So Word Recall issues are fun times had by many with MS, including yours truly. It goes beyond the typical "the word is right on the tip of my tongue" recall that most people experience. It goes into full on wackiness.
It's kind of like using MS Word translation function. I was writing the newsletter for the PTA at my children's elementary school and they have a large spanish population. I was on a time crunch to get out the newsletter and I didn't have time to get it to a human to translate so I though, "Why not? I can still kind of remember Spanish." (At least enough to get the gist of the newsletter) So I wrote about the School Spirit Store and it translated into "School Liquour Store" but I caught that one so I was able to change the word in the translation. The one I didn't catch was where I wrote that Backyard Burger was going to be selling food at the Back to School party and Translate decided the call the business "Buttyard Burger" Thankfully the Spanish speaking families thought it was HILARIOUS and came out and bought "Buttyard Burger" for dinner. Of course several of the families NEVER let me forget that for the entire time I was PTA president.
So sometimes my word recall problem happens that I get a word in a sentence that wasn't exactly the word I wanted but it had a meaning that was still understandable in context. For example, I told Fynn to put his dirty plate in the washer. He knew I meant DISHwasher not clothes washer but it was still funny. Then there are the completely bizarre word switches...
My first real experience with Word Recall happened about 2 years ago (before diagnosis so I just thought I was out of my mind). Matt had a really bad case of pneumonia that required that I take him to the hospital. I posted on Facebook that he was really sick. The next day at church people asked me what was wrong. I said, "Oh, he has lasagna." I realized that I had said the wrong word so I said,"No, not lasagna! He has lasagna!" For the life of me I COULD NOT say pneumonia.
I have had a couple of other episodes but none as dramatic as the pneumonia/lasagna episode. Until the other night. I walked into the bathroom and there was a cricket on the walk. I yelled and Fynn said "What is it, Mom?!" and I yelled "There's a raccoon on the wall!" Fynn was very scared and then I started laughing. "I meant a cricket." Raccoon? Really?
So the title of this blog came from a comment by Bono in an interview in the early 90s. He sang "I've Got You Under my Skin" with Frank Sinatra on the Duets album. He said that the translation into some asian language was messed up so on the album cover the song was translated as "I've Got You Under My Chicken". Hee hee! Matt and I have laughed about that for years. Who knew it would become such a personal issue?
