the PDF of her book - National Aphasia Association

114 Ruth Codier Resch Without Utterance:
I can’t articulate what it is, but my thinking is still
problematic, not just the loss of words. I sit in the cubbyhole office
of the neuropsychologist who has been following my progress
since the first major problems with my speech here in the West.
The desk nearly fills the room. Sitting close, he hands me beautiful
little red and white cubes to copy patterns. The task is familiar,
but I am straining. He gives me wooden donut shapes to stack in
sequences of color and size on little pegs. The time runs out, and I
continue on anyway for the solution I know is there. I am oblivious
to my scrambling effort. It’s only when I get home that I fall apart,
can’t think, forget that I have a patient waiting for me.
In the third session with the neuropsychologist, I tell him, “I am trying
much too hard. After both sessions I’ve been totally done in! The effort of
trying to do well really costs.”
“I’m glad you told me this,” he says, “I wondered about that; you do put
on a really good show of competence. You’re trying to mask your difficulties
and push on anyway. The testing is showing where your difficulties are.”
I am relieved; I want to know the truth; I do want to know the worst.
“It is a little like attention deficit disorder which affects the frontal
cortex, distractibility in executive thinking. Only it isn’t the same for you.”
He continues, “Your damage is in the sub-cortex, below the cognitive brain.
What you have been experiencing is disorganization at a more basic level than
attention deficit disorder. You are having difficulty putting together sensorybody
information with perceptual-visual information in your brain. These
specific changes are interfering with the organized functioning you want.”
I’ve brooded all these months, the knowing there was something else.
What he tells me has the ring of truth. In a practical way I don’t get it all, but
I see a path forward now.
Taking a walk in the old woods near my house is calming and peaceful.
I’ve come to meditate along the trails, but the green foliage beside me juts