Shrinkage

22nd November 2011 Tuesday

We are on time for our six monthly appointment with the consultant neurologist but he thinks we are twenty minutes early so we wait till he comes to find us. A psychology student, a young woman who looks about fourteen, sits in on our session. He asks my husband how things are. My husband itemizes the things he does. He makes them sound fun. When he says it’s harder to recognise faces the neurologist pricks up his ears. It’s an indication that there is a change in the right side of the brain. All my husband’s language loss is related to the left side.

I say there are no personality or behaviour changes that I’ve noticed in my husband -almost as if there isn’t anything wrong except he says things like ‘pick up the beans’ when he means ‘pick the beans’. The neurologist says it can be very slow - the progression of this disease/disability. He doesn’t say it won’t progress at all. Which is what I want him to say.

Afterwards we walk by the river in golden sunshine. My husband watches the clouds while I tell him about seeing my nephew yesterday. I noticed how engaged he is in the world with a wife and new son, how full he is of young-man energy and enthusiasm. And how afraid I am that without the stimulus of work and people and desire in his life my husband’s world will shrink into small domesticity.

But it’s me I’m talking about - the shrinking bit. My husband is fine. I haven’t got an exhibition of wierd and wonderful clay creatures, starting tomorrow, like my out-of-work husband with his diminished vocabulary.