英語流行話題聽力:Unit 18 殘疾——我與ALS癥

[00:00.01] Unit 18 Disability -- My Experience with ALS I am Stephen Hawking. [00:11.09] People often asked: How do you feel about having ALS? [00:15.56] The answer is, not a lot. [00:18.13] I try to lead as normal a life as possible, and not think about my condition, [00:23.20] or regret the things it prevents me from doing. [00:27.22] As a child I had never been good at ball games, and my handwriting was the despair of my teachers. [00:33.27] In my third year at Oxford, I seemed to be getting more clumsy, and I fell over once or twice for no apparent reason. [00:41.56] My family doctor referred me to a specialist. [00:47.09] The realization that I had an incurable motor neuron disease was a bit of a shock. [00:53.37] Not knowing how rapidly the disease would progress, I was at a loss. [00:58.53] The doctors told me to carry on with the research I had just started in general relativity and cosmology. [01:05.56] After all, if I were going to die anyway, I might as well do some good. [01:11.35] But I did not die. [01:12.43] In fact, although there was a cloud hanging over my future, I was enjoying life in the present more than before. [01:21.32] I began to make progress with my research, and I got engaged to a girl called Jane Wilde. [01:28.32] That engagement changed my life. [01:30.55] It gave me something to live for. [01:34.01] But it also meant that I had to get a job if we were to get married. [01:39.22] I therefore applied for a research fellowship at Cambridge. [01:42.57] To my great surprise, I got a fellowship, and we got married a few months later. [01:48.32] The fellowship took care of my immediate employment problem. [01:53.57] I was lucky to have chosen to work in theoretical physics, because that was one of the few areas in which my condition would not be a serious handicap. [02:04.30] And I was fortunate that my scientific reputation increased, at the same time my disability got worse. [02:12.47] Up to 1974, I was able to feed myself, and get in and out of bed. [02:19.00] Jane managed to help me, and bring up the children, without outside help. [02:23.14] However, things were getting more difficult. [02:26.44] In 1980, we changed to a system of private nurses, who came in for an hour or two in the morning and evening. [02:36.06] This lasted until I caught pneumonia in 1985. [02:39.10] I had to have a tracheostomy operation. [02:42.54] Before the operation, my speech had been getting more slurred, so that only a few people could understand me. [02:50.34] However, the operation removed my ability to speak altogether. [02:56.53] A computer expert in California heard of my trouble and sent me a computer program he had written. [03:03.53] The program could be controlled by a switch, operated by head or eye movement. [03:09.14] When I have built up what I want to say, I can send it to a speech synthesizer. [03:15.27] This synthesizer is by far the best I have heard, because it varies the intonation. [03:21.30] The only trouble is that it gives me an American accent. [03:24.37] However, the company is working on a British version. [03:28.21] I have had ALS for practically all my adult life. [03:33.39] Yet it has not prevented me from having a good family, and being successful in my work, [03:40.10] thanks to the help I have received from Jane, my children, and a large number of other people. [03:45.52] I have been lucky, that my condition has progressed more slowly than is often the case. [03:52.29] But it shows that one need not lose hope.

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