Impossible? Matthew Brewster’s Journey in healing

Brewster suffered a “subarachnoid hemorrhage,” his family learned after he fell to the floor at his South Bend, Indiana home on Dec. 5, 2012. He was a junior in high school and a vein in his brain had exploded, causing indescribable pain, a stroke, a seizure and seeping of blood into areas of the brain where it did not belong. What follows is an chapter from his book Impossible?.

Speech (and Language)

“He will never recover from these deficits in his speech.”

Before

What more is there to say besides “I could talk”? Just ask anyone who knew me. I made friends everywhere I went. At home, in school, on planes. I excelled in events like Mock Trial and gave untold numbers of presentations in school. I was fortunate that I had never had to overcome a stutter or speech impediment of any sort, and I never had any form of stage fright, no matter the size of the crowd.

After

As noted previously, at Methodist Hospital, my skill set included breathing and occasionally responding to requests to move my fingers or blink my eyes. When I was extubated and had the trach removed, we found that I was silent. The strokes had rendered me not just unable to speak but unable to make any sounds. I was less capable than babies, who can at least cry or scream to express themselves. My strokes had not only made me unable to speak but had erased the ability to make sounds and be heard. After that, I had to relearn to speak the English language clearly and fluently.

Impossibility

In my journey of recovering the gift of speech, no one ever said directly to me that I would likely never be able to speak clearly and articulately again. Some medical professionals did say this to my parents, and they decided (thankfully) that it was inappropriate to share these opinions with me. My parents, despite what most medical professionals told them, believed it was inaccurate.

Nevertheless, for years I certainly felt like having a normal conversation or giving a presentation would not be in my future.

When words started to come out of my mouth, my voice to me sounded like before my injury. My misperception meant that I was horrified every time I listened to a recording of my voice. The impossibility related to speaking stems from the initial assumptions of professionals and my painful realization.

Reaction

The ICU doctors initially did not think that the strokes had impacted the areas which control speech. As I began to make sound again, it became apparent that they had. Once at RIC, my first goal was the relearn how to make a sound. Over the three months at RIC, I learned how to control my breath and all the muscles necessary to speak. I also had to work on pacing and intonation to make my speech intelligible. In the years following my injury, I was stopped by bouncers, teachers, ushers, peers, and police officers not only for my lack of balance but for my lack of ability to enunciate as well. I could understand why they thought I was intoxicated or incapacitated, but it still frustrated and hurt me.

We had a huge welcome home party in June when I returned from RIC. At this point, I found myself in a strange scenario. To the world, I was the miracle boy who survived certain death. Unfortunately, though, there was still so much more work that I needed to do. Once home, I worked with a very demanding speech and language pathologist, Karin. It was challenging and frustrating, but I respected her, and eventually, I began even to like her as a friend.

Karin asked me to work on my speech at one of the local colleges with its speech- and language-pathology students. I did not want to work with any inexperienced students, but I agreed to try it, out of my respect for Karin. Due in large part to my preconceptions and biases, it went horribly.

When I did not make what I deemed as sufficient progress towards perfection, I closed my mind and refused to go. Having worked with some of the best professionals in the world, switching to working with a student seemed pointless to me. My lack of interest, resistance to working with the students, and avoiding the needed work, was to my detriment.

I openly admit that I spent a significant amount of time complaining about working with the new therapists. I probably spent more time complaining than I spent on practicing my speech. It would be fair to think that I took nothing away from these sessions, but I benefited and learned from these appointments.

Every time I met with a new therapist, I had to do the initial evaluations and tests. This repetition seemed pointless to me at the time, but it allowed me to practice those valuable strategies that therapists had given me over the years. In practicing them, I discovered how to do exceptionally well on the tests, and I believed that my success on these evaluative tests meant I would be done with speech therapy for good. Sadly, I was starting to expect and accept that people would look at me oddly, and I understood that I would continue to be pulled aside for appearing to be drunk in public. After almost three years of therapy, I decided to stop going to all forms of treatment.

Despite my refusal to continue with professional speech therapy, my speech did improve. I initially thought this improvement was of my own doing. I was working on relearning Spanish, and I spent a lot of time talking to random people, and I worked on my posture, all with the intent of improving my speaking ability. These techniques were of course the ones recommended by the therapists over the years.

I tried to overcome the most troublesome impediments, yet the negative encounters at school continued. Teachers sent me home from class. I had multiple meetings where students would think that I was drunk or from another country. I even had people assume that I was mentally disabled. As much as I could objectively see how people could make those assumptions, I knew that my mind and brain worked just fine, and it hurt. So, after graduation, I decided to go back to therapy.

Going back to therapy, this time, made me feel happier and more productive. I didn’t feel an aversion to working with anyone, regardless of their experience. Years of being singled out made me a much humbler person.

This new acceptance of my need for professional assistance allowed me to get more therapy sessions, which immensely helped me progress.

With my more positive outlook, therapy moved along productively and quickly. My two therapists recognized that I now had a suitcase full of strategies that I could utilize independently. I was discharged from in-person therapy sessions with an invitation to come back when I felt it was necessary.

I left South Bend in August of 2020 with greater confidence to begin a year of service work in Phoenix, Arizona. I no longer cared as much if people thought differently of me, which proved crucial. In Phoenix, I continued to face instances where people would make inaccurate assumptions about me. Over my first five days, I had volunteers question my sobriety, and I had people who were living on the streets asking me if I had any idea where I was. Due to my built up confidence, though, none of their words bothered me. I had faced these issues before, and now I had the inner strength to not let it devastate me.

I was able to strengthen my speaking muscles differently in Phoenix. Rather than strictly working on intelligibility, I began speaking Spanish with many Spanish speakers.

Having studied Spanish in school, visited many Spanish speaking countries, and having a mom and two sisters who spoke close to fluent Spanish and a brother-in-law from Mexico, I had a basic background in the language. Since my injury though, the problem was that I had spent all of my time practicing my primary language, English, rather than Spanish.

I focused solely on English for over seven years, and then I spent one year on Spanish. It worked! I had dreams in Spanish; I was conversing with my mom and my brother-in-law. I still work on my Spanish, but I am far more confident now.

I started a daily oral diary while in Phoenix to improve my speech. Not only did it help me focus on my voice, but it also served as an outlet for me to process the experiences of my days working with the individuals experiencing homelessness. It piqued my interest in being a professional speaker (even though I still hated my voice.)

Despite my apprehension, I reached out to the local chapter of the National Speakers Association. Early on, the meetings weren’t about the act of speaking per se but how you develop speeches. I thought it was an exciting idea to focus not only on my fluency but also on the subject of my talks.

I conclude this chapter not because my voice is perfect but because, at this point, I feel as if I have overcome the “impossibility” presented to my parents. My self confidence outweighs how others may perceive me.

Brewster

Lesson

The main takeaway from over seven years of speech therapy is to be less arrogant. I have read the works of philosophers and theologians, which stress the importance of humility. Looking at my experiences and how my mindset impacted those experiences is shocking to me now. I had so many outstanding therapists. Some of them were therapists I didn’t feel deserved my respect. If the therapist was younger or less experienced, I assumed they couldn’t help me as much as a veteran therapist. Embracing humility and minimizing preconceptions enabled me to bring professional therapy to a close in my life and helped me find and utilize methods to work on my speech at home.

My second takeaway is that something can be impossible for some and not for others. My mom learned French and Spanish at the same time. I figured I could learn Spanish and English at the same time. This turned out to be highly confusing and of no benefit to me. It’s important to understand that what is difficult for one person may not be as difficult for another.

You must understand and accept what is more impossible for you than it is for others.

Read more about Brewster and buy his book Impossible? and All the Times My Parents Tried to Kill Me at inspiration-everywhere.com.