What began my passion?
In December 2013, my paternal grandfather suffered a hemorrhagic stroke and fell down a flight of stairs into the basement of his New York City home. At the time, he lived with my disabled grandmother, who was unaware of his stroke/fall. The length of time he remained unconscious in the basement that night was unknown; we did not realize the damage from his brain bleed in his left frontal lobe would change his ability to communicate.
When he awoke, he began to speak jibberish - the cadence of his speech suggested he was attempting a conversation, but his sentences lacked vocabulary, were choppy and short, and his speech sounded slurred. He was admitted into the emergency room where we were informed that he was experiencing amnesia; a common side effect post-stroke. His short-term procedural memory was gone; this was his ability to remember how to make a sandwich, or how to ride a bike. His long-term episodic memory remained intact; this was his ability to remember events related to himself. This meaning, he could not remember the family he had created in this United States, but he recalled specific childhood memories from India.
As treatment ensued and he physically recovered from his fall, his cognition and speech did not. His speech was lacking appropriate grammar markers, verb tense, and function words such as “the”, “is”, “and”. He had a hard time remembering the name of a banana, he couldn’t figure out how his sons and grandchildren were related to him, and he could not tell the time on a clock. Although his English language was damaged, his Hindi language remained intact. He could read and write his name in Hindi but could no longer read or write in English. He could still speak to his siblings in Hindi fluently but struggled to speak to his grandchildren in English.
A speech-language pathologist was the first specialist I watched interact with my grandfather in the hospital post-stroke. I was amazed at this cognitive phenomenon. I was fascinated by the presence of his language structure and lack thereof; why did his brain injury only affect his ability to remember his second acquired language, but it did not affect his native language at all?
And so, the elusive mystery of bilingual aphasia piqued my interest, and I immediately knew I had found my calling. I tapped into communication sciences and disorder to learn about how the brain works, compensates, and heals over time. This traumatic family event ignited the fire for my career as well as a lifelong passion for learning how to overcome our language deficits by using total communication and God’s Grace.
What continued to drive me?
In June 2021, I caught the COVID virus at 6.5 months pregnant. My O2 level had dropped to 91%, so I was admitted to the hospital. My chest x-rays came back evidencing my lungs were under attack with a bilateral pleural effusion. The treatment plan was to slow the virus down enough to stabilize my lungs using steroids and antiviral medications, in the hopes that my lungs would be able to drain themselves and gradually begin to recover. In addition to, the medical team also had to stabilize my body so that I could continue to safely carry my unborn child for another 12 weeks.
The best way to do that was to place me into a medically induced coma. Only by doing it this way, would both Olivia and I have a chance. I was intubated for eight days, during which I experienced an out of this world spiritual experience. My physical body was attached to the midline catheter and drips, but my spiritual self had been summoned to a different realm; I call it Paradise. It was then that my sense of this earthly world and my purpose on it was made apparent to me after 26 years of living.
Before my coma, I had lost my faith and hadn’t gone to church in years. I wasn’t praying for His guidance, and I wasn’t being faithful to His will for my life. It took this near-death intubation experience for me to truly understand that God’s love for me is unconditional; whether I had been a good Christian or not, I had been saved. After my coma, and as soon as I learned how to walk again, I immediately found a church and have been there ever since. The Bible verse that stuck out to me that day is the foundation for which I live my life, parent my child, and work with my clients.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.” -Ephesians 2:8
I do not take our existence for granted. I am drive by this renewed purpose - both as an SLP and as a mother. I wholeheartedly believe that the work I do with my clients is the work of God. I strive to display His unconditional Love, compassion, and grace during all my therapy sessions. It only makes sense to honor the greatest demonstration of His Love for me by dedicating the name of my business to Him as a constant reminder of all the times God has saved me even when I did not deserve His Grace.