WHEN THE WORDS WON’T COME
SHE can hear the words in her mind but when she tries to speak, they don’t come out right.
“Hard . . . spoken word,” Nicole Hearne (49) forces the words out. “Can write . . . words.” It’s clear she has something to say, but her speech won’t cooperate.
Her father, Clarence, intervenes.
“She knows what she wants,” he says. “She’s always been a chatterbox – always so bubbly.”
Nicole, from Mitchells Plain in Cape Town, suffers from aphasia, a rare condition which makes it difficult for her to form words. It developed 26
