Stroke patient relearning how to write. The patient, a 69-year old woman, had a stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain two weeks previously. This left her with aphasia (a disorder of speech generation and understanding) and hemiparesis (unilateral paralysis) of her right side. As the patient was right-handed, she is having to learn to write with her left hand. The therapist draws a pattern of dots on the paper, the patient traces these to form the letters. In right-handed people the left hemisphere is dominant and includes the main centre of speech.