“Mr. Corn exhibits perceptual evidence of a
mild-moderate dysarthria, with clinical features which appear compatible with a
Spastic (upper motor neuron) Dysarthria, including slow, reduced rate,
imprecise articulation, slow but regular AMR’s (alternating motion rate), low
pitch, reduced variability of pitch and loudness.” That is the heart of the report that I
received from Virginia Chapa, speech pathologist at Mayo Clinic in November of
2015. She had mentioned the word
Dysarthria in our discussion and explained that it is a motor speech disorder
which is typically the result of impaired movement of the muscles used for
speech production. This issues from some
damage to the brain. I suppose all of us
know someone who has speech difficulty after a stroke. My situation is not dissimilar to that with
an important exception, CBD is progressive.
There is no way of knowing where it will stop and most people with this
disease eventually become unable to speak.
As I said in my last blog post, I have talked for a living. The idea of becoming silent is more than a
little frightening.
Now, there is nothing funny about any of that, but
at least two aspects of my time with Mrs. Chapa made me smile. After we had spoken for just a few minutes
she gave me a test. I was to name as
many animals as I could in 60 seconds.
What was funny about this was I had seen John Travolta given the same
test in the movie Phenomenon. He had blown the evaluator away by naming a
list of animals in alphabetical order and then asked if the examiner would like
another list of different animals in reverse alphabetical order! No, I didn’t get as far along as Travolta,
but I did get 27 animal listed before I was stopped by a smiling Mrs Chapa. She informed me that most people come up with
15 animals, I had passed with flying colors!
Mrs. Chapa immediately wanted to know why I had done about 20 of these
in alphabetical order and I explained about the movie. “Well, this proves two things, there is
nothing wrong with your memory and you do not suffer from aphasia!” I suppose it was the quizzical look on my
face which led her to explain that aphasia is an inability to find the right
word. I think coming up with benobo, a
sort of dwarf chimpanzee, in my list demonstrated I was aphasia free!
The other humorous thing was Mrs. Chapa’s
suggestions to me about my speech. Since
she knew I was a pastor she felt it important for me to explain my speech
difficulties to my congregation lest they think I had been drinking! Along this same line she suggested I get a
letter from my doctor explaining that I had a neurological problem which often slurred
my speech. This was to be kept in my car
just in case a policeman who pulled me over assumed the worst! I jokingly followed through with the first of
these suggestions but not the second. I
just can’t see a letter stopping a policeman from drawing his or her own
conclusions.
That was about a year ago. If my dysarthria was mild to moderate then I
believe it would simply be classified as moderate now. In other words, it has gotten noticeably
worse in a year’s time. This was one of
the leading factors in my resignation from the pastorate. I began to realize that doing a Sunday School
class and preaching twice on Sunday was just too much talking for one day.
My vocal problems have also affected my
interaction with people. Since there are
times that it is a struggle to get things across I have become more of a listener,
which isn’t all bad. When I complained
about this to a good friend he jokingly responded, “It makes you seem more intelligent!” Perhaps so, perhaps not, but as I explained
to him, the witty rejoinder is my stock-in-trade. I just can’t throw a verbal hand grenade into
a conversation anymore whether it is to cause a laugh or shoot down an
argument.
Oddly enough I can still preach. There is something about the setting which
forces me to work harder at articulation.
Preaching has always been an intense thing for me, but with the added
speech problems I have been forced to take it up a notch. I don’t speak
anywhere near as fast, but I do so with deeper emotion and, I believe, more
unction. Some have even said that all of
these problems have made me a better preacher.
In the words of Forrest Gump, “Now, I don’t know about that…” but I do know that it has made me realize
what a great privilege it has been to preach God’s Word. I am thankful for it.
A final thought on all of this. As far as I can tell, CBD has yet to affect
either my memory or my intellect. I feel
certain that some assume it has. Being
quiet really isn’t in my nature, but it will have to become so for the rest of
my days. A few friends do seem to
actively solicit my contributions to conversations and I appreciate that, but I
know it will become less and less. This
is the hand that I have been dealt. The
question is, how well will I play it?
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