues.