25 Years Later — Still Struggling With Aphasia & Memory
I had a stroke in 1999. It took me a couple of years to get back to some form of normality, but I’ve continued to have issues with aphasia and short-term memory ever since.
Over the years I’ve developed my own ways of covering or working around it, so most people probably wouldn’t notice anything is wrong. Quick alternatives, avoiding certain situations, adapting conversations, etc.
But now I’m 46 and I feel like my memory is getting worse again. I don’t know if it’s age, stress from work and children, or related to the stroke itself.
One of the biggest examples is cooking. I find it really hard to follow instructions from a cookbook. I read a step, but then struggle to hold it in my head long enough to confidently do the action. I constantly second-guess whether I remembered it correctly or missed something.
Another example is names. I really struggle to remember people’s names, especially if I don’t see them often. For example, my partner’s nieces — I might only see them a couple of times a year, and because I’m English and they have German names, I sometimes struggle to properly connect the names in my head and retain them.
Does anybody else have issues like this years after a stroke? And if so, have you found any techniques or exercises that genuinely help with short-term memory and processing?