Saint Jude knows what's up.

"The greatest mistake in the treatment of diseases is that there are physicians for the body and physicians for the soul, although the two cannot be separated."  (Plato, quoted Brookshire 2007)

Unfortunately, Plato is right—until the moment of death, of course, the soul, the body, and the intellect are in this together.  When the body is damaged, it sometimes affects the intellect, which in turn affects the development of the soul.  

I am beginning to see how vital a role a speech therapist—or any therapist, really—may play in someone's life.  An SLP may see patients whose brains have undergone such trauma that even their families don't recognize them.  And it's the SLP's job to do whatever she can to recover what can be recovered of the patient's intellect and ability to communicate.

Many good people have spent much of their time and energy to serving those society forgets—the severely intellectually disabled, young and old.  I am honored that God has called me to do likewise.  When I was very young, I am not proud to admit that I had no patience for my peers with intellectual and learning disabilities.  It was God who opened my eyes, my mind, and my heart to see that they are just as important to Him as everyone else—that He loves them and they bring Him great joy.  In high school, one of my best friends was involved in Best Buddies, and while I didn't join the club myself, I learned to first tolerate, then to enjoy the presence of her friends who were attending special education classes.  Slowly, I transitioned from someone with no patience into someone getting ready to devote my entire life to helping people to communicate.  My time in the Dominican Republic serving as a special needs teacher really taught me to practice valuing every life, no matter what.  We had one student who, when we met her, did not even know where to focus her eyes and could not say more than one word at a time.  But because we hoped and prayed and spent countless hours working with her, by the end of the semester, she was starting conversations and understanding pretty complex social interactions.  Her older brother is still non-verbal.  Every time I saw him, he was surrounded by his smiling family.  

My neuro professor brought up an interesting ethical discussion last week:  When a patient comes to the hospital, they expect to be healed.  But often with brain trauma, there is no such thing as a cure.  The most that can be expected is the recovery of some of the function that was lost (depending on the severity, perhaps most, or perhaps only a little).  And when it comes to slow-onset health problems, such as Parkinson's, the treatment team is working to slow the loss of function.  They cannot stop it entirely; alas, medicine is not yet that advanced.  There are naysayers who believe that with the shortage of SLPs, attention should be focused on the young and those with hope of at least partial recovery, instead of on those with degenerative disorders.  My professor, on the other hand, believes that these patients are very important to serve.  She argues that their importance is not diminished because of their condition; they are humans whose lives we can improve, even if only a little, by helping them to continue to communicate.  She, like good old Saint Jude, will NOT give up on these "hopeless" cases.

Being naught but a naïve linguist, I had never considered this issue—that there are some patients who will never recover, and some even who can only grasp to retain what they once had, watching in despair as it slips through their fingers (or worse, losing the ability to understand the loss).  I recall the book Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes—an important, if emotionally difficult, novel.  The thought of that happening to me is terrifying.  To lose the intellect, knowing there is nothing to stop its eventual demise. 

What are we if we cannot even reason or communicate?  Clearly we have value; we are still human beings, still loved by our Maker, still whole in His eyes.  He died for every single person, even those whose intellect never develops beyond the age of two years, even those who never experience life outside the womb.  The soul is somehow beyond the body and the intellect.

It's easy to agree in theory, but in practice, our society is heading in a disturbing direction.  There are those who believe that an unborn child with DOWN syndrome should be relieved of the burden of life.  But I have never met anyone with DOWN syndrome who felt this way.  How much do we really value the elderly who have so much wisdom but cannot express themselves—or worse, are forgetting the wisdom they have acquired?  How much do we care about soldiers, or policemen, or firefighters who have had traumatic brain injuries or burns that severely hamper their lifestyle?  How often do we turn away from those who most need our patience?  

It is easier to change the subject and think of something else.

I can see now that God is calling me to face my fears, to be more motivated to help those living with communication disorders and cognitive disorders.  To believe that beneath—nay, within—each mess of flesh and brain tissue and nerve cells, there is a person that God loves dearly, and that they have something to say.  And that Someone is listening because He loves them.