This day was a day like no other. Â I was alone in my hospital room and in came the Occupational Therapist. Â I did not expect her. Â Nor did I expect what I was about to discover. Â She emptied out her toy bag and revealed several colored blocks. Â No big deal, I thought, just blocks representing primary colors.
Then she asked me to pick up a block, place it in the correct slot, and name the color. I picked a block of a color I have known since I was a toddler. It’s green, I thought. Â But no matter how hard I tried I could not say it. How does one lose capabilities so quickly? And what happened to me medically to affect my cognition and my speech so profoundly?
That was a day I’ll not forget. I couldn’t identify green, the color I so loved. The color of trees and forests was lost to me that day. And it took diligent work to recover my ability to recognize and identify color. Â So I am reminded how difficult it was for me to say “green” on that day. And I am also reminded not to take the special hue of leaves for granted. I will always love a path through a forest and all the lush green that covers me.