What Does Early Aphasia Look Like?

Chammer

For anyone whose LO presented early on with aphasia in the dementia process, what did you notice first and how did it present? A friend (not a medical professional) after a recent conversation w DH mentioned he might have aphasia due to his speech pattern. He has always said "umumumumumum" in a very staccato and fast fashion as a "conversation holder" when he is pausing in speaking to gather and finish his thoughts/sentence. Now he will say um (pause) um (pause) several times slowly while he is word searching in his mind for the word, usually an object, place, thing or person (mostly nouns 😁). It is a change in his speech pattern but not sure if it is significant. He doesn't have a diagnosis.

Marta

Is your husband in the process of being evaluated? Does he have other symptoms?

Early aphasia often starts with loss of nouns.

SDianeL

Yes I think it's worth having him evaluated. Start by making a list of things you notice. My DH started about 5 years ago not being able to spell common words. I bought him a spell check device but he couldn't even figure out how to use it. The next phase about 3 years ago was not remembering nouns. Names, things, etc. He would look at me and say "help me out here" and I had no idea what he was thinking. Looking back now, he was early stages. He kept saying he couldn't hear me but I knew he could. He wasn't understanding me especially if I talked fast. The thing that got me to get him evaluated was 2 years ago when I was talking to my daughter (his step-daughter) about her brother who lives in a different state. My DH looked at me confused and asked "what is his relationship to her" and pointed at my daughter. I knew then that something was very wrong. Then he stopped being able to use our iPhone. He became obsessed with organizing things even the trash. Your DH's PCP can do the simple memory test as a start and refer to a Neuro Psychologist for the 3 hour test. The 3 hour test showed that my DH had visuospatial difficulties and should not be driving a car. I was shocked. In hindsight, he was driving way too slow and I didn't put 2 plus 2 together. Hope this info helps. Please keep in touch.

mommyandme (m&m)

My LOs aphasia seemed to start with loss of nouns and opposites. Couldn’t find the word for ex. refrigerator and using girl for boy, dog for cat etc and visa versa

CindyBum

MY SO's aphasia seemed to appear rather dramatically. She went from what we both saw as sort of normal word searching you see in normal aging to one day unable to finish sentences and not being able to find the words at all. I honestly thought she'd had a stroke, it seemed to change so rapidly. It wasn't a stroke or a UTI. Just real aphasia. Now that's combined with when she can't find the words, she says, "I don't even remember what I was trying to say."

GothicGremlin

With Peggy (my sister), it was the nouns that went first. We didn't catch it early because she was good at covering + she always played Words With Friends on her phone. She was fairly good at it, so it masked the noun loss.

Honestly though, at the time, I was paying more attention to her driving than to her noun loss. Peggy was never a good driver, but the last few years before her diagnosis she was getting downright dangerous. Like @SDianeL 's DH, I think it was the visuospatial issues, but it wasn't flagged until she had seen a neurologist.

Ed1937

When my wife first started losing words, she would just pause mid sentence, try again, then again, and finally just stop talking. Then she got to the point where she would say "I don't know what's happening. I can't even talk anymore". Finally she would use "three to eleven" to take the place of any word she couldn't find. I had no idea what she was talking about, but she didn't realize she was having a problem with speech.

Jeanne C.

I agree. Definitely nouns first in my husband's case. He often loses words or replaces them with the wrong word (example: says "letter" when he means "leaf"). We had one terrifying episode when he was very agitated and he spoke in gibberish. It sounded like a normal sentence cadence but it was random syllables and sounds (EMS followed stroke protocols but thankfully it wasn't one). He has progressed now to where he often stops midsentence and tells me he's tired. I've also noticed he seems to not understand things at times. I don't think it's his hearing. It seems more like he just doesn't grasp what's being said.

SDianeL

last night my DH woke up about 6am and was talking gibberish. I think he was dreaming and trying to describe his dream. Something about picking people up.