Miracles

‘He can’t talk’

I looked at the tall, middle-aged woman with worry lines etched along her face. She was his mother and looked to be around 65 years of age, but something told me she was younger. Life had dealt her several blows, each one leaving a scar on her once beautiful face.

‘What do you mean he can’t talk?’ I quizzed. I knew from previous history that he was not deaf. Past medical records showed that he was a 19-year-old boy who was previously being managed for allergies and nothing serious. I sometimes saw him in the clinic and we had a cordial relationship. At the last visit, he had told me how excited he was to get admission into the university.

I looked at his handsome face and noticed that his eyes had filled with tears. I tore a sheet out my notebook and asked him to write down what had happened. He picked up the pen and started scribbling furiously. His mother told me that his friends had brought him back from school two days ago, mute. He was unable to talk and only communicated via text messages. He wrote that he had been in a fight with some 400 level students. A group of them had accosted him as he came out of from the mosque after Isha prayers and beat him into a coma. He was getting too close to a girl in his class. Their leader had his eyes on the new girl. It was an open secret: they belonged to a cult. She had just been crowned the prettiest girl in the school and they read together; sometimes into the wee hours of the morning discussing sociology theories. His friends had taken him to the university clinic where he was treated. The doctor had said he had suffered a mild concussion and discharged him the next day when he felt better. Except that, he had not gotten better. He stopped talking after the incident and stayed in his room all day. When he did not speak for three days, his friends decided to bring him home, they were scared and rightly so.

I read his notes quietly and looked up at him. There was still one more thing.

‘Is it that you cannot speak or you do not want to speak?’

Medically, there is a difference. One is a neurological case, the other a psychiatric symptom. James* wrote on the paper ‘I can’t speak’. My heart sank.

He had expressive aphasia, most likely due to trauma to the Broca’s area of speech, a part of the brain which is responsible for speech and Language. I requested for a Brain CT and explained the likely diagnosis to them. They were to return the next day.

I spent the entire night researching various treatment options for Broca’s aphasia. I called up my neurologist friends but their response was all grim; we could only offer conservative management. In a lay man’s terms it meant that we would have to wait for the brain to heal itself. Another option was speech therapy which would help him a great deal but is not readily available in this part of the world. Needless to say, I slept fitfully that night. The result of the Brain CT showed an area of bleeding in the frontal lobe and confirmed the diagnosis. I gave them a referral to the Neurologist and shared with him stories of people who had recovered from aphasia, but he just stared at me blankly.

The Neurologist continued to monitor him monthly without any progress. He was still mute and because of that, was gradually slipping into depression. He refused to go back to school and stayed in his room all day staring at his phone. His parents were getting frustrated and went to seek spiritual help. Several pastors claimed they would perform miracles but nothing worked. His mother dragged him from one Pentecostal church to another. His uncle secretly took him to a marabout without his parents’ knowledge. At a point, they even reached out to me to try ‘our Moslem prayer’ as they had run out of options and did not care which God accepted their pleas!

Three months later, James was rushed to the emergency room. His mother called me immediately. He had slipped in the bathroom and fell, hurting his head. He was unconscious. The medical officer on call was able started to resuscitate him and while doing so, called his name several times: ‘James! James!’.

A few minutes later, James started mumbling incoherently, as if attempting to answer the doctor. His mother and I were shocked. Only we knew he could not speak. We looked on as James regained consciousness and moved his mouth to form words which came out jumbled. We were ecstatic! This was the most progress we had had in months.  A brain CT was ordered immediately. In the morning, the radiologist reported that the area which previously showed a bleeding had cleared. He postulated that there must have been a blood clot which had likely shifted as a result of the recent trauma. His mother was overjoyed. James remained on admission for two more days after which he was transferred to the ward. The physiotherapist worked with him daily to improve his pronunciation.

James regained his full speech five months after his accident. I often joke with him that if we had known what the solution was, we would have taken a bat to his head a long time ago. But the truth is his recovery was nothing short of a miracle. Maybe he would have regained his speech without the fall, slowly after. And then again, maybe not. I am reminded of Ray Bradbury’s quote: ‘Science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain’.

We thank God for his miracles.