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"Dilbert" Creator Gets Voice Back
Scott Adams lost his voice 18 months ago to a disorder called Spasmodic Dysphonia. One day, it returned. He is apparently the first person in history to recover from this malady. Read his account. It is inspirational. I can't find any other word for it.
While teaching the course his voice was like a hoarse whisper. He characterised it as having "forgotten" how to speak. But while telling the class about his voice, he said he could sing. And suddenly as singing his voice was loud and strong.
I wished he did that for the whole course.
Mr Adams is extremely good at thinking creatively at problems. In the back of one of his books ( i can't remember which ) he talks about his experimentation with affirmations. It was extremely interesting to read about his testing and just the way he thinks. I envy his ability to reason through and logically deciefer things he doesn't initially understand.
Nice to hear you got your voice back.. now get back to drawing funny stuff!
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
I've been fascinated with speech conditions, primarily because of the nature of how people end up compensating and communicating. It's definitely related to something neurological, because scientists have shown that, for example, you use different parts of your brain when you speak personally vs when you sing. I've also seen people who, when they act on stage or in screen, speak in perfect diction, tone, and with great command, but if asked to improvise or speak informally, they say umm a lot and/or seem very nervous. A prepared speech in front of many people would often work, neurologically, the same way as an acting or singing performance.
I wish Scott Adams the best. He's one of the gods in the geek pantheon, and it would be sad for him to suffer so when he brings joy to so many of us.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
If you really need an "enlightenment" icon, how about finding a simple Buddha image?
It's generic enough where pretty much everyone would catch on to the meaning.
In honor of this situation, I say we rename the disease to Dilbert's Syndrome. Note how Dilbert has no mouth? Think about it :)
;)
You think this is callous? Far from it! Again we name it this way in order to honor the first person who kicked it. And I think Scott would enjoy the irony of having a neurological disease named after one of his characters. Scott Adams is all about Irony
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I recently stumbled across his book God's Debris (Free PDF file) at http://images.ucomics.com/images/pdfs/sadams/godsd ebris.pdf. I'm not real a big fan of Dilbert and only read a handful of the comics but this book is very interesting.
Here are two facts that align with TMS:
- it doesn't have a well-described physical mechanism -- i.e. doctor's don't understand specifically the physical mechanism of the diease
- the fact that it is a phenomena of the muscles align with other TMS diagnoses -- in this case paralysation instead of oxygen deprivation.
Now before any of you claim that the two are mutually contradictory, understand this: the doctors don't have any explanation for *why* Scott's muscles are paralysed. They just are. They have no reason or cause not to be working; they just don't. There is no diease, such as injury, bacteria, virus, or anything that would have paralysed these otherwise working muscles. They just aren't working. But, the person can sing.The fact that Scott was able to work his way out of it through self-hypnosis, visualization, and practice, seems to indicate that it was something in the mind. Sarno's course of treatment for TMS includes such activities. He also recommends psychotherapy for dealing with emotions.
In fact, in Sarno's recent book _The Divided Mind_, he recounts a story about a famous turn-of-the-century hypnotist who was able to cure a person's muteness, while they were under hypnosis.
I'm not in favor of going to herbs and drumming for medicine. But it seems to me that emotional issues causing physical problems are an unexplored and undertreated area of modern American medicine.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Does this have anything to do with the return of Loud Howard? (I wonder?)
Mine was of a much more temporary nature but still frightening.
I had been playing basketball at the gym one evening and took a good elbow to the head down in the post that put me on the floor. Hurt, but didn't knock me out or anything. I got up and continued playing the rest of the game. I didn't think much of it at the time. I went home, grabbed a shower and headed for bed. I was single at the time so I didn't chat with anyone at home.
The next day I got up, felt fine, went to work. Someone came over to ask me a question and as I responded, the words were just a jumble. I couldn't pronounce anything. Sounded like I was just mumbling some unintelligible garbage.
My vocal cords were fine. I could make sounds. I could understand people. I could write responses on paper. I just couldn't form words. I headed to the ER.
Anyhow there was nothing they could do for me. The scans showed no dangerous swelling that needed immediate attention, but obviously something had been short circuited in my speech center. I took me a good month+ to get back to where I could speak more or less fluidly again.
For me, it wasn't a "one day I could talk again" sort of thing. I had to work at it every day. I'd practice speaking in the mirror. I could speak very very slowly if I concentrated on each sound I wanted to make.
Anyhow I just wanted to convey some sympathy towards Scott Adams' situation.
Seems like Adams also suffers from focal dystonia, "Adams was diagnosed with the condition -- a neurological movement disorder, marked by involuntary muscle spasms--back in 1992...The problem affects his right hand -- the one he uses to draw."
c le/2005/05/09/AR2005050901066.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
First up, congratulations to my favourite cartoonist for getting his voice back!
I'm curious though. These days we can image individual atoms, and build things on a molecular scale. Yet in many ways medicine is still in the dark ages - there's so much we don't know or even begin to understand about the human body.
Why? Hard to say. Sure the human body is extremely complex, but it seems to me that modern medicine seems almost archaic at times.
Most common technique for fixing people? A person with a sharp blade - a method most likely pioneered by the ancient Egyptians nearly 5000 yrs ago.
Most common technique for finding out what's happening inside someone? Firing X-rays at a piece of film - a process pretty much unchanged since the late 1800's.
Most common method for curing bacterial infection? Penicillin, a drug over 50 years old.
Pain relief? Aspirin - again nearly 100 years old.
Why isn't medicine evolving as quickly as, say, computing has over the last 100 years? What's holding it back? There are so many "syndromes" and untreatable things out there - why? I can't help feeling we should know and understand far more than we do. Anyone else have any thoughts?
When I visited my father(+) in hospital there was this girl of about 21/22 years old. She was just having a normal day when her brain "reversed". Apparently, the brain discovered that something was not going right, and decided to do a full reset. She simply collapsed. The good news was that it should be possible for her to get a full recovery. She was able to speak fine, and actually she was doing some work on her laptop while in hospital, but she had to relearn how to walk. That was her story anyway.
The brain sure can do strange things sometimes. I hope I never have to experience what she experienced, just collapsing out of the blue. I collapsed because of too low blood presure once, and that was scary enough.
Has anyone else contemplated the absolutely brilliant way MP successfully got the word "cunt" past the BBC censors here?