Dysphasia is a language disorder that comes from a variety of different sources, one of which is damage to the brain. As you'll know if you read my blog, I had cancer back when I was around 17/18 in my brain, which wreaked havoc across my entire body, ranging from the bottom of my spine to my frontal lobe and pituitary gland. The result for me was, of course, issues with the hormones in my body, damage to my nervous system and, of course, learning difficulties (at least for a while).
One learning difficulty that comes and goes for me is dysphasia. When I say it comes and goes, I believe it's always there; it just worsens occasionally. It's gotten worse over the past 10 years, and a lot of the damage done was from radiotherapy more than anything else.
Dysphasia is not just a disorder that affects speech; it also affects comprehension and understanding of what people mean. For example, sometimes I know what a word means and then, occasionally, when I see the same word and cannot understand it.
It leads to extreme frustration with myself, particularly what happened to me, and I feel useless. I feel people sometimes look at me and think I'm stupid or something, yet I know when I'm having a day where I'm in control of this, I can talk. You see, I'm typing this up without anyone else's help, so right now, you can see that right now I am not feeling the effects of dysphasia. Sadly, I have, in the past, considered committing suicide because this gets to me more than anything else in the world.
People aren't really aware of how difficult it can be to have dysphasia and don't think it's a real problem. Over the last few years, I have found it incredibly challenging, particularly when doing job interviews and public speaking (I usually blame stress for this as I don't want to come across as 'stupid').
