Faith’s Faith
Andrea Rock, contributing editor
Faith and Gary had it all. They were DINKs — Double Income, No Kids — long before it was fashionable. They had moved from the East Coast to Arizona, where Gary was thriving in his work in product development in the high-tech industry, and Faith was back in school to become a speech and hearing therapist. Both in their twenties, they had been married just three years.
Just before her BA finals in 1969, as Faith was driving home from Arizona State University, she was broadsided by a young driver. Thrown from the car, she landed on the curb, completely unable to move. She was rushed to the hospital, where they gave her a 50/50 chance of living through the night. Gary paced the floor as doctors spent the next seven hours operating on her, trying to stop the internal bleeding and release the pressure on her brain.
When she awakened from the surgery, Faith could not read or write, walk or talk. She could see her beloved Gary standing over her, but could not even begin to utter his name. She was completely aphasic, and the doctors were not optimistic about her chance for recovery. Faith’s mother and aunt wanted to take her back to the East to care for her there, but Gary wouldn’t hear of it.
As soon as was possible, Gary started taking her to speech therapy, which proved a very frustrating experience for her: in her mind’s eye, she clearly recognized any object or picture or word they put in front of her, but her attempts to describe them were gibberish. When real words did come, they were the wrong words for that which she was trying to describe. But because of the aphasia, Faith didn’t have a clue that her brain and her vocabulary weren’t connecting!
What Faith lacked in words, she compensated for in, yes, faith — in her own ability to recover. Gary wholeheartedly shared in her determination. Many times per week he chauffeured her to both physical and speech therapy, and perhaps more importantly, he applied his engineering ingenuity to developing exercises that would push her hard at each stage of her recovery. That recovery was long and slow, punctuated by seizures, but it was steady.
Along the way, Faith continued to be frustrated by the mind/word disconnect. She wanted to resume her studies for the speech and hearing degree, but feared she lacked the vocabulary to re-enter that field. Ingeniously, she concluded that since her own verbal skills were reduced, perhaps she should work with young children, who would “speak her language!” A Catholic school hired her as a first-grade teacher, and a year later she returned to ASU to pursue a degree in education. Again her recovery was challenged: she was up to attending five classes, but unable to complete the work. With the caring guidance of one of her professors, she simply repeated all five courses the next year and passed them with honors.
Faith believes that God allowed her to struggle so mightily in order to equip her to help others. She did experience a complete recovery, and went on to earn both a Masters and a Doctorate in Special Education. Faith is one of only two individuals in the United States who, while suffering from aphasia, completed a Ph.D, and along the way she earned several awards as an outstanding student. She spent more than thirty years working with and advocating for special needs children in Arizona schools, during which time she received countless awards for her contributions to that community. Now in retirement, she continues to consult throughout the state. Her beloved Gary has gone on to be with the Lord, and she is presently seeing a gentleman named John who was among the close circle of friends who shared in supporting Faith throughout her recovery — and to this day.
In addition to her consulting work, Faith speaks to groups about her journey and how it might help others. Her heart aches whenever she learns of anyone who has given up when confronted with a similar struggle. Aphasia is a shock and an insult to the human condition, but Faith is living proof that it can be overcome with the help of family, friends, prayer, and lot of hard work. May her story be an inspiration to others.