News Feature: The best medicine

Students restore speech….and laughter

| Watch a video about Lewis’s speech therapy journey

Imagine your client makes a living talking and you’re the speech therapist trying to restore what two strokes have stolen. That’s what Seth Poynter faced during his last semester as a student speech-language pathology clinician in the MU Speech and Hearing Clinic. He’d helped many pediatric clients just learning to communicate. But a professional comedian? Seth was determined to help the “World’s Worst Farmer” make ’em laugh again.

Photos by Karen Hecksel, performance photo courtesy Lewis Baumgartner
Lewis uses strategies such as tapping and an “ABC list” to help him speak smoothly.
(Front: Laura Ziegler, MHS-CSD '11, encourages Lewis during a therapy session)

Seth’s client, Lewis Baumgartner, worked most of his life as a contractor, but the idea of farming was appealing. So, in 1979 he bought a 120-acre farm in Callaway County, Mo. His timing was terrible. Within five years, farm values dropped by as much as half and many farmers were forced out of business.

Baumgartner expressed his feelings in verse and script. He created the funny, self-deprecating character “The World’s Worst Farmer,” got himself booked speaking to area senior centers and service organizations, and before long, the overalls-clad, easygoing Baumgartner was a hit. He took his act on the road and by the late 1980s had been featured in three national farming magazines.

"It’s getting to the point where I'm doing better telling folks how bad I am than I ever did farming," he told audiences. Then on June 19, 2007, he suffered the first of two strokes.

“I remember being in intensive care for a few days where I spoke my first word: ‘Well’,” he would later write. “Then they moved me to a room where I added to my vocabulary with the phrase ‘What the heck happened?’ ”

A good recovery returned him to the farm and eventually the stage. Then Baumgartner suffered another stroke April 28, 2008, causing severe expressive aphasia and apraxia. Recalling and forming the words he wanted desperately to say seemed lost. When insurance quit paying for speech therapy, he turned to the School of Health Professions and its speech clinic.

Graduate students supervised by Department of Communication Science and Disorders (CSD) faculty provide therapy for clients like Lewis. The rates and their services are both lifesavers. “Because they are students, we are able to offer therapy at a much reduced rate,” says Mary Ann Scheneman, BS-Ed ’73, M Ed ’74, CSD clinical assistant professor. “They learn to diagnose a disorder or delay, analyze the data they have collected from testing and observation and use that to design an effective therapeutic program. When they see what Lewis was able to do pre-stroke, they are even more determined to do whatever they can to increase his communication skills.”

In September 2010, Seth, BHS-CSD ’09, MHS-CSD ’11, became Lewis’s sixth clinician. Lewis was Seth’s first adult client. “With children, a therapist must turn everything into a game with prizes,” Seth says. “Lewis came ready and eager to work. We needed no games, no prizes, no convincing to participate. My reinforcement also had to change. ‘Way to go little buddy’ wasn’t going to work anymore.’ ”

Seth incorporated Lewis’s performance into every session, and Lewis responded, working diligently to improve his speech. “If you ever get discouraged with being a therapist and feel like you’re not doing any good, let me tell you, you are doing some good,” Lewis writes in a memoir titled I’ve had a Stroke. “I’d hate to think where I’d be right now if it wasn’t for folks like you. I’ve never met a sour therapist; they always have a smile on their face and offer an encouraging word.”

For Seth, that encouragement came easy. “I remember sitting at the table with Lewis and having a conversation about weather,” Seth says. “It took me a few minutes to realize that we were having a conversation! Lewis was using all his strategies to create sentences that flowed from one to the next.”

Lewis continues to make progress and admits it takes a lot of “small steps.” But ask him if he wants to go out “on the circuit” again and his whole body seems to quiver with joy. “Oh yeah,” he laughs and smiles. “There’s no greater feeling than making other people laugh. Like they say: laughter is the best medicine.”

— Cheri Ghan