What is aphasia?

Aphasia is an impairment of language, affecting the production or comprehension of speech and the ability to read or write. Aphasia is always due to injury to the brain-most commonly from a stroke, particularly in older individuals. But brain injuries resulting in aphasia may also arise from head trauma, from brain tumors, or from infections.

Aphasia can be so severe as to make communication with the patient almost impossible, or it can be very mild. It may affect mainly a single aspect of language use, such as the ability to retrieve the names of objects, or the ability to put words together into sentences, or the ability to read. More commonly, however, multiple aspects of communication are impaired, while some channels remain accessible for a limited exchange of information. It is the job of the professional to determine the amount of function available in each of the channels for the comprehension of language, and to assess the possibility that treatment might enhance the use of the channels that are available.

Wernicke's aphasia – In this form of aphasia the ability to grasp the meaning of spoken words is chiefly impaired, while the ease of producing connected speech is not much affected. Therefore Wernicke's aphasia is referred to as a 'fluent aphasia.' However, speech is far from normal. Sentences do not hang together and irrelevant words intrude-sometimes to the point of jargon, in severe cases. Reading and writing are often severely impaired.

http://www.aphasia.org/Aphasia%20Facts/aphasia_facts.html

       He has recovered much of his speech, is able to communicate quite well through gestures, and other non verbals.  He knows most of the time what he wants to say but the words do not come out right, or if they do he questions it because to him the word sounds incorrect. 

       He is determined to overcome this and is working very hard to be better.  The speech therapist at the hospital was blown away because he had begun his own therapy even before she came to asses, and diagnose him.  On his own he had looked up online the sentence “The brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” as well as the alphabet and numbers 1-10 and had been working on learning to write and say them.

       I know he will come back, it will just take time. This morning he had a friend pick him up at 6:30am for Saturday morning men's Bible study, and later another will be picking him up so he can go mow the grass in front of his law office.  He is a remarkable man and an inspiration to me. I am so proud of him!

       He has decided that if he cannot practice law then he will go back to painting, the profession he had for some 10 years prior to going to law school.  He plans to start with our living room as it needs some work done.

       Thank you everyone for your positive thoughts and prayers. I know that they are being answered.

    Have a blessed day

~Kay