I have a lot of problems with my brain. Some are physical like the void the bleed left in my brain, but others affect the way I think. The void will always be there – that is one of the things I will take to the grave with me. The other things, which I am going to talk about in this post, are things that affect my thinking. These things are not going to go to the grave with me. I plan on overcoming each of these hurtles so I can return to being the person I was before the stroke. Actually I am going to be new and improved, the old Darcy had some traits I want to get rid of. Anyways, on to the good stuff.

Writing

Writing the wrong letter. This is when I want to want to write one letter and I write a different one. In these cases my brain knows which letter it wants to write but the signal to my hand gets muddled up on the way somewhere and I type a different one. Sometimes (50%?) it takes multiple try’s before I get right.

Writing the wrong word. Same thing as above but with whole words or multiple words. My brain is telling my hand to type something but it does something else. Sometimes I will type part of a sentence two or three times before I get right.  Combine this with the “wrong letter” issue and I think you start to see how communication is tough for me.

Confusing “if”,”it”,”is” and similar words. Sometimes I go through a lot of them before I get the one I want.

I can’t remember a lot of words, but that is slowly improving.

I can’t write or print. My dominate hand (right) is on the side the stroke affected (left side of brain, right side of body). I am going to start working on this soon.

Verbal commutation.

Getting better all time. People that only occasionally see me tell me each time they see me, it is better than the time before.

As my vocabulary gets bigger I am finding that there are a lot of words I cannot pronounce. I can “say them in my head”
but when when I try to say them out loud it sounds like I am talking a different language.

After some time I start to get tired and things start to deteriorate. My speech gets to the point where I am hard to understand. Usually at this time it is “nappy time”.

There are a lot of other points that I could rattle off but I think this gives you an idea of what I am up against.

I love technology. Things such as spell check and Siri have made my new life a lot easier. The whole time I was in the hospital and rehab Siri (iPhone voice recognition) was my best friend. It wasn’t until I came home and got my new computer (Surface Pro 3) that I started typing without using Siri. Now I only use Siri when I’m in a hurry or don’t know how to spell something.

Anyhow, thanks for reading this. Typing this was a good lesson for me, and I hope it gave you some insight into some of the challenges I am facing right now.

Darcy