ACQ Vol 10 No 1 2008

A C onsumer S peaks

Steve Pape

I awoke from my coma after several weeks in hospital; I remember thinking to myself, what on earth was I doing here. I was on a motorbiking holiday in Scotland when I lost control and crashed. I had died on the roadside as a result of my injuries. Luckily for me, I was in a group other riders, some of whom were off duty policemen and in the first car to happen upon the crash was a nurse on her way to work. When the ambulance arrived and I was stabilised, I was taken to the nearest hospital specialising in neurological injuries, which was Ninewells Hospital in Dundee, 45 miles away. I had broken only my ankle on the initial impact and the rest of my injuries were related to being thrown around like a rag doll. My helmet was shattered like an eggshell and this gave the doctors their biggest worry – it was obvious that I had sustained a head injury. My accident and coma had taken me back to zero; I was like a newborn baby in an adult’s body. I had thirty years of life experience ahead of me to relearn. Physically, my recovery was progressing very well and all my body needed was time to heal itself. Mentally, my problems were only just beginning and I realised that there would

doctors and nurses are used to dealing with head injuries and speech problems, but out in the big wide world it’s a totally different story. Carol and I had a long journey ahead of us, I still couldn’t control my tone of voice very well and I still needed to work on my breathing. Every day with Carol’s help, I performed my exercises to build up my lungs and throat, and to control my tone of voice. I had to mentally force myself to listen to what I was saying and how I was speaking, and if it didn’t sound right to me then I would correct myself to make it sound correct. I spoke to people in the manner and tone of voice that I would like to be talked to; this was the rule I made for myself to follow when speaking. Talking to old age pensioners helped, because for them to understand me I had to enunciate clearly; this helped tremendously with controlling my voice and tone. My speech was progressing well until I started work. As I mentioned earlier, because there were no visible injuries or bandages people assumed I was fully recovered. What people couldn’t understand is that my brain was still damaged and working hard to heal itself. In hospital and at home I didn’t have to think about much – the biggest decision I had to make was what to have for lunch, so I didn’t have to strain myself or do any hard thinking. In the months before I went back to work both Carol and I thought that I was doing remarkable well with my recovery. Physically, I was back to normal because I’d been exercising daily and mentally. I was coping well with

be many problems ahead. People think I’m joking when I tell them how badly damaged I was, but because there are no bandages or physical disabilities people assumed I was fully recovered. Because of the head injury I had sustained, speech therapy was included as part of my rehabilitation program. The speech therapy was teaching me how to regain control of all the different systems used for speech, with various breathing and oro-facial exercises I was progressing well with my speech. I left hospital with a slight speech problem, so Carol (my wife) and I made some outpatient appointments to continue with the speech therapy. It was at home, away from hospital that I realised how much of a problem I still had. In hospital, the

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ACQ uiring knowledge in speech , language and hearing , Volume 10, Number 1 2008