Hello all,

First, I just want to say I'm sorry if anything I say is tone deaf. I'm just a guy who doesn't understand strokes or the brain, who wants to understand more and help however I can.

My girlfriends' uncle suffered a stroke last month. Long story short, he lost the ability to speak at the start, his memory is suffering, but he's made lots of improvements since and the family doctors are feeling confident in his progress.

I hosted a little get together for her family last night, and it was the first time I have seen her uncle since his stroke. I have some observations I don't understand, and I want to understand it, because I feel like there's some knowledge in there that might help me help him.

Infront of his mother and sister, he really struggled. Every 4th word he would stutter as he forced the word out, and about half the time he got the wrong word. I also noticed his hands were shaky

I saw him alone on the couch later and joined him, and told him about how my Christmas travels home went. After about 5 minutes, he was really into the conversation, and he seemed like his old self. He was going 4-6 phrases at a time between stutters, his shaking was gone, and he was remembering the whole conversation normally.

Then my girlfriend joined us and it broke the flow for a bit. He started stuttering again and forgetting what he was saying. Until the three of us broke out the jenga, he got back into his flow, his shakes eventually went away and he held conversations normally again.

Then his mother joined, and the stuttering/shakes came back. He didn't go back to his self until she left, but I noticed his mother is sort of babying him. She isn't speaking to him normally or helping him remember like I and my girlfriend were, she was speaking to him as if he couldn't answer for himself, and his behaviour matched her expectations.

Sorry for the story, but I just want to know if anyone has any insight. I'm curious what causes his stutters and memory loss. Is it partially stress induced? Is it that once he's talking, his brain starts firing in its old habitual habits, but getting into that flow he faces resistance? I want to help and start inviting him over for games every week, since my understanding is he needs to re-practice, and he seemed to be doing really well speaking with me.

Thank you for your time and patience, I hope I wasn't tone deaf with this post. I genuinely want to help him out and want to understand what he is going through better