Gabby_ A Story of Courage and Hope - Alison Hanson [108]
When people came to visit Gabby for the first time, I’d usually talk to them in the hallway. “You don’t need to speak loudly,” I’d say. “Gabby can hear just fine. And please don’t talk down to her.” My most important request: “Be positive.”
One early visitor was an old friend of Gabby’s whom she has known for years and really loves. He’s funny, but a bit over the top, and he likes to be thought of as a rebel. Occasionally, I could be sensitive to how people interacted with Gabby. Maybe too sensitive at times, but this particular friend was too much.
Gabby hadn’t even said her first word yet, and he seemed set on making sure that the word was “bullshit.”
“Hey, Gabby,” he said. “If a nurse asks you to do something, you tell her, ‘Bullshit!’ When doctors talk to you, tell them all the same thing: ‘Bullshit!’”
I’m not sure whether he was hoping the media would one day report that Gabby had chosen “bullshit” as her first word. I ignored the request the first time, but after hearing it to the point where I thought his efforts might work, I told him to knock it off and keep his bullshit suggestions to himself.
The media announced that Gabby’s first word, uttered on February 7, came at breakfast time. She was eating yogurt and oatmeal and asked for “toast.” That update had been supplied by Gabby’s congressional office as a word she had said, and the media wrongly assumed it as her first word. Yes, Gabby did say “toast,” but a day or so before that she had actually said the word “what”—flatly, as a statement, not a question. She said something that sounded like “whatwhatwhatwhat.” It appeared to me that the speech part of her brain was just beginning to boot up and that was the place it picked as a starting point. Gabby’s neurologists said the words that patients seize on initially are impossible to predict, but the repetition of words is very common.
When Gabby said those first early words, it wasn’t as if a lightbulb went off in her head: OK, now she’d just start speaking. It was more a case of her willing one word, haltingly, out of her mouth. The next one would need to be willed with equal determination. But soon, she had a few dozen words. Within a couple months, she had perhaps a thousand words she could say. It just took great patience, for her and for the rest of us.
She could mimic a word we said far more easily than she could initiate one herself. Doctors said that was an appropriate first step, and that her ability to repeat our words was an excellent sign of neurological recovery. That meant the area of her brain that controls primary language was working.
By March, Gabby started creating phrases she deemed worth repeating. Sick of being confined in the hospital, she’d say, “Want out of here!”
“Where would you like to go?” Gloria would ask her.
“Tucson, Arizona!” she’d say.
She also started saying, “No more Mr. Nice Guy!” It was her way of announcing that she was going to be more assertive. She wanted to make her own decisions about what she ate, what she wore, how long visitors stayed.
Gabby was good at finishing familiar phrases. I’d say, “Thank God Almighty I am . . .”
“Free at last,” she’d say. (This later became her mantra every time she walked out the door at TIRR. “Free at last, free at last. Thank God, I am free at last!”)
If I gave her a hint, she could say the amendments to the U.S. Constitution. I told her, “The first amendment is free—”
“Freedom of speech,” she’d say.
“What’s the second amendment? The right to . . .”
“Arms,” Gabby said.
“Yes, the right to bear arms.”
“How about this, Gabby. Four score . . .”
“And seven more,” she said.