On December 31, 2019, I retired as SVP, Compensation and Benefits, DXC Technology. On June 8, 2020, I had a stroke.
At the hospital, the doctor told me that I had aphasia. I had no idea what that meant. A few days later, I learned more about my challenges at the rehab. I realized that a long life of talking like a maniac would change.
The rehab of the “funny” stories was when I met a doctor who noticed that I was wearing a Penn State t-shirt, and she said, “WE ARE …” I looked at her and smiled. I tried to say what everyone knew the correct answer, and all I could say was “…” All I could say was, “yes, yes, big fan.”
She told me that her son was a former football player at Penn State. Within a few days later, I tried to tell her a story about me at Penn State on my iPad. It was the beginning of how aphasia
a will figure out how to tell my stories.
Since June 2020, I have worked hard to tell stories to work on aphasia. I have worked at Penn University for language therapy and learned about Temple’s Aphasia PACT (Philadelphia Aphasia Community at Temple). I connected to a Penn State University professor who worked with aphasia a few years ago. We started talking about how we might connect to a connect Penn Staters with aphasia.
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