FINDING THE WORDS

My relative was recently involved in a motor vehicle crash that left her unconscious and broken. We eventually learned she had head injuries, numerous broken bones, and a collapsed lung. She had to be on a ventilator for almost ten days. I went to visit her this past Sunday after she'd made a dramatic turnaround; she was off the ventilator, sitting up, and talking.

After talking with her about the experience, I got to thinking about how finding our words and communicating are the first things human beings struggle to do. Think about babies; the first thing they do of their own volition is smile when someone talks to them, an attempt to communicate via the only means they know how to use. The next thing they do when someone talks to them is make noises and try to imitate to form words. They understand what people say to them long before they can form the words themselves. They get frustrated when they can't find the correct ones.

As my relative was slowly emerging from her medically induced coma to help with the swelling on her brain, the first thing she tried to do was communicate. The desire was so strong that her daughter created a letter board she could use to spell words when she still had the tube down her throat and couldn't speak. On Sunday, I could tell that her ability to speak, even though it took great concentration and effort to do so, had lifted her spirits and given her hope for her full recovery.

It also amazes me how much other people's words can impact us. Before my relative woke up and her close family members could explain to her what happened, she had no idea why she was in the hospital. One of the first people she remembered visiting her was her eighty-two year old father who drove approximately an hour to get to the hospital where she was admitted, something she knew he wouldn't do without a good reason. She'd had a tooth extraction scheduled so when she saw her father, she said she first thought something went wrong with the extraction. But she ran her tongue over her teeth and they were still there. She knew something had to be seriously wrong for her father to drive all that way to the hospital to see her and talk to her. I don't know what he said to her, but it seems like an uncanny coincidence that right after that visit, immediately after receiving that communication from her father, she began to turn around for the better, getting off the ventilator the next day, getting out of ICU the day after that, and talking about being discharged to a rehab facility just three days after that.

Words. Always amazes me what they can do and how important they are. Just 26 little letters...

Here's to your health and always being able to find your words!

-The Wordsy Woman