Rochelle’s Winter Blog 2020

Winter Blog
December 2020/January

1.  The virus is still around and I am very sick of it. Maybe it will be done soon because of the vaccine, maybe it will be another year, who knows?

2.  The American Heart Association has a blog. I wrote an entry about the virus.  Here is link to my entry.   https://supportnetwork.heart.org/blog-news/rochelle-anderson-stroke-and-aphasia-in-the-time-of-covid-19/.  I just had a second entry published this week:  https://supportnetwork.heart.org/blog-news/rochelle-anderson-grocery-shopping-with-aphasia-then-and-now/

3.  In Star Trek Deep Space Nine, there was an episode about aphasia.   Since I am a big fan of the original series in the 1960’s, I could understand this show from 1993.  The episode was titled “Babel”.   There was a virus which caused aphasia when it infected a person.  Of course, at the end of the show there was a cure, and all the aphasia was gone.  Wouldn’t that be nice!

4.  Six months ago, the Star Tribune had a limerick contest.   This is a third entry I had:

                   Twelve years ago I suffered aphasia and stroke

                   It makes it hard to walk and to tell a good joke

                       My family is wonderful

                      Good friends are always helpful

                 Getting better and better drinking Diet Coke

5.  Since the virus, I do many things with Zoom.   Recently I was on a Zoom meeting in my family room with 10 others.   Someone from Wisconsin was talking about a musician.  Their Alexa started to play a song by that artist, and my Alexa (in the next room) started playing the same thing—and I didn’t even ask for it!   I didn’t know how to turn it off.  Alexa is weird.

6.  Here is my yearly aphasia pumpkin.  Halloween was very different with the virus—no trick or treaters.  I still carved my pumpkin.

7.  Because of the virus, I started to play backgammon, for the first time since my stroke.  I used to play it a lot in college and after I was married.  I was very happy I could remember how to play.   I looked up aphasia and backgammon on Google and found out the game is popular with people who have aphasia.

8.  I just recently read that Tina Ball (mother of NBA basketball players) had a severe stroke in 2017.   She has right sided weakness and aphasia.  One of the saddest things I read was that the family was told that after one year of rehabilitation, the person will not improve any more “unless there was a miracle”.   I had my stroke almost 14 years ago and feel that I am still improving.  It is important to remember that the brain has an amazing ability to heal itself, so keep trying to get better all the time.

If you have aphasia, let’s hope you continue to get better, because 2021 has to be better than 2020.

Rochelle Anderson
Rochelleandersonaphasia@gmail.com