Louis De La F.
Friday, February 24, 2012
By: Louis De La Foret

Survivor

A Re-doable Brain

I had a stroke.

Left partial anterior circulation stroke. May 2010.

It meant that the right side of my body was affected. I veered to the right when walking. My mouth didn't work right on the right side. My right arm didn't have strength it used to. I couldn't lift my right leg far enough to get my trousers on.

But you wouldn't know it to look at me.

That's where the big difference lies. Aphasia "it sounds like a C S Lewis character in The Chronicles of Narnia" but it means a condition where the stroke has affected the person's ability to speak, read or write. You can't see it.

A stroke is a designer affliction: every person is affected differently. I've got two of the three. I can read, but speaking and writing I've got to work on. Then there's memory: I forget words. I like to refer to my life now as a crossword puzzle: some answers are apparent, some you have to search for.

This is ironic because I've spent my life talking and writing as a television news reporter, teacher of journalism and in public relations. I have some things left to do: finish my novel and resume my photography career.

I've detailed the stroke experience, and the re-doable effort in writing in a blog because I have now trained my right arm to do reasonable service on the keyboard and I know where to search. In some small way it may help others. In a large way it's helped me, giving me voice when a stroke took my speech away.

http://redoable.wordpress.com