parlando

n

Posted on September 27th, 2009 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Boring Posts, Recovery, Memory.

(I'm going to post insignificant details of my rebuilding mind, both because I wish I'd kept closer track of my pre-stroke mind -- even before my stroke, my memory was not good, but now it's awful -- and because I'm living here, and while my friends keep marveling at my speed of recovery, it frequently seems like I'm standing still to me.)

For four or five months, I've been typing every day, and my progress has been infinitesimal. Not the progress of my content; two months ago I couldn't summon up the word "infinitesimal", for instance. But my typing is about the same as two months ago. It's frustrating. A sentence will enter my thoughts, and by the time the typing catches up, sometimes the sentence will have vanished. And, my god, the N's. For some reason, N is particularly difficult, both the placement of the N in a word -- literally about one-third of the time my mind will drop the N, except the ING combination -- and also the placement of the N on the keyboard. Even though, as I said, I stare at the keyboard every day.

Composing and typing time: 24 minutes.

5 comments.

LauraJMixon

Comment on September 27th, 2009.

It's not boring! It's interesting. (While, I'm sure, unimaginably frustrating for you.)

ethan

Comment on September 27th, 2009.

I ever liked n's ayway.

Yatima

Comment on October 6th, 2009.

I'm with Etha.

Fred

Comment on October 6th, 2009.

I went to a music store (Academy off of Union Square) last night, and thought of you. It's been a rough year; I'm glad you're continuing to recover.

Anonymous

Comment on October 7th, 2009.

I don't know how to say this in any way that will sound polite (I probably didn't have appropriate words before, either, but that's no help): it's good to hear that another stroke victim has trouble spelling.

I had a very different pattern of damage than you did. I had a series of many small stokes. They probably happened over a couple years, and I just didn't understand the reasons I was having more and more trouble coping with life until things got really bad. I will probably have more, but as far as I know, I haven't had one for more than a year.

The good news is that my spelling is getting enough better that I only misspell every other word and I often know how to fix it (I didn't know where the mistakes were for a very long time).

I, too, have become fascinated by the way my mind works, or doesn't. I think figuring out what still works is helping me figure out how to deal with the things that don't.

I hope good results will follow your explorations too.