I am sorry that I missed the Gabby Gifford special. Is it saved and posted somewhere? Like many others, my own battle with aphasia started with a traumatic brain incident. I had a blood vessel burst inside a benign brain tumor. My doctors believe the tumor had been growing, undetected in my head for more than 30 years. The surgeon who removed the tumor said that the blood vessel “exploded” and the tumor “imploded.” My head filled will blood. Since blood wasn’t cut off to the brain proper, it technically wasn’t a stroke. However, I was left with all the symptoms and after effects of a stroke. I was in speech, physical and occupation therapy for many months. As an administrative officer at an academic institution, words were a very important part of my work. From the first the time I woke up in the hospital after the surgery I knew there was something wrong. I knew what I wanted to say, I just couldn’t find the right word. Oral communications were more difficult for me than written communications, so I started writing essays to describe my difficulties. Several months into my speech therapy, I watched a TV special on Bob Woodruff, the imbedded TV reporter wounded in IRAQ by an IUD. At one point in the show, he used the word aphasia to describe the difficulty he had in preparing his news reports. I told my wife, my caregiver, “That’s what I have.” When I asked my speech therapist at our next session, she started apologizing profusely and said that she thought that she had used the word aphasia to describe my condition. She said that taught her a lesson that she will never forget. She vowed that in her therapy sessions from then on, she would be very careful to let her patients and their caretakers know the names of their conditions. From the beginning of human history, humans have found that they must name something to have control of it. As soon as I found the word aphasia, I discovered “Aphasia Corner” and the “Aphasia Corner Blog” (URL < http://aphasiacorner.com/blog >). Knowing about aphasia has been a big help in the past 2 years of my recovery. In one essay, I described my battle with aphasia by saying that words were behaving more like cats than dogs. Dogs come to you when you call them; cats come to you when they want to come. This essay was featured at one point on the blog “Aphasia Corner”, along with a beautiful translation by Audrey Holland into an article that is “aphasia friendly.”< http://aphasiacorner.com/blog/living-with-aphasia-2/aphasia-friendly-words-are-more-like-cats-than-dogs-274>. The shortcut to my essay on my blog is< http://wp.me/p10snX-x > Other analogies, which I have used to describe the difficulty of communicating for someone with aphasia, are trying to put jigsaw puzzles together with pieces missing, or digging coal out of the dark, damp crevices of a mine on your hands and knees. As was noted for many of us, aphasia is not our only difficulty. Nine months after the brain tumor was removed, I had four tonic-clonic seizures within a 30 minute time frame, which left me unconscious in the hospital for three days. So now I was also dealing with epilepsy. For nearly one year I had no more major seizures, just many minor annoyances, such as sensory migraines or auras. Two days shy of the anniversary of the seizures I was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s disease. Three months later, I had to have a pace maker implant to help control a long-term A-Fib condition. I have had no major seizures since those first ones. However, as noted I have had numerous minor auras or absences. My neurologist keeps a very close watch on my seizure medication, and asks me to keep a log of my episodes. Coordinating my seizure medications and my heart medications has been a constant challenge. My battle with aphasia has had its ups and downs. For 40 years, I lived in the analytic world of academia. Immediately after the seizures, I found myself in a metaphoric world. Analytic, sequential and deductive thinking have been a real challenge. At times the metaphoric world completely overpowers the analytic world. At other times, I catch glimpses of the analytic world in which I formerly lived. From the Epilepsy Foundation and their magazine I found that I am not alone in this transformation. Although my aphasia is classified as mild, I find it interesting and sometimes discouraging to see that there is a great deal of work searching for treatments and cures of Parkinson’s, some work on Epilepsy, but very little on Aphasia. We need to spread the word about aphasia. I would not want to put undue pressure on Gabby Gifford or Bob Woodruff. However, because of their celebrity status, the American public is more likely to listen to them at the beginning of a campaign to combat aphasia. We need to begin the campaign by using the word aphasia. We don’t need to be afraid of the word. Remember the first step to controlling something is to name it. There is nothing to be ashamed of to say I have Parkinson’s. Why should there a stigma hanging over our heads, if we say, “I have aphasia;” or “I have epilepsy.” There! I’ve said it! “I have aphasia.” I am fortunate and I thank God that my aphasia is mild. Others that I know are not as fortunate. We must do all we can to help them.
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