Let's hear it for Aphasia!

[golemkennels]

I got a whole week of clarity, well, of improved clarity.

And then I get to the counter at Francesca's to order my coffee, and I can't explain what I want. The person behind the register is looking at me, I"m trying to say I want a medium coffee in a large cup, except that doesn't come out, and all I get is "large coffe, medium..." then I figure out

Comments

[mary_mayhem]

We all have it to some degree. You just get to deal with a larger dose than most. As frustrated as I get when a single word falls out of my brain, I can imagine how knotted up having bigger chunks of language doing that must be.

If you are having trouble understanding me, aside from spacing, does changing the words to synonyms help?

[golemkennels]

Nope.
From what I can tell, it is purely cadence, with volume being a factor. It all comes in as gibberish, all of it, it isn't like, just one word, or just one phrase. It is more like you are making noise, which I assume from experience is language, but it isn't being processed as language. It doesn't even come across as possibly a foreign language - it comes across as sound only. So exchanging words won't help, because I'm not language processing at all.

The way I figured out it was cadence, and the space in between words that was crucial, was I was making some financial call on the phone, and only hearing gibberish, and I kept asking them to repeat. Except they'd say it the same exact way I think, so it still wasn't language. Finally on the 5th time the lady got pissed enough to put more inflection, therefore more space, between the words, and it resolved into language, no problem.

[mary_mayhem]

I will keep that in mind.

That happens to me sometimes. I can't hear the breaks that divide the words up and a sentence becomes a long garble. I t is worse on the phone than in person. I'm not sure why seeing the lips move seems to give me better cues about the divisions.

I think that is why people sometimes have trouble understanding little children that they don't know well. They aren't familiar with the pattern of breaks the kids use. And children, since they are still learning to communicate, tend to use patterns that make sense to THEM but don't necessarily work for the-world-at-large. I have told my nephew, who is 4, that I can't always hear as fast as he can talk and, sometimes, that helps us. Sometimes, he's too excited to slow down.

Marq has been directed to check with you about a good night for y'all to come to dinner at my house this week. (In case he hasn't gotten around to asking you yet.) I hope you can find a time that suits you. I am looking forward to it. :-)

[marq]

I think we're getting a lot better with tricks for both figuring it out and getting around it.

Still, I know it's frustrating as all get-out.

[code_slave]

I'm really sorry you're having to deal with something so frustrating and discouraging. :-( I was glad to hear, though, about the barista in your story who seemed to know what was up, offered *helpful* help, but didn't make a big deal of it. I think that's the way to go - I find it helpful anyway

[golemkennels]

Thank you. It does, a bit.

It is very much like not having the codeword or the key to unlock what you need to know or say. At other times it is...spatial for me, and I'll have bits an pieces but nothing connecting them, they are just floating there.

[graene]

As much trouble as my brain sometimes has with where the word divisions are, I can't imagine how much more frustrating this must be. Hope stress and incidents reduce soon.