“Sir, can you hear me?” “What is your name?”
“Stev…….en…….Ken…..dall,” I said, with great effort.
“Can you understand me, sir?”
“Qui, je comprend,” I replied.
“Is he speaking in French?” asked one of the paramedics.
It was after this exchange with the emergency personnel when I realized that I was unable to speak in English without long pauses between each word.
I was able to speak a few words and phrases I learned from taking French in college over 3o years ago.
I was sitting on the living room floor of our apartment, able to understand everything that was said to me, but only able to speak without difficulty in French.
In the emergency room I continued to answer questions in the few French words and phrases that I could still remember.
Once this bout of "expressive aphasia," as it is called, passed after two hours and my language skills returned, several doctors and nurses remarked that I looked happy and told them I was. I said, "It's a blessing this happened so that you all can hopefully find out what's wrong because this also happened to me 10 years ago…To be continued
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