I'll x-post the same post I did on another forum.
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From the quote[About his inability to speak at the moment], it does sound like it is a vocal chord issues, yes.
However, I've been through major brain trauma myself, and when I woke up with a broken skull and brain bleed, I was unable to speak as well. Even when my recovery were well underway, this kept being an issue. I was diagnosed with a "mild aphasia", and have been able to recover fine from it. It did take time though, and I had my last session where I spent a day doing loads of different mental excersises for the doctors to be able to figure out what kind of lasting damage I got. Turned out to be some fine-motoric issues on the right side of my body, some short term memory issues and a tiny bit of speech issues, where the last part would never be recovered no matter how hard I trained, as it was likely due to the scarring on my brain.
The most frustrating thing with it all, is that with aphasia I was able to think the words, I "sent" the words from my brain to my mouth - and I don't know how to describe it, as I cannot feel it now, but back then, I felt the words in my throat. Everything worked perfectly, I knew the words, I felt the words, I did everything just like I did pre-accident. All the sound that came out of my mouth however, was "aaaa" and "nnnn". No matter what word, no matter how hard i tried. It all felt like it did previously. It was just not coming out at all.
Man that was frustrating.
I wish Zanardi a continued good recovery! And I hope that any potential lasting issues, is things he will be able to work around, like his legs after 2001. That's so much better than things you can't work around, but will forever frustrate."