And stories about young people - I was just 39 - who have had a stroke also interests me. Further - and play the audio at the bottom of this posting - music and aphasia intrigue me.
Now, those three items have come together in a story about as strokes become more common in younger population, intense programs to reteach speech grow:
“We are seeing more younger people with aphasia attending our program,” said Leora Cherney, the director of the Center for Aphasia Research and Treatment at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.
Cherney said younger patients with aphasia have different wants and needs. They want to go back to school, go back to work. Some of them have families with young children.
“What are they going to do with the rest of their lives?” Cherney asks. “An older person who has a stroke in their 70s may already be retired or close to retirement. With a younger person who has a stroke and aphasia, they need to find some kind of worthwhile meaningfulness.”
The UCF Aphasia House is one of a few dozen intensive comprehensive aphasia programs in the world. Patients come from all over to spend six weeks at the college reteaching the brain how to speak.
I've written before on how music helped me bring my speech back to normal, or close. One of the people in the story has found therapy using music helps. Listen to him sing:
(Photo of hymnals from Scott W. Vincent via Flickr)
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