It is truthful to say that when I was diagnosed with epilepsy and aphasia in 2010, my life was turned upside down. Epilepsy is medically defined as a neurological disorder marked by sudden recurrent episodes of sensory disturbance, loss of consciousness, or convulsions, associated with abnormal electrical activity in the brain. For me, this resulted in multiple severe seizures, during which I lost consciousness. With a lot of hard work over the next few years and with help from my family, friends and my specialists, I managed to get my epilepsy under control, with a combination of anti-convulsant medication, exercise and a healthy lifestyle. Secondly, aphasia is best described as the inability to understand or produce speech, normally as a result of brain trauma or damage. With a lot of patience from my speech therapist, family and particularly my gran who spent hours with my every day helping me to speak and then read, my aphasia is mostly at a point where most don’t recognise that I even have this condition.
Prior to my diagnosis in 2009, I had my head set on becoming a police officer but epilepsy probably doesn’t suit that career – and aphasia definitely doesn’t suit! I spent a few months getting back into a retail job that I had done alongside my role as a Special Constable, and I knew I needed to rethink my future career prospects. It took studying alongside my day job for another few years, but I found a career which I could put set my head and heart on. In 2016, I started the first step of becoming a Personal Trainer and in 2018 I officially started my leisure career as a gym instructor and lifeguard for Active Leeds.
Blogging with Aphasia
Blogging with any type of aphasia has its challenges; most people who I converse with daily have a normal conversation with me and have no idea how difficult a conversation can be at times. At the same time, I don’t always want or need them to know, and I definitely don’t want sympathy. Putting pen to paper, or in this case typing, is doubly difficult. I am not just thinking what to say, how to spell it and using correct grammar, but I am dealing with this simple fact: the English language isn’t always easy.
The difference between ‘Knowing your shit’ or ‘Knowing you’re shit’ is important!
Thankfully, we now have ‘spellcheck’ and I have a partner who has a bottomless well of patience and happens to be an English teacher. So all of my rambling words can be read and interpreted into correct English. So when it shows ‘written by Matthew Duckworth,’ it should also show ‘Edited by Miss S. Carr.’