Wednesday Without Words

Do you know what aphasia is?

I had known for two and a half years that I had a stroke with language problems. Healthline provided some history about stroke on their website: “apoplexy”, the original Greek name for a stroke which meant “struck down by violence”, was found 2,400 years ago by Hippocrates. Not until the mid-1600s was it really looked into: Jacob Wepfer had discovered the bleeding in the brain, and found that blockage in the brain could cause apoplexy. The name wasn’t changed to stroke until 1928, but even today it still deserves much scientific research.

After my stroke – when I had finally found out about it - I was told I was suffering from aphasia. Over the last two years I had looked up website information, and I thought I knew a little about it. It took me two and a half years to look up any talk about deficit within aphasia, and I found it mentioned in Wikiversity and Wikipaedia: this time telling me about the anomia aphasia. The word “aphasia” had come from the Greek word “aphatos”, meaning speechless, and according to the Wikiversity there are seven types of aphasia. They mention anomia aphasia. Over to Wikipaedia, and I found that the definition of anomia aphasia is: “… a deficit of expressive language. The most pervasive deficit in the aphasias is anomia. Some level of anomia is seen in all of the aphasias.”

There are three types of anomia:

“Word selection”, in which the sufferer (patient) can identify an object but can’t name it;

“Semantic anomia”, which causes sufferers to “lose” words for objects; and

“Disconnection anomia”, which identifies loss of connection between sensory and language cortices.

I can count myself in word selection anomia. My conversation will seem to progress easily, but far too often I forget a word – usually a noun or a verb. I’ve lost my fluency, and sometimes I feel extremely irked. I have seen people, with aphasia like me, who lose their words and then eventually just stop talking. More than two years ago that was me, too. I could listen to anyone talking and I understood what they were saying, but if I tried to respond I couldn’t find my own language.

More than a year in speech pathology after my stroke didn’t really fix me. Aphasia had been an innate inheritance from stroke but, even though aphasia had been mentioned to me, I didn’t even know anything real about it until I went out to an aphasia group coffee morning at North Lake. I met quite a few people whose language was very similar to mine, but some, with carers, did nothing more than smile and nod. I believed they understood what was said, it was related to how they responded.

Throughout the months at the aphasia group coffees I wore a name badge, which I had printed with the logo of Australian Aphasia Association. One of the members, Paul, whose wife after her stroke has aphasia, handed out aphasia badges, and I still wear it often. Very recently I have thought I need to be more involved with AAA. I need to talk to people about what aphasia has done to me.

Next week, 12-18 September, is the National Stroke Week. AAA posted an event on their Facebook page, advertising Wednesday 14^th as Wednesday Without Words. They said “Wednesday Without Words is our National Aphasia Day which occurs every year in the middle of National Stroke Week. On Wednesday Without Words, you are challenged to raise awareness for aphasia, a loss of language commonly as a result of stroke.” They made a few suggestions, and this one got to me: “… even try and go for a whole day without words (as the name suggests) and walk in the shoes of some people with aphasia.”

That will be very interesting for me – every Wednesday I have a social morning tea in the village and then a two-hour trivia in Logan (I allow myself a feeling of being able to move around: it’s good for me). Some weeks I can feel lost, and don’t say anything throughout the trivia game. Other weeks I can chat, and offer my suggested answers to questions. So next week I can’t talk when I am there on Wednesday Without Words. Perhaps I need to design a handout which can tell people what aphasia is! I’m pretty sure that very – v-e-r-y – few people know about aphasia or even understand it, especially since it’s living inside of me.

Before Wednesday Without Words, find out what you need to know about aphasia. And, one day, talk to me – I’ll talk back!

http://www.healthline.com/health/stroke/history-of-stroke

https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Psycholinguistics/Aphasia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphasia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomic_aphasia

https://aphasia.org.au/

https://strokefoundation.com.au/how-you-can-help/stroke-week

https://www.facebook.com/AustralianAphasiaAssociation/?fref=ts

 

Our tale

In 2011 I read a book by Margaret Atwood titled The Handmaid’s Tale. It was hard for me, even though it was a futuristic tale of the Gileadean regime. Atwood’s book told the tale of a woman who was one of the “breeders” in Gilead before 2195 (possibly 150 years prior to 2195, which might have put it around 2045).

Many of the books in my shelves were written in some place out of our own time, and many could be classed as sci-fi or similar. According to Wikipaedia, sci-fi is “a genre of speculative fiction dealing with imaginative concepts such as futuristic science and technology, space travel, time travel, faster than light travel, parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life.” Atwood’s novel could, for me, be described as dystopia: “…characterized by dehumanization, totalitarian governments, environmental disaster, or other characteristics associated with a cataclysmic decline in society.”

Dystopia describes what our world is becoming. Dehumanization is for real for so many people who are not rich – don’t have their own money; they are killed by hundreds of thousands by war-like governments who don’t care about them; they are shut up within a “civilised” country when they have tried to escape war in their own country; rape and violence is far too often. Religion is looked on as “good” when none prove they are – too many wars are in the name of religion; men take control in most countries; climate change is flicked off; trade agreements with other governments take over - and people who are dehumanized have no involvement. Yes, dystopia.

Who are you thinking about? Syria? Israel? Afghanistan? Try Australia, China, USA. Think of everything I mentioned in the previous paragraph and see if you can place it in Australia, China or USA. Or any other country which might seem a “good” country. Work out if that country has poverty. See if they have refugees. Look into recent history and find out if they’ve been at war anywhere in the world. And think if there is any “dehumanization” within your own country.

Recently the LNP “won” the election, lost three government votes this week when some of their politicians went home when they had no need to, and yet argues against Labour and opposition politicians who do what they should be doing. They argue about the Chinese donations when LNP also received them. They turn their backs on the climate change when the majority of the population agreed with it. They ignore poverty and try to move Newstart even lower when unemployed people never asked to be there. They reduce tax on multi-million profit companies who should pay more. They have responsibilities they ignore, such as the purchase of building products with asbestos from China. They have cut the funds from many charities which provide help to needie people or sick people or victims of rape and violence. And so much more which is spreading the gap in this country.

Many unemployed never chose unemployment, but have found out that 11:1 applications for work would be what they face. Many DSP people never chose DSP, but applied for work and have found out that they will be ignored because they are not really fit for work – except something like cleaning. Many can’t get past this, can’t find work, decent work. Government contractors take them on but can’t really help them. In fact, many contractors have shown that they are there to make money on the applicants when the applicants have no choice. Perhaps if the government got rid of these contractors there should be a lot more money for unemployed or DSP people.

The Conversation, FactCheck QandA, in May 2016 had been been told that Newstart hadn’t increased since 1996. They wrote that their checks proved that. Newstart only went up with CPI and “rates of Newstart have not increased substantially in real terms since 1996.”

Roy Morgan found that “[n]ow a high 11.0% of the workforce, 1,422,000 people, are unemployed – up 54,000 since March 2015 with the unemployment rate up 0.2% in a year while 1,011,000 Australians are under-employed – working part-time and looking for more hours.” It’s a real pity that these figures are ignored by LNP, and unemployed are blamed for their unemployment.

So why are politicians getting paid so high? Why are CEOs of any large company in Australia paid in the millions? Why does tax-avoidance happen by companies which pay part of their profit to their shareholders instead of paying the ATO? Why are house prices far too high? Why is rent too high for many Australians? Who owns too many properties but don’t care about who they rent to?

Have you, an employee still wonderfully employed, received a decent salary increase in the last year, two years, five years? Have you invested in your home, paid for your overseas holiday, eaten out evenings, private-schooled your kids, owned more than one family car? Can you pay to get your hair cut, your nails painted, new clothes, new shoes? Who is spending tens of thousands more dollars than any unemployed or DSP person or any other beneficiary can spend? Who cares about the rich-poor difference? 

I wonder how many people are aware of what happens within the whole world, or especially within Australia. I wonder how many people care about any of this. I wonder how many people can relate anything in any alleged fiction to reality.

Gilead?

Should it be?

“I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilised. I wish it showed me in a better light, if not happier, then at least more active, less hesitant, less distracted by trivia. I wish it had more shape. I wish it were about love, or about sudden realizations important to one’s life, or even about sunsets, birds, rainstorms, or snow.”

The Handmaid’s Tale, Chapter 41

“…to institute an effective totalitarian system or indeed any system at all you must offer some benefits and freedoms, at least to a privileged few, in return for those you remove.”

Historical Notes on Handmaid’s Tale from the Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies, 26 June 2195

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dystopia

http://theconversation.com/election-factcheck-qanda-is-it-true-australias-unemployment-payment-level-hasnt-increased-in-over-20-years-59250

http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/6739-roy-morgan-unemployment-estimate-march-2016-201604070750

Last day...

A month ago I started a Pozible project for my book Aneurysms with Aphorisms. It took me two days to get it set up, add in a video and some quote pics and information, and posted it. I posted pics, sometimes from the project or other times from elsewhere, every day, until about 15 days I got frustrated with it. I got serious again on it with only 12 days to go. I started to add the project website onto whatever news I posted on BASA. I went into National Stroke Foundation, Synapse, Lions, Rotary and a lot of other charity places around my area, and posted it on some of the FB pages I follow. I never had any response.

Now, with only one day to go and only 5 people showing up to support this, I’m almost in tears.

Why can’t I get through to BASA when I’m posting pretty much every day on there?

Why couldn’t I get any indication from any other place where I posted it or emailed it that yes, they saw it and passed it on?

Why was there only 3 BASA people of the 5 who supported me?

Why would there have been more than 2,000 viewers on a recent BASA post but none who would look through the project and help me?

Why don’t so many people on BASA – or elsewhere - care?

I know what leads BASA followers on – cuppas which Maya, the page owner, posts and pins up to the top. National BA week where Maya has posted some stuff that she’s selling to raise funds for Brain Foundation – hand sanitiser, pens, bracelets, ribbons. So many responded today to pay for that, yet none of them have supported me!

I’d been the administrator of BASA since December 2014. I designed the logo which is on the page and which Maya has used on the stuff she sells. I wrote my book about brain aneurysms. Yes, it was about me, but has heaps of information for people who have suffered from brain aneurysms, for people who have cared for their friends/family/partner who suffered from brain aneurysms, for anyone who wants that information.

I am very grateful to the BASA 3 people who supported my book project. Your money will stay in your own pocket if it doesn’t get up to target in the last ONE day. Thank you for your help, I love you people.

I will be in tears tomorrow.

https://pozible.com/project/aneurysms-with-aphorisms

Tinker, Tailor... Broke and Frailer

 Have you ever read stories about the richest people in history? Being on the DSP (Disabled Support Pension), and very close to poverty, I had some aggro which Aussie’s PM, Malcolm Turnbull, just seemed to drag out of me. Almost every day. The last few weeks I had watched Newstart, DSP and other benefits and pensions which seemed to roll further under the poverty line, and I wondered how anyone like MT, who has his own $200 million somewhere offshore, could allow that to happen.

As at 2016, this year, Wikipaedia has listed around 30 people in Australia with over $1 billion. Gina Rinehart was, until fairly recently, the richest person in Aus worth $11.18 billion. The richest now is another woman, Blair Parry-Okeden, a USA-born Australian heiress, worth $11.68 billion. (Wikipaedia) I don’t understand how anyone can enjoy the money that too many of our population will never, ever see. 

In 2012 the Australian Council of Social Service said that as at 2010 “after taking account of housing costs, an estimated 2,265,000 people or 12.5% of all people, including 575,000 children (17.3% of all children), lived in households below the most austere poverty line widely used in international research.” (Wikipaedia)

In 2014 ACOSS reported that “poverty is growing in Australia with an estimated 2.5 million people or 13.9% of all people living below the internationally accepted poverty line” (ACOSS website), and also provided a Word report called Poverty in Australia: New Estimates and Recent Trends Research Methodology for 2014 Report. 

Let me ask you a question. How much do you earn in your salary or wages? Is it more than $800 per week? According to ACOSS, “Poverty line (50% of median income) – for a single adult was $400 per week…” My DSP adds up to something like $470 per week – 8% above the poverty line. That is less than when I started work here 11 years ago – back then I only worked 3 days a week and I received $503 a week.

Most of the time I feel very sad for so many people in this country who live just over, just on or under the poverty line and can’t get themselves a decent income to live a decent real life. Running a daily budget has become essential to ensure that we don’t live over our very low income, but the inability to save can cut unbudgeted costs. Like clothes, haircuts, insurance, car repair, tyres, dinner out, holidays, gym. Just the things that people who earn a decent income can allow for.

In today’s dollars, some websites laid out information about historical men who had walked or fought their way into money (listed below). It didn’t look very different than I had learned about at school many years ago, but way back then I really felt that the world would change, that WWI and WWII had changed people, that religion concentrated on poorer people and not on their own money, and that jobs were easy to find. I grew up thinking that we’d gone a long, long way past these sort of people.

10^th century, Basil II, something like $170 billion dollars as the Byzantine Emperor.

11^th century, William the Conqueror, $230 billion dollars. He got it by pillaging.

12^th century, Genghis Khan - however much he had was unknown but seemed to amount to… well, heaps. He also got it by pillaging.

13th century, banker Filippo di Amedeo de Peruzzi, up to $200 billion. He lost much of it and was kicked out of Florence, Italy.

14^th century, Mansa Musa I, $400 billion maybe but that was a guess. He was one of those gold miners. And salt.

15^th century, Jakob Fugger, more than $275 billion. Charles V gave Fugger the right to mint his own money, and his family also had most of the European copper market.

16^th century, Suleiman the Magnificent, no records, or Akbar the Great  for somewhere around $340 billion. No records were held about just what Suleiman had, but it was very much. Akbar had “a ruling pattern which was epitomized by a centralized system of administration throughout the Mughal empire”.

17^th century, Aurangzeb from India. He made his wealth from tributes.

18^th century, Stephen Girard or Cornelius Vanderbilt, both worth around $105 billion. Girard made his by personally underwriting America from financial collapse during the War of 1812, and Vanderbilt had lots of shipping and railroads.

19^th century, the Rothschild family, more than $300 billion. London-based bankers, financing Napoleonic wars and simply getting bigger after that.

20^th century, John D. Rockefeller, around $340 billion, and all from the world’s oil production. Also Andrew Carnegie at $298 billion. He’d started for a pittance wage as a young boy, and by his death he’d made his own empire.

21^st century, Muammar Gaddafi, just a tad ahead of Henry Ford. Gaddafi, after death, had around $200 billion tucked away in secret bank accounts probably around the world.

Are we still seeing these kind of people? Have we really changed since WWII? What can we do to help every person on Newstart or DSP or any of the myriad of benefits live within their tiny income? Or can we police the excess income that far too many people pull off? How will this government work for us? What drew aggro from me seems to be getting worse. This beneficiary’s fall into poverty is happening more and more than I had ever seen it, and unemployed people seem to now get blamed themselves for not working, even though the jobs have just dried up.

This government must allow themselves some caring mentality for those who did not choose our worst life. This government must turn their budget around to help people like me, without blaming us.

Will that ever happen?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australians_by_net_worth#Members_of_Australia.27s_50_Richest_people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_Australia

http://www.acoss.org.au/poverty-2/

http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/culture/children-and-adolescents-1930-1960

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/5D709B83B7F7C25ECA2569DE00221C86?OpenDocument

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/12/richest-people-century/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_figures

http://www.hexapolis.com/2014/08/24/10-richest-men-history-20th-century/

http://www.neatorama.com/2008/07/09/10-richest-people-of-all-time-and-how-they-made-their-fortunes/

http://www.biographyonline.net/people/famous/richest-in-history.html