After two weeks, my speech has finally returned. I cannot say how terrified I was to not be able to speak that time. I could form the thoughts in my head but I could not get them to come out of my mouth audibly. Because I am alone for a large part of the day, it felt as if my tongue was swelling inside my mouth for many of those days. I am so beyond grateful to be able to speak again.
For those two weeks, I often word think about and wonder if this was how it was going to be with my speech. I thought of the book and movie, The Fault in the Stars where Hazel talks about Gus’s “Last good day.” He did not know it would be the last good day before he died. I am not dying immediately but I can’t remember my, “Lst good day” of walking without crutches, not being a wheelchair, driving, and the list goes on and on.
It was sobering to think about my speech not being normal again. It was scary. I could not remember the last thing I talked about. My speech is slurred sometimes, but I can get my thoughts out almost as quickly as I think then. My thoughts get mixed up sometimes but I’ve figured out that if I remain silent for a moment and shake my head, at this point, they come back.
I don’t know when my, “Last good day” will be and that’s a little bit scary. But for now, I continue living with my, “slightly modified” way of doing things; but they STILL get done. Oh yeah, and… with my speech still slightly slurred, my knee popped out again and the next day it over-extended backward upon transferring. It was a completely new pain that I have not felt in the past two years that I have been feeling pain. I made another appointment with Dr. Moore coming up to see what’s going on. Needless to say, that was another, “Bad Day” like before. It had a soundtrack as well.