People in need are often the ones helping people in need

By Tom Broussard

June is Aphasia Awareness Month! I am a survivor of three strokes, an open-heart surgery, a transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR), a lost kidney, and this thing called aphasia (loss of language). You would think that I am a mess, but a mess can be relative! I could be a mess compared to some of my friends who don’t have what I have, but I am doing well compared to many of my friends in the heart/stroke/health world. Learning from everyone’s messes stories is how we learn. Life is a mess story to share.

I have been an American Heart Association (AHA) Heart Valve Ambassador and a Support Network (SN) volunteer for several years. The Support Network is one way we have to share and learn on any given day; sharing our stories, our tragedies, and our triumphs is how we learn to live successfully.

In its own way, the Support Network provides somewhat the same message and mission as other stroke and aphasia groups. The questions and answers on the network are granular, familiar, and intimate. Yet they also provide many of the common supporting themes that help us better understand the body/brain/health foundation that supports our still quite different and individual expressions of our symptoms and health.

The members of the Support Network community are all people in need, and many have an interest is helping others in need too. The members understood that a long time ago, long before having to join the Support Network in search of finding people in need with similar stories to share and learn from.

In my case, I joined the SN with an interest not just in stroke but linking stroke to aphasia. I learned about aphasia by listening to thousands of people with aphasia; I realized that most people know about stroke but don’t know much about aphasia or the linkages between them.

The staff at AHA/ASA are working hard on adding more functionality to the SN. Given that 25-40% of stroke survivors acquire aphasia, I am looking forward to seeing more of the linkages between stroke and aphasia and the continuum of language recovery.

Thanks to the AHA/ASA staff and the Support Network community for helping all of us helping all of us, including Aphasia Awareness Month!

Tom Broussard is the founder & president of Aphasia Nation, Inc.: www.aphasianation.org

For more information on this health topic, visit heart.org.

Would you like help dealing with heart or stroke conditions -- either yours or someone else’s? Join us in the AHA’s Support Network! We are an online community of patients, survivors and caregivers where you can share your experience while getting encouragement, hope and informational resources from others who have been there. Membership is free and the benefits can be priceless. Register today.