Aphasia often follows a stroke or brain injury. Bruce Willis and Gabrielle Giffords have publicly acknowledged their aphasia.
I’m sharing my experience to give hope to others with aphasia and to their families.Within days of my injury, I could unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth and create an odd sound every now and then, but I couldn’t communicate in any traditional sense. I felt like a human radio pumping out static — with sporadic bursts of clarity.
I pointed to a chair because I couldn’t say “chair.” I mimed drinking from a bottle because I couldn’t find the word “bottle” or “water” or “thirsty” or “drink.” I spoke, if I spoke at all, with an urgency bordering on panic. In the first year after the accident, once I began to put words together, I said things like “white stuff sky,” which meant snow, or “cow thing pants,” which meant belt.My condition still interferes with my life, although not the way it did in those early days.
Tests say they quantify cognition, but I would say they quantify only what we can say, which is not the same as what we know or feel. We need words for that, plus neural functions, synapses and soul.The boundaries between “able” and “disabled” are fluid, not fixed. Sometimes you’re able, sometimes you’re not, depending on what’s going on inside you and around you at any given time. It’s hard to learn your limitations when they change every few moments.
Aphasia cannot be described or prescribed with one set of secrets or tactics or remedies. The damage from aphasia is variable and involves different deficits unique to each person.Judith Hannah Weiss is a freelance writer and the author of an as-yet unpublished memoir titled “Away With Words.”
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