To me, the immediate physical aspect was that all text started to look like Star Wars languages. Another aspect was that it was difficult to even concentrate on the text. It no longer stood out from the environment. It was an irrelevant detail, a decoration you wouldn't pay particular attention to.

I can also appreciate what the author is saying about how their perspective of the world shifted. I expect that her shift was a lot larger than mine, but mine already made me appreciate that in the modern world, when we look at things, we often seek to retrieve some bit of information. We don't look at them holistically. Our tunnel vision is tremendous.

As you are reading this comment, you are so focused on the words that you don't see the boxy proportions of the rectangular screen you're looking at. You don't see the contrast on the screen; you're not even paying attention to the colors, likely. The texture of your display is expected to be different on the back, the corners, and its surface. Your display is also a rectangular light, casting a shadow of your head behind you now. Some parts of the light are stronger than others; it's not a uniform light. The device you're reading this on (whether a monitor or a phone) has hot spots and cold spots on its chassis that you may not have thought about, despite looking at it or touching it for thousands of hours.

But if you can't read, you see all these things on a computer monitor, on a TV, on a road sign, on a book, and that's all that your brain finds significant about that object. That's quite interesting - how our language abilities shape our everyday perception of reality.

I would even say that it can be an enlightening experience to take a holiday from reading. Though I don't think anyone can come close to enjoying it, considering how much anxiety the thought of whether they'll learn it again causes. In some ways, experiencing the world around them freshly anew, without that anxiety (as the author has), is a blissful and beautiful experience few people have had in their lives.

No one knows how he would deal in such a situation and cope with it, some would give up or even kill themselves, other fight to come back.

Being able to reflect on that traumatic experience in such a calm and thoughtful process is inspiring.

Side note, could it be possible that the 'inner voice', which the author lost during a while is what separate us from animals ?

She mentions being at peace, calm without it. Not thinking about the past nor the future, just present.

I kept thinking this experience made her behave just like an animal : can't speak, extremely limited thought process, basic instinct. Is that what separate us from ape ? A small part of the brain that gives consciousness.

Edit: author seem to have written a book called 'a stitch of time', if you enjoyed the reading.

It might sound cynical to people who suffer from these severe neurological injuries. But it also is also a great piece about "not thinking".

If you are a person who feels tormented and fascinated by inner monologue or generally have issues with self-perception, trauma, mental health, depression, this is a great read.

Especially if you feel trapped in your inner monologue. I'm sure I'm not the only person who feels like this more often than not.

Same message like many spiritual or self-help strategies (mindfulness, living in the now, etc).

But this story is visceral, captivating.

I'm not a doctor, but I would even recommend it as a therapeutic device.

She's fine now, though, so no worries.

The unnerving thing about his first stroke recovery is that as the brain healed, his personality seemed to change.

My dad is friends with everyone, my mental picture is of him telling a fascinating story while everyone listens. For a few months, the confident man I'd known for 40 years became like a teenager, quiet and timid. I think the timidity came from him not being able to find the words as easily, but it felt like there was a different person inside him for a moment.

After two Heart attacks, welcome to my last five years of passive acceptance.

Just about back up to reading so long as a sentence doesn't have too many concepts or TLAs. In which case, slow down and start again.

Had to learn to program again. I could remember the university lectures teaching programming (modula-2 - never used since) perfectly. I could remember reading the text books over the last 20 years (C, Ada, Visual basic, C++, ASP, C#, Delphi, Java, JavaScript) all of which I've programmed in but the fingers can not type the magic program words any more.

I've re-learnt C, I've prodded some of the bits I've completely forgotten the existence of (C unions of all things!), I've written half a pascal compiler. I've waded through Petzold's Windows Winforms C# book. I'm currently poking at relearning OOP with writing lisp interpreter from scratch (not just the meta-circular thing), but I seem to have side tracked into OpenGL, WebGL and ES.

After five years I've just about at the point where I can (technically) cope with a job again. But, s*t, agencies and CVs. I might hit retirement before I can deal with those again.

Meh, have fun.

Don't expect a reply - I've already forgotten the password for this account.

My stroke was a thief of thought; language fell apart, washed away, leaving me unable to read, write, or even conceive of words. Talking was something beyond me, to the point that I didn't notice when people were moving their mouths while speaking.

For about 3 weeks after my stroke, it seemed everyone was giving me the silent treatment, and I was worried I'd done something terribly wrong to the point nobody would even talk to me, yet I couldn't put any words together to ask them why they were so angry with me. Somehow, I also sensed that something was terribly wrong with me, but I couldn't quite grasp what it was; any time I tried, it slipped through my fingers like fog.

Yet, it was still very quiet, and that left me much more focused on sensations and immediate experiences than before or after. Apparently, I would stare at a tree, or at the snow as it fell. Simply existing. Feeling connected to the world in a new way, part of it, instead of separate from it. Maybe this was ultimate mindfulness, but it didn't feel that way. When I practice mindfulness now, there's still a sense of I-ness that wasn't present back then. All there was existence and connection along with a vague unease, knowing something was wrong.

Much later, they told me I only spoke 5 words after the stroke, all of them so-called "automatic" words like yes, no, and what.

For...reasons...my parents never took me to see a doctor about it, so I had to relearn how to read, write, speak, and listen on my own. Without words, I had to figure out other ways of thinking that didn't involve an internal monologue. Within weeks, I was already building up a new way of thinking to allow myself to understand what was happening in a way that didn't involve language, yet was still expressive enough to describe my experiences internally just as well as language had allowed. To this day, my natural mode of thinking involves no monologue, no words, no images at all.

I do remember what it was like to think in words all the time when I was younger, an unending flow that had carved a deep canyon in my mental landscape. But now that river is little more than a nearly dried up trickle and the canyon lies empty...except when I put words together to communicate with others.

Word-ing is now a very intentional activity for me, laying words like bricks, together with the mortar of understanding to build my own Tower of Babel, translating back and forth between my new way of thinking and the words I need to communicate with others. I've been told I have a very deliberate way of speaking in person, as though I'm carefully choosing each word, and this is why.

I sometimes wonder what my life would be like now if I'd never had the stroke, never lost my language. I suppose I'll never know.