Sunday, October 31, 2004

Strokanese

I have decided that during my blogging experience, I wil refer to my husband as Clark and myself as Ann.
Aphasia: a language disorder that results from damage to portions of the brain that are responsible for language. Usually, the left side is affected. The disorder impairs both the expression and understanding of language as well as reading and writing. It is caused by a head injury, brain tumor, stroke....
Clark had his 2nd stroke Aug. 2, 2003, this one was a cerebral hemmorrhage. He bled about 3 tablespoons of blood into his brain. I will go into more detail about that later, but for this blog I want you to know where Strokanese came from. One of Clark's afflictions from the 2nd stroke was Aphasia. Physically, he wasn't affected hardly at all, just speech. Certain words would come out different. My sister had come to visit him and she mentioned her concern of getting lost coming to the hospital. Clark has a very good sense of direction and knows the area well, so he decided to help her out and explain how to get back. If you can imagine, place the word "Dracula" in place of "Freeway" and go with it. Everytime he referred to the freeway, Dracula came out. I actually was not there at the time, but my sister told me about it. I am still amazed she figured that out so quickly, but then my sister "V" is very sensitive to people.
You know what, this isn't working for me. I will tell you that "Strokanese" came from me, when Clark had trouble speaking, it became a healthy "joke" to his problem. When ever I couldn't understand what he was trying to say, I would say "Oh my he is speaking in Strokanese". I told him we were going to publish a new Dictionary for Stroke victims. It would convert the language Strokanese into English.
I realize in trying to tell this, that I must end here for this blog, and start a new one. I need to start at the beginning.....

Saturday, October 30, 2004

Let's Get Started

This is my first blog. I was introduced to blogging by DeathMaiden, a seasoned blogger.
I first want to apologize for any punctuation errors or spelling. School is a long time behind me.
I started a personal journal last year after my husband had his 3rd stroke. I was writing it like a autobiography, thinking that maybe in the future it would help someone else who had a loved one who had a stroke. But then my computer crashed (it had a stroke also, I guess you could say). So, I lost most of what I had done, luckily I printed some of it out. That crash stopped my journal day's until now. I imagine most of what I say, won't be of much interest to most. So, I have decided to put that a side and just blog for myself.
I am a born again christian to start. I said a lot of prayers in 2003 for my husband, and God did answer my prayers, beyond what I would dare to let myself hope. We have many times in our life's, when things change. I know, I can look back in my life to certain times and events that changed me forever. For example, when I was 9, it was announced my father had cancer, when I was 14 and he died. When I was 19 and I gave birth to my only child,who I gave up for adoption. When I was 28 and I met my second husband. But,the event that was the most changing, was when I was 50 and my husband had his 3rd stroke. My view of life changed totally, and thanks to the Lord, most of it is good.........