The first week of school is a terrible time for a mom to get sick.
But there I was, struck by some virus that rendered me nearly useless among all the bustle of kids loading and unloading backpacks and hunting for matching socks. For nearly a week I floundered, trying to keep my preschool children alive but quiet, occasionally sitting up to sign a note from school for one of the older kids.
By the beginning of the next week, although I was still weak and left with a lingering cough, I felt well enough to begin the task of digging my family out of the mess that had grown up around us. On Tuesday evening, I was explaining to my daughter why she needed to help clean the family room when my tirade was interrupted by a severe coughing spell. After I finished coughing, I tried to continue the lecture, but found it difficult to speak. The words just weren’t coming out right.
I had never experienced anything like this before. When I went upstairs to talk to my husband, Wes, my speech was slurred, and I stammered over some words. Frightened, I began to cry. Wes put his arms around me and asked what was wrong. “I’m scared,” I tried to say, but the words wouldn’t come out.
“You’re just tired,” he told me. “You’ve been so sick. You go to bed. I’ll put the kids down. You’ll be fine after a good night’s sleep.”
I crawled into bed and lay there, hoping he was right, but deep down I knew that I was not just tired. I was terrified that something was really wrong with me.What’s happening to me? I wondered. What if it doesn’t get better? What if it gets worse, and I can’t talk at all?
For the first time in my life, I considered what it would be like to lose the ability to speak. While talking is a skill generally taken for granted, I was keenly aware that night how much it meant to me. I had considered in the past what it might be like to be without sight, or hearing, or hands. Now I was wondering if any of those things were as valuable to me as my voice. I had never really realized before how important is was to me to just talk – to tell stories and jokes, to ask a friend how she felt, to chat on the phone.
I suddenly recognized the power our words have – for good and bad. I saw that to be able to speak is a gift from God, who created us, and is the giver of all good gifts , and it seemed tragically wrong that anyone would use that gift to lie, or to gossip, or to hurt. I promised myself that if my speech was restored, I would never again misuse my ability to wield words.
At last I slept, and when I woke the next morning, my husband’s first words to me were, “Good morning. Can you talk?”
“Yes, I can talk,” I answered automatically, but the words didn’t sound quite right. We looked at each other apprehensively.
“Say something else,” he said. “Read me something.” He thrust a book at me, and I began to read aloud. Although I could speak, and he could understand me, I was stammering and mispronouncing words.
“Can you sing? Sing something you know really well.”
We found that I could sing fluently.
“Maybe we should go to the hospital,” Wes said.
I didn’t want to go. I honestly felt healthier than I had in days, and I didn’t see what a doctor could do about some fuzzy speech. “Let’s wait, and see what happens,” I said. I told Wes I was fine and that he should go to work.
In truth, I was more worried than I pretended to be. But I was still reluctant to seek medical help. I decided to wait one more day.
The next morning, my speech was only a little improved. Wes called his office to tell them he wouldn’t be in. We left our younger children with a neighbor, and Wes and I headed to the hospital.
When we explained the reason for our visit to the woman at the hospital reception desk, we had her full attention. “I have a 36-year-old woman with slurred speech,” she said into a microphone at the desk. I was whisked immediately to the emergency room while people waiting ahead of me remained in their chairs.
The emergency room doctor asked us questions and listened to me speak. He had several theories and seemed to feel there was nothing seriously wrong, but he wanted to do a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan to rule out the possibility of brain damage.
With Wes at my side, I walked to the radiation center where the MRI scanned and recorded images of my brain. When the scan was finished, Wes and I went back to the emergency department and waited nervously for the doctor to return with the results.
When he did, he had unexpected news: “Mrs. Spencer, you’ve had a stroke.”
The next few hours were a blur of activity. I was transferred to a hospital eighty miles away. I spent the next day there while test after test was performed – tests on my heart, my blood, my veins – tests that would attempt to determine why a healthy, relatively young woman had a stroke. Eventually, I was released and told that they would let me know what they learned. Weeks later, I got the final word: my stroke was “cryptogenic.” No cause had been found.
More than a year has passed since my stroke. I have made an excellent recovery. Although I still sometimes make errors in my speech, they are minor, and most people talking to me never notice.
Over the past year, watching my youngest child learn to talk, I feel like I am witnessing a remarkable, mysterious miracle – and indeed I am. From a very young age we human beings use breath, and brain, and ear, and tongue in a complex combination that we little understand to produce words with which we ask questions, and communicate facts, and invoke powerful emotions. The fact that we do it every day should not lessen our appreciation of the whole astonishing process.
I am truly grateful that my speech was restored. I cannot say that I have fully lived up to my promise that I would never again misuse my power to speak. However, I have certainly appreciated the ability more, and have tried to be more aware of the good – and bad – I do with it.
It seems to be a fact of life that we do not cherish most of the things we have – our health, our abilities, our loved ones – until we lose them, or almost lose them. I don’t know if we can really change that. But perhaps the next time you speak words that make someone smile, or laugh, or cry, or light up with understanding, you will recognize how remarkable it is that you can do that.
I hope I will.
