HAPPINESS IS RAIN -- DUAL LANGUAGES -- UNUSUAL BEHAVIORS

What brings happiness can be experienced differently by each of us.   After many dry months I was pleased last evening to hear a rumble I determined actually was thunder.   The sound moved north to south over my house, then faded away.  Where was the rain, I wondered?   Is that all there is?    

Peggy Lee – Is That All There Is -- 1969

A short time later I heard another band of thunder gradually moving overhead preceded by brief lightning flashes.   This time I began to finally hear the sound of welcome rain.  I was happy.

Language translation I wrote about in my most recent previous posts brought to my mind another intriguing variation on the topic.  

I recall an alert 100 year-old woman a physician asked me to see in a long term care rehabilitation facility.   She presented my first work encounter with the French language other than my long ago college studies, but I’d had no conversational practice during the ensuing years.    This lady had lived in the U.S. most of her life speaking English, no French, her daughter said, but her birth language had been French. 

This agile petite lady had recently had a slight stroke from which she was thought to have mostly recovered.  Surprisingly to all, they discovered that she had begun speaking French which no one could understand.  She spoke to staff in French frequently, or seemed to be using a combination of English and French sounding words.  Later we learned, as with her infrequent English productions, even her French was lacking in grammar and meaning.   Staff and her family were having great difficulty in understanding her so they could fulfill her functional daily living needs and wants. 

I knew universal medical histories documented some individuals after stroke have reverted to a birth language though they might not have used it since early childhood or during their adult life.   I was asked to see if she could resume English speaking as she had before her stroke.

In addition to her impaired French, she had other cognitive complications and hearing loss issues I was able to determine.   The stroke had left her with short term memory problems, so what skills she might learn in the moment, to use English, was not retained, unfortunately.   Introduction of all techniques including pictures, gestures became a focus, too.   

Anything further that could be done to facilitate her better communication in a trial intervention was soon completed as meaningful progress could no longer justify continuing therapy.    Gains, if any, would be long term requiring 24/7 consistent reinforcement by all with whom she had contact.  

Staff, family, friends would need to use a combination of total communication techniques, reinforcing speech with English as a constant, but French words could be used if most helpful should staff and family acquire a few, too.   She made no later significant communication gains or changes in her use of English as far as I ever knew.   Inability to achieve a significant positive change in someone's life is always disappointing.  

Unusual behaviors can occur as a consequence of neurological brain functions.  This can be due to variations in neural connections, chemical imbalances, tumors, other effects and causes.   Our whole being is complicated but fascinating.   From the time I held a human brain in my hands and began to learn about that most important part of our body I have been mesmerized, but also very aware of my knowledge shortcoming.  

What I soon realized is that the more we know about our brain’s function, the more we learn about how little we know.   The scientists who study the brain are acutely aware of this fact.  As much as we are all the same, we are also very different -- a reason to be compassionate, tolerant and try to understand one another.  

A neurologist author has written numerous books in very readable language about many real individuals whose brains had a slight variation from what is often considered normal.   I highly recommend Oliver Sacks books if you are unfamiliar with his writings.   His entertaining writing makes fascinating reading though we're deprived of more clinical tales since he died in 2015.   

His most well-known book became the movie “Awakenings” about some most unusual real people with Parkinsonian type behaviors.   His other books are equally fascinating.  

Some of their intriguing titles are “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales”, “The Island of the Colorblind”, “A Leg to Stand On”, “Seeing Voices” to name a few. 

Have you encountered unusual behaviors in others you know, or changes in them that you didn’t understand?  Perhaps we should use caution concluding too quickly the reasons why people act as they do sometimes.  Differences or changes are much more readily accepted and understood if they are visible than if hidden from our sight in the brain whenever they're acquired, or if present from birth. 

Did you ever wonder if maybe ... just maybe ... the person you thought was behaving strangely had changes in their brain over which they had no control, altering their behavior from what typically had been thought of as their normal?