I have decided that during my blogging experience, I wil refer to my husband as Clark and myself as Ann.
Aphasia: a language disorder that results from damage to portions of the brain that are responsible for language. Usually, the left side is affected. The disorder impairs both the expression and understanding of language as well as reading and writing. It is caused by a head injury, brain tumor, stroke....
Clark had his 2nd stroke Aug. 2, 2003, this one was a cerebral hemmorrhage. He bled about 3 tablespoons of blood into his brain. I will go into more detail about that later, but for this blog I want you to know where Strokanese came from. One of Clark's afflictions from the 2nd stroke was Aphasia. Physically, he wasn't affected hardly at all, just speech. Certain words would come out different. My sister had come to visit him and she mentioned her concern of getting lost coming to the hospital. Clark has a very good sense of direction and knows the area well, so he decided to help her out and explain how to get back. If you can imagine, place the word "Dracula" in place of "Freeway" and go with it. Everytime he referred to the freeway, Dracula came out. I actually was not there at the time, but my sister told me about it. I am still amazed she figured that out so quickly, but then my sister "V" is very sensitive to people.
You know what, this isn't working for me. I will tell you that "Strokanese" came from me, when Clark had trouble speaking, it became a healthy "joke" to his problem. When ever I couldn't understand what he was trying to say, I would say "Oh my he is speaking in Strokanese". I told him we were going to publish a new Dictionary for Stroke victims. It would convert the language Strokanese into English.
I realize in trying to tell this, that I must end here for this blog, and start a new one. I need to start at the beginning.....
1 comment:
This is a fantastic post. I wish you'd continue. In real life, stories so rarely have a clear beginning nor end. Though I imagine this story must be very painful to share at times, it may be therapeutic for you and help others with similar experiences to feel less alone. My partner gets terrible migraines that occur in this same language portion of her brain. At first, she couldn't find the right words. As the migraine continued, she could barely speak at all. The first time she got one of these migraines, I was terrified that she was having a stroke, despite her young age. These migraines recurred a number of times, each one equally as frightening for her. Once I had to fax a note from my work to her pharmacist asking them for her migraine medicine because she couldn't speak nor write to tell them what she needed. Fortunately, she hasn't had one of those migraines in a long time now. I cannot imagine how it must be for Clark to live with long-term language difficulties. It's wonderful that the two of you can find humor in it. I don't know a better way to move on from such adversity.
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