Ataxic Aphasia

Parkland has been a difficult, yet wonderful, experience. Every day a new situation arises that requires quickness, efficiency, problem-solving, deductive reasoning, and common sense. These are all skills I believe myself to have (thank You, God, and thanks, Mom & Dad for the genes); however, my supervisor, unfortunately, has seen very little of these in her student intern.

Today, after completing an initial evaluation on a new patient, I was filling out the paperwork to write down how the patient performed during the assessment and to give an official diagnosis on this patient.

"Patient presents with mild/moderate ataxic aphasia complicated by...".

For those of you who don't know, "ataxic aphasia" doesn't exist. There is ataxic dysarthria and there is aphasia, but there is definitely not an ataxic aphasia. An equivalent misdiagnosis would be for a psychologist to diagnose an individual with "mental regurgitation" instead of mental retardation. This could also be compared to a a minister asking the congregation to turn to Hezekiah 3:12, a car salesperson trying to sell you a Honda Lumina, or a baker confusing the flour with salt.

So, just in case I was beginning to feel slightly competent and confident in my skills as speech therapist in the hospital setting, I was given yet another dose of humility... and good grief! These humility shots smart!