Hidden Disability: Aphasia

Last year, my husband Andrew and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary. A few months later, Andrew had a stroke. After his stroke, Andrew's doctor did an evaluation of his verbal interactions and ran some imaging tests. The results confirmed that his stroke damaged the broca area of his brain, which impacts expression, and he was diagnosed with aphasia.

Aphasia is partial or complete loss of the ability to express or understand spoken or written language. Andrew's inability to express himself causes a lot of frustration. He understands the meaning of words and knows how he wants to respond, but it's really challenging for him to find the right words. When he does speak, his words are forced out slowly and with great effort.

As soon as we had his diagnosis, we set Andrew up with a speech therapist. While he works hard to improve his language skills, Andrew sometimes communicates with a computer-based device to express his needs. While communicating with my husband is much different now, I know with Andrew's dedication, he won't stop fighting to recover some of the skills he's lost.