I was fighting to escape—something—but what it was, I could not imagine. I had no name for it. Everything has to have a name; every object, every action, every idea. Later, I would wonder if that was what it felt like to be autistic; to be unable to express ideas and feelings because I didn’t know their names.
It had been a lengthy surgery to deal with a perforated ulcer requiring the removal of a sizeable portion of my stomach and cleanup of the poisonous mess in my insides. I had been under morphine for so long that my memory was severely affected. I simply couldn’t come up with words for the things I wanted to say. I realized that fact while trying to turn off the sound of an annoying TV program across from my bed. I studied the buttons on the remote control. None of them were of any help. It took two more days and a lot of trial and error before I retrieved the word MUTE, and there it was, right at the top of the right hand corner of the control where it had been all along. I hadn’t been able to find it because I couldn’t remember the word.
Now that I put my finger on the problem, I set about to try to retrieve as many of my missing words as quickly as I could. I discovered that simply looking at printed words helped. Every so often I would recognize one. I welcomed them like old friends and had a compulsion to write them down so they couldn’t get away from me again. Another day or two and I realized that wasn’t necessary.
Trying to work crossword puzzles helped. I did a lot of peeking at the answers but that was ok because I wasn’t trying to prove how clever I was at working out the clues, but simply searching for familiar words. Part of that search was a need for synonyms. One of my writer friends once called me a walking Thesaurus, yet here I was in the pitiful condition of being unable to think of two words with similar definitions. I started compiling a mental list of synonyms for the words I was beginning to remember. It helped.
I began receiving physical and occupational therapy right away once I was moved from the hospital to a rehab facility, and a dietician and speech pathologist soon followed. I couldn’t communicate well with the dietician, not only because of my language limitations, but because I had been fed intravenously for the past couple of weeks and the doctor had told me to start eating carefully, slowly, in tiny bites to help my stomach and digestive system get back to normal. There was also a fear factor that made me cautious about eating anything that might bring back unbearable internal pain.
I was eager to work with the speech pathologist, and struggled to explain how the loss of language affected me and about my efforts to find the missing language. She assured me that I was doing exactly the right things and suggested some additional exercises that could help; making lists of related ideas such as kinds of buildings, brands of cereal and names of streets in my hometown. I found that the lists brought back my memories and ideas that this long time on morphine had stolen from me. One thought led to another and I began to suffer from what I named “Busy Brain.” That new malady kept me awake some nights and I longed for hours of uninterrupted sleep. After three or four days, I could believe I was going to continue rebuilding my vocabulary and didn’t need to be so anxious about words slipping away from me again.
After about a week I’ve managed to get in touch with several of those writer friends who have been greatly supportive. They are all bright, interesting, articulate women. Over the years they have been invaluable inspiration, encouragement, sources of information, challenge, support and friendship. We talk on the cell phone often and they help me feel more like myself. A big part of my on-going recovery.