Silent Struggle

My struggle is silent and let’s know why. I got a Celebrovascular accident (CVA) also known as a stroke impairing speech. The long term strategy would be to walk and speak again. For a person whose trade was speech,who participated in a moot competition in Washington DC and was doing radio punditry on radio. Losing Speech is similar to losing life because, what’s there to live for anyway? If Euthanasia was legal and practical,I would have applied because I am not afraid of death.

“Death is our constant companion, and it is death that gives each person’s life its true meaning.”- Paulo Coelho, The Pilgrimage . Death should never beautify our sorry souls. I should not become a good person overnight just because I am no more. I want friends and enemies to know and acknowledge that my duty has come to end. The other sobering fact will be that as I breathe my last, another life will have been brought on earth. So my memory will be left with those who knew me and loved me. They should perhaps go to this blog and drink from the old man’s wisdom. We should be a society that normalizes death with much emphasis on our mortality.

I have written about,Once an adult, twice a child Stroke is a dog depending on the part of the brain affected,it basically babies you and you have to relearn and train the brain to catch up, even recovery comes with some imperfections like limping and the speech won’t be as good as it was.

You know how you trained in kindergarten class on saying words where you began saying out the vowels, that is me.

This comes with patience as it is easy to get frustrated and give up on the process. Whenever I feel like giving up,I remind myself as to why I started. This is like walking through fire and I tell myself that I have walked with grace because it takes grace to walk through. A good friend had this Easter message for the old man

Relearning speech is not an easy thing, you have to train your brain to say out words, you can begin with words to sentences and you keep struggling. In the process of training the brain, you have to let go of the items you are comfortable with and that is the phone for me. It is simple, the brain will get used to the communication with the phone as the speech part of the brain is not being tasked. Last week on my birthday, a friend,whom I call my muse came to check on me and she was the person who reminded me that I can speak with the hand given that my left hand is paralyzed and I write with the right hand. She arrived at the time when I had no phone and this was a blessing in disguise, I had to speak to her and the good of it was that she heard me. That’s like winning a medal for me, speaking and being heard. These are the small wins I celebrate. I have thus learnt to value progression no matter how small it is . The other most important milestone is the ambulation which is walking in simple speak, I have written before how the fall led to the regression. I now normally train with the walker to learn how to walk and there are imperfections but we shall get there. The trick lies in respecting the process. The reason why I chronicle my journey is to give an update on my recovery. Yes the Struggle maybe silent but we are heading somewhere.