I had a great moment with a patient that has aphasia. This patient... I'll call her Susie... has severe expressive aphasia with some receptive involvement, although not as severe. Here is a video of someone with Wernicke's Aphasia... which is a fluent aphasia like my patient's. It's black and white... but it was really the only good one I could find on the internet that really exhibits a fluent aphasia. Anyway... back to Susie. She had a stroke and damaged the part of the brain that controls language. With aphasia this damage occurs in Broca's area or Wernicke's area on the brain above. So imagine being very intelligent, having the same personality as before, being active, having perfect emotional responses and great problem solving ability... but not being able to communicate! This patient can't read or write either. Imagine feeling that isolated all day long from friends and family! The worst part is that people think these types of patients are just crazy... but they are far from it. Many of them can even understand speech but just can't use language expressively, or vice-versa. There was a moment today where this patient had a breakthrough and named 15-20 objects correctly and then counted objects from 1-4 correctly all in a row. It makes my existence on this earth worthwhile when a patient looks up with tears in their eyes with a look that screams "I did it... thank you" without having to say (and being unable to say) a single word.
No comments:
Post a Comment