Aphasia from the Inside
Sep. 3rd, 2023 03:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeRogan: I've had words back long enough that my aphasia periods might be coming to an end, and I want to write down notes of what it felt like from the inside before the memories fade.
Four Layers of Language
It turns out that I have at least four forms of verbalizing. At bottom, there's passive thoughtstream, the inner narrative that runs constantly through my head regardless of my volition. That was completely unaffected by my aphasia, which I'm glad about. (Other people with aphasia DO lose this as well.) Some headmates could communicate with me by listening to my passive thoughtleak, but it was really challenging for everyone. (Most of us plain can't do it, and even the ones who can... we've spent years trying not to eavesdrop on each other; it requires a lot of attention to forcibly monitor someone's quiet, passive, CONSTANT thoughtstream, and it can get overwhelming. There's a reason we filter that out!)
Then there's active thoughtstream: me purposely thinking about things. That was affected by the aphasia, especially the moment I'd realize I was doing it. Then I'd get tangled up by the words, trying to figure them out, find the correct ones, and it'd all fall through my fingers. Since passive thoughtstream worked fine, and since I was aware it worked fine, losing my active thoughtstream drove me fucking crazy. It felt like the whole machine only worked as long as I didn't think about it or try to do it. The moment I did, the whole structure had to warp around the aphasia.
I could sometimes do writing, but it tended to be stream-of-consciousness, required me be up late at night, and a lot of carefully NOT thinking about what I was doing. (I made Protection while aphasic.) If I was blending with other headmates, sometimes I could escape that way, but it's honestly not clear to me whether that truly worked or not. We vessel-natives have a lot of commonalities, and often we aren't paying a lot of attention to who exactly is saying or doing what. So what might've been blending might've just been Mori knowing what needing to be done and saying it similarly to how I would've.
I recovered my ability to purposely think in words faster and better than speaking.
You'd think conscious thoughtstream would be the same as talking to someone in headspace, but I learned while asphasic that NOPE! Apparently it is different, more refined and concrete than active thoughtstream, and thus, I couldn't do it, anymore than I could vessel-talk. It was the fucking pits. It seemed to be more or less the same level of impairment as verbalizing.
Then there was vessel-talking, which, unsurprisingly, I couldn't much do. My vocabulary was fairly intact, but fancier words required more brainwidth to ponder the correct usage of, so I didn't much use them. I could use nouns and verbs and adjectives, but stripped of tenses, number, and such--I'd basically be restricted to dictionary tenses. Pronouns especially made me miserable. At first, I could only string together one or two word-blocks at a time: "Go store," "Oh no," "Love" instead of "I love you." Over time, I was able to string more word-blocks together: "No want episode now bye." I was unable to use intensifiers, and would repeat as a form of emphasis: "Bad bad bad," "love love." I'd also sometimes treat all verbs as intransitive: "no thank" instead of "no thank you" or "yes want" instead of "yes, I want that."
I use the term "word-block" because my brain would sometimes lump multiple words together as one "block," thus allowing me to sometimes say them as one unit, rather than individual words. (Examples include "oh no" and book titles: I could say Danny Champion of the World as one title-block, but I was incapable of saying "Danny is the champion of the world." And even then, I would sometimes gut the block and say something like Danny Champion World instead.)
I was aware of the inconsistencies of my passive (grammatical) thoughtstream and my active, ungrammatical attempts to verbalize, and I'd easily get frustrated. (It did not help that my passive self-hate thoughtstream could rattle on with, "this is clearly proof that you're just doing it to yourself for [insert bullshit reason here]" but I couldn't actively think back, "No, that's stupid, why would I do this to myself for weeks on end?") I did not (and do not) understand why my passive thoughtstream could rattle on about the intricacies of plural racism, but the moment I tried to do it on purpose, I would break down to, "friend wrong."
Communicating with Other People
At first, I avoided communicating with much of anyone at all, out of embarrassment and just wanting to be on my own. Over time, though, I started reaching out more (in part because after a couple weeks, I was getting lonely). This also coincided with my verbalizing improving, though I'm not sure if it's a case of reaching out improving my communication, my improved communication making reaching out easier, or a mix of both.
My comprehension, thankfully, stayed pretty fine--and I was sensitive to being treated like I was stupid. Most of my headmates continued interacting with me much the way they had before, just simplifying their statements so I could respond more effectively. Mac, who's very attuned to my thoughtleak, would sometimes have brief, challenging-but-sweet interactions with me by using thoughtleak to visualize images, which I could interact with. It was fun, but really hard to do! I'm not a visual person at all. Mori would sometimes act as my interpreter, reading my thoughtleak and then verbalizing it, but I hated her doing it--it very much made me feel like I was a toddler being talked over.
Grace and Bob handled it very well, unsurprisingly. Bob was used to being around someone unable to speak in a usual way, so he just treated me the way he does Grace, paying attention to nonverbal communication. Grace and I would sit in peaceful, companionable silence together. My aphasia was probably least bothersome to me when I was around them.
It was also notable how different my aphasia was to Gigi's speech trouble or Grace's nonverbal stuff. For Gigi, speech is challenging because of an old headspace throat injury. The problem for her is physical effort, and her voice always comes out strained and raspy. Grace, in contrast, has issues with using her voice (possibly due to dysphoria), and she gets quickly socially overwhelmed so tends to keep her communications short and to-the-point, but she was never so telegraphic as me, she could still use correct grammar, and she had more stamina in writing or sign language than speaking. For me, all grammar (and thus all language) were equally difficult, and social anxiety or physical challenge had no part in it. It was GRAMMAR that was broken for me.
However, I did end up learning ASL for "thank you" and using that sign a lot. I was able to manage it more than "thank you" because my brain kept getting turned around by the pronouns and conjugations. Just having one fluid motion did help me avoid that.
Japanese
I also had an easier time with accessing Japanese, a language we studied for six years but were far from fluent in, even at the best of times. (And we are now very out of practice.) In the early, most intensely aphasic days, I had an easier time accessing kanji and kana than English words, to the point of sometimes putting Japanese on my communication cards. "Before" was a word completely beyond me; it fell through my fingers like sand. 前, however, I was able to comprehend. Kanji were always a challenge for me, so it wasn't a matter of ease; I think it's because the symbolic form of it, rather than phonetic, helped reroute around the neurological blocks. "Verb" totally stymied me in the depths of my aphasia, but I was able to use "する" as a workaround replacement. (Note: する just means "to do." It is NOT Japanese for "verb," merely the most common verb in the language.)
As my aphasia started loosening, I was able to use grammatical (or, well, as best my JSL ass could manage) Japanese before I could use grammatical English. I was able to state complete sentences in Japanese, though I definitely reverted to the "speaking to the Emperor" level of formality I learned in high school. Best I can figure, my brain stored Japanese learned in high school differently, in a way less incapacitated. (And we've managed to hang onto our high school Japanese way better than our college Japanese.) It was a surprise to discover this; I didn't even consider trying to speak Japanese until a new friend of ours, who speaks Japanese WAY better than we do, had a Japanese headmate come out who admitted he felt most comfortable speaking Japanese. So we did!
My Japanese statements still remained very simple: "this is very inconvenient!" "yes, that's fine," "my Japanese is poor," but it was still a far cry from my, "no thank" English.
Feel free to ask me what it felt like; I figure maybe this post would be a useful reference for writers or something. (With the usual caveats of I am only one person with one form of mercifully temporary aphasia.)
Four Layers of Language
It turns out that I have at least four forms of verbalizing. At bottom, there's passive thoughtstream, the inner narrative that runs constantly through my head regardless of my volition. That was completely unaffected by my aphasia, which I'm glad about. (Other people with aphasia DO lose this as well.) Some headmates could communicate with me by listening to my passive thoughtleak, but it was really challenging for everyone. (Most of us plain can't do it, and even the ones who can... we've spent years trying not to eavesdrop on each other; it requires a lot of attention to forcibly monitor someone's quiet, passive, CONSTANT thoughtstream, and it can get overwhelming. There's a reason we filter that out!)
Then there's active thoughtstream: me purposely thinking about things. That was affected by the aphasia, especially the moment I'd realize I was doing it. Then I'd get tangled up by the words, trying to figure them out, find the correct ones, and it'd all fall through my fingers. Since passive thoughtstream worked fine, and since I was aware it worked fine, losing my active thoughtstream drove me fucking crazy. It felt like the whole machine only worked as long as I didn't think about it or try to do it. The moment I did, the whole structure had to warp around the aphasia.
I could sometimes do writing, but it tended to be stream-of-consciousness, required me be up late at night, and a lot of carefully NOT thinking about what I was doing. (I made Protection while aphasic.) If I was blending with other headmates, sometimes I could escape that way, but it's honestly not clear to me whether that truly worked or not. We vessel-natives have a lot of commonalities, and often we aren't paying a lot of attention to who exactly is saying or doing what. So what might've been blending might've just been Mori knowing what needing to be done and saying it similarly to how I would've.
I recovered my ability to purposely think in words faster and better than speaking.
You'd think conscious thoughtstream would be the same as talking to someone in headspace, but I learned while asphasic that NOPE! Apparently it is different, more refined and concrete than active thoughtstream, and thus, I couldn't do it, anymore than I could vessel-talk. It was the fucking pits. It seemed to be more or less the same level of impairment as verbalizing.
Then there was vessel-talking, which, unsurprisingly, I couldn't much do. My vocabulary was fairly intact, but fancier words required more brainwidth to ponder the correct usage of, so I didn't much use them. I could use nouns and verbs and adjectives, but stripped of tenses, number, and such--I'd basically be restricted to dictionary tenses. Pronouns especially made me miserable. At first, I could only string together one or two word-blocks at a time: "Go store," "Oh no," "Love" instead of "I love you." Over time, I was able to string more word-blocks together: "No want episode now bye." I was unable to use intensifiers, and would repeat as a form of emphasis: "Bad bad bad," "love love." I'd also sometimes treat all verbs as intransitive: "no thank" instead of "no thank you" or "yes want" instead of "yes, I want that."
I use the term "word-block" because my brain would sometimes lump multiple words together as one "block," thus allowing me to sometimes say them as one unit, rather than individual words. (Examples include "oh no" and book titles: I could say Danny Champion of the World as one title-block, but I was incapable of saying "Danny is the champion of the world." And even then, I would sometimes gut the block and say something like Danny Champion World instead.)
I was aware of the inconsistencies of my passive (grammatical) thoughtstream and my active, ungrammatical attempts to verbalize, and I'd easily get frustrated. (It did not help that my passive self-hate thoughtstream could rattle on with, "this is clearly proof that you're just doing it to yourself for [insert bullshit reason here]" but I couldn't actively think back, "No, that's stupid, why would I do this to myself for weeks on end?") I did not (and do not) understand why my passive thoughtstream could rattle on about the intricacies of plural racism, but the moment I tried to do it on purpose, I would break down to, "friend wrong."
Communicating with Other People
At first, I avoided communicating with much of anyone at all, out of embarrassment and just wanting to be on my own. Over time, though, I started reaching out more (in part because after a couple weeks, I was getting lonely). This also coincided with my verbalizing improving, though I'm not sure if it's a case of reaching out improving my communication, my improved communication making reaching out easier, or a mix of both.
My comprehension, thankfully, stayed pretty fine--and I was sensitive to being treated like I was stupid. Most of my headmates continued interacting with me much the way they had before, just simplifying their statements so I could respond more effectively. Mac, who's very attuned to my thoughtleak, would sometimes have brief, challenging-but-sweet interactions with me by using thoughtleak to visualize images, which I could interact with. It was fun, but really hard to do! I'm not a visual person at all. Mori would sometimes act as my interpreter, reading my thoughtleak and then verbalizing it, but I hated her doing it--it very much made me feel like I was a toddler being talked over.
Grace and Bob handled it very well, unsurprisingly. Bob was used to being around someone unable to speak in a usual way, so he just treated me the way he does Grace, paying attention to nonverbal communication. Grace and I would sit in peaceful, companionable silence together. My aphasia was probably least bothersome to me when I was around them.
It was also notable how different my aphasia was to Gigi's speech trouble or Grace's nonverbal stuff. For Gigi, speech is challenging because of an old headspace throat injury. The problem for her is physical effort, and her voice always comes out strained and raspy. Grace, in contrast, has issues with using her voice (possibly due to dysphoria), and she gets quickly socially overwhelmed so tends to keep her communications short and to-the-point, but she was never so telegraphic as me, she could still use correct grammar, and she had more stamina in writing or sign language than speaking. For me, all grammar (and thus all language) were equally difficult, and social anxiety or physical challenge had no part in it. It was GRAMMAR that was broken for me.
However, I did end up learning ASL for "thank you" and using that sign a lot. I was able to manage it more than "thank you" because my brain kept getting turned around by the pronouns and conjugations. Just having one fluid motion did help me avoid that.
Japanese
I also had an easier time with accessing Japanese, a language we studied for six years but were far from fluent in, even at the best of times. (And we are now very out of practice.) In the early, most intensely aphasic days, I had an easier time accessing kanji and kana than English words, to the point of sometimes putting Japanese on my communication cards. "Before" was a word completely beyond me; it fell through my fingers like sand. 前, however, I was able to comprehend. Kanji were always a challenge for me, so it wasn't a matter of ease; I think it's because the symbolic form of it, rather than phonetic, helped reroute around the neurological blocks. "Verb" totally stymied me in the depths of my aphasia, but I was able to use "する" as a workaround replacement. (Note: する just means "to do." It is NOT Japanese for "verb," merely the most common verb in the language.)
As my aphasia started loosening, I was able to use grammatical (or, well, as best my JSL ass could manage) Japanese before I could use grammatical English. I was able to state complete sentences in Japanese, though I definitely reverted to the "speaking to the Emperor" level of formality I learned in high school. Best I can figure, my brain stored Japanese learned in high school differently, in a way less incapacitated. (And we've managed to hang onto our high school Japanese way better than our college Japanese.) It was a surprise to discover this; I didn't even consider trying to speak Japanese until a new friend of ours, who speaks Japanese WAY better than we do, had a Japanese headmate come out who admitted he felt most comfortable speaking Japanese. So we did!
My Japanese statements still remained very simple: "this is very inconvenient!" "yes, that's fine," "my Japanese is poor," but it was still a far cry from my, "no thank" English.
Feel free to ask me what it felt like; I figure maybe this post would be a useful reference for writers or something. (With the usual caveats of I am only one person with one form of mercifully temporary aphasia.)
no subject
Date: 2023-09-03 08:31 pm (UTC)Oof, sounds like you met the Self Consciousness Monster.
The Self Consciousness Monster is a little insecure and a little shy. It gets all messed up when people call attention to it.
//ponders//
I wonder if there's any resemblance in this to the early development of language. In linguistic history, or in individual development. I mean, you've got the concept there and the most concentrated parts come out first.
Still HELLA frustrating experience though! Eesh. I'm sorry you got all tangled up.
Really interesting about your second spoken language being more accessible, and sign not working for you. ASL has a lot of grammar worked into signs and it can be a large bundle of information to put together in one sentence compared to spoken languages (plus, if you're freezing mentally and linguistically I would Not Be Surprised if that got tangled into physical freezing as well).
- Kani (he/him)
no subject
Date: 2023-09-03 10:16 pm (UTC)I feel pretty confident that it wasn't related to early development of language, since my language impairments weren't like those of small children, whose vocabularies are limited. I was still capable of really complex symbolic communication, using comics and art and emoji pidgin; it was GRAMMAR specifically that tripped me up, even very simple grammar.
no subject
Date: 2023-09-03 11:21 pm (UTC)Oh, I didn't mean your personal language development. I was thinking about how pathways are developed in general, and that it would make sense both to prioritize the most concise expression of a concept possible (like for babies learning how to use language - you'll more likely hear an excited 'cat!!! cat!!!' than 'There's a cat and I'm excited!!!' when they both convey the same concept and one is a LOT HARDER when language is still being learned, even if kiddo can understand more than they can speak) as well as for the same to emerge first in the development in language-as-a-phenomenon. Grammar is super useful and allows a standardised way for communication to happen about complex and abstract topics - but the first words were probably concrete, immediate things like No and Look and Go There and Huh? and take a lot less energy and mental bandwidth to put together.
I'm just poking at the potential connections between language development and aphasia and what they could say about each other (at least, depending on the kind and cause of the aphasia). Might be a good rainy day research topic. :)
>> Enh, it wasn't even self-consciousness. <<
Ah, gotcha.
A lot of people over here experience self-consciousness as something like an undercurrent, that isn't necessarily conscious but can create a complete block on ANYTHING they do or think or feel - because it's constantly under criticism or scrutiny. It could lead to freezes because no thinking or feeling or action wouldn't be subject to it, and it could even lock memories up. But that hasn't happened in a while. That's where I was coming from.
What do you think was going on with your lock-ups? If you want to talk about it on here.
- Kani (he/him)
no subject
Date: 2023-09-03 11:30 pm (UTC)What do you think was going on with your lock-ups? If you want to talk about it on here.
It seems to have been connected to a severe neurological injury I sustained in my teens, which (among other things) made me unable to speak even telegraphically for a while. The aphasia fits coincided with me dealing with memories involving it, and as I composted the memories, the aphasia calmed down.
That's as much as I'm willing to discuss here.
no subject
Date: 2023-09-03 11:38 pm (UTC)MAJOR props and respect to you for untangling it. It sounds like a pile of nails and barbed wire to sort through.
- Kani (he/him)
no subject
Date: 2023-09-03 11:53 pm (UTC)[Janusz]
This is all really interesting, thanks for sharing
no subject
Date: 2023-09-04 01:23 am (UTC)I find this pretty interesting, in part because I can confirm I've also noticed those four rough levels, even if I haven't articulated it out that way. It's noticeable mostly because I can tell I work a little unusually, if not in an unheard of way, in that I function with almost no active thoughtstream (the second one you've listed out). I do not think in words of any kind. Ever. Unless I'm making an active choice to think really hard how to word stuff (say, I'm thinking ahead to how to say something to a manager at work or something), I don't think things in phrases at all.
I've only had to think this out before to try to explain to people that, despite what it looks like, I'm really, REALLY bad at wording things, and work overtime just to catch up to casually inarticulate. For whatever reason writing is easier than talking, so I know I come across like an academic on the internet and you might be thinking like "damn if this is inarticulate I'd hate to see what this guy thinks of someone who's actually bad at words", but I think I'd be hard to recognize as the same person comparing this to how I talk out loud. I sound a lot more like "'s like, kinda, y'know... weird n' stuff...?" verbally. Like part of that is just a personality thing I guess, but the other part is that I genuinely feel I am putting in a lot of conscious effort to painstakingly translate every tiny thing I think into a word, and I don't have the mental bandwidth to both physically talk quickly enough for normal conversation AND make it sound good. Mostly I've had to think out how to put that because The Roommate is hyper-verbal and wants to talk literally all the time, and every time they ask me a question and then I get three words in before they talk over me with twenty more sentences rapid fire and break my concentration trying to "translate" to words I'm just like PLEASE SLOW THE FUCK DOWN FOR TWO SECONDS SO I CAN AT LEAST MANAGE ONE SENTENCE TO EVERY THIRTY OF YOURS I AM TRYING TO THINK OF HOW TO TURN MY THOUGHT SLUDGE INTO SOMETHING AAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Anyway. Multiplicity-mechanics-wise, interestingly I can't say anyone here almost ever hears anyone's active thoughtstream (people who are not me have a more solid one haha), but we can all hear each others' passive ones pretty much constantly unless we make active efforts to ignore it or throw metaphorical barriers in the way (say, we're in different ROOMS so we can't hear anything, isn't that right brain, ISN'T THAT RIGHT BRAIN I SAID). This makes it more difficult if we're having any active talking-to-headmates issues, in that all you can hear from anyone else if they can't say it IS the wordless passive sludge of thoughts, leading to an almost charades game of "Okay, so you... [attempt to interpret thing]?" "[vague feeling of 'that isn't how I'd put it']" "WELL HOW WOULD YOU PUT IT THEN????" "anjfdskfklfdlsrregh?" "...yeah my guess is gonna have to be your statement." "[vague feeling of reluctant agreeing]". Basically what you mentioned with Mori trying to interpret and unfortunately it feeling like being condescendingly spoken for. That doesn't happen too often anymore, but basically, active-thoughtstream seems to keep to itself more than passive here for whatever weird reason, so it can make it obvious that talking-to-headmates-voice is a wholly separate thing. People who've gone phases not being able to be heard properly like that have said that they, to THEMSELF, are still thinking out all the words properly, it's somehow just not transferring over to something someone else can hear.
Anyway, past the 'this is scientifically interesting' stuff there, I'm gonna ask for the person who's had problems speaking before to see if he has anything fun to say.
[Goldenrod]
Hi.
I feel like I'm being used as a demonstration but it's fine. This is what I'm supposed to be demonstrating. I talk choppy like this most of the time. I could use commas but I'd have to think about where each one of them went so I don't and all my sentences end up sounding the same. I think I can actually only talk this well because I'm stealing someone else's ability. Me and the person above are a connected twin set and I can ride all his skills so that's the only reason I have his vocab I think. When I've been more on my own I just don't talk verbally at all. I can't think of the words or grammar. I don't think it's anything that happened to us here though. I just didn't talk for ten years and it messed me up. Probably the autism also. I don't know how this works. I just know sometimes nothing happens when I try to say things and I end up saying single words like how you said up there.
Interesting reversal: I sound better out loud than in writing. Some of these pauses sound like purposeful sentence pauses. What do you call those. Where you'd put a comma or the dots. So since the pauses are different lengths it looks less stupid than this. It's less unnatural.
That was low-level riding someone else's skills, this is stealing his voice entirely. If I really want, I can basically sound like I'm the exact same person typing, but I feel like I'm puppeting someone else's brain into translating my thoughts entirely instead of me typing. So this is demonstration two: I promise this is the same person talking, but I look like the other one. This is how I've usually written things out before since people make a lot of assumptions about your intelligence if your writing style is off. Makes our head hurt to do it even this long though.
Anyway. Easy talking now. We've never been hurt the same way so it's probably not the same thing exactly but the grammar's hardest for me too. I feel like saying things even this flatly goes through a filter where someone else is auto-filling for me. Feels like going in circles trying to explain though. Weird thing: when I was first practicing talking again the easiest way to do it was stealing the voice of bad purple prose writing. Talking in fancy metaphor like a kids' overblown fantasy. I think I used to read a lot of that. Made me sound like a cryptic horror movie ghost a lot. Now I'm still copying but I'm copying someone else. Summary of point: the shortcut I can work with is copying someone else's way of saying things. I don't know if I could say anything at all if I didn't.
I think that was it. Maybe interesting, maybe not, but we're not torturing people by forcing them to read words like some people here worry about so I'm leaving that and not trying to make it make more sense. Or worry about using commas once. Ooh now I look like I'm faking it because I got better at sentences for three seconds. Get real.
Leaving.
[Carnation]
Anyway, back to me I guess. I feel like we should probably say some form of 'sorry that happened, hope it's over, that was interesting though' instead of just talking about us? Hopefully it doesn't come across self-centered, I mean it more in a connecting through shared experiences way instead of NOW IT IS TIME TO TALK ABOUT ME, ME ME ME way, I just don't think of relevant questions or condolences or etc very well, haha.
no subject
Date: 2023-09-04 04:34 pm (UTC)Grey doesn't think much in words either. It makes her thoughtleak super calming, for me anyway!
And Goldenrod, I attempted piggybacking, but the rules of aphasia meant it'd only working as long as I wasn't doing it on purpose or thinking about it, which never worked for long. Very much the centipede's dilemma.
no subject
Date: 2023-09-04 03:05 am (UTC)And I'm not too good at broadcasting my thoughts either, but some people can figure them out through listening to the thought-leak, and interpreting for me, but it makes me feel like I'm a toddler they're talking over too.
Thank you for posting this. I found it super interesting and was happy to read it.
-Brin
no subject
Date: 2023-09-04 04:35 pm (UTC)I wonder if these different forms of language and thought get processed different, neurologically?
no subject
Date: 2023-09-04 08:02 pm (UTC)It's interesting how Japanese came back faster than English. I wonder if Japanese was more ~blocky for you, or if it has to do with brains handling first languages and additional languages differently?
It's also interesting hearing about different forms of aphasia. (I've been lucky enough to avoid having it visit me so far, but I do have a family member who had aphasia of the form of "can think in grammatical English sentences, but the voice box could only say 'thank you.'")
I'm glad it was more ~inconvenient then ~distressing, though!
no subject
Date: 2023-09-30 12:18 am (UTC)Rogan: Who knows? I don't FEEL like it was more blocky for me--"hai, ii desu" should be about as rote a preloaded response as "yes, that's okay," but the latter was IMPOSSIBLE for me to say.
I do have a family member who had aphasia of the form of "can think in grammatical English sentences, but the voice box could only say 'thank you.'"
I mean, if you had to be stuck with only one response, I can definitely think of much worse than "thank you," but it'd still be a royal pain in the ass!
no subject
Date: 2023-09-30 04:22 am (UTC)Languages and brains: both eternal mysteries.
I mean, if you had to be stuck with only one response, I can definitely think of much worse than "thank you," but it'd still be a royal pain in the ass!
There were some jokes after the fact, when language came back online for her, that if she was going to be stuck with any phrase, it was going to be either "thank you" or "sorry." It definitely caused some problems though. (She was in the hospital for the thing that gave her aphasia, and we had to semi regularly put ourselves in between her and nurses to be like "so, for most patients, 'thank you' would be explicit verbal consent, but this is a patient who can *only say thank you*, so do you want to maybe check again?")
no subject
Date: 2023-09-30 11:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-09-16 09:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-09-30 12:16 am (UTC)No clue if he's right, but it would kinda explain some of the weird impairments some of us have (and some of us DON'T have, once they arrive here).