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METROLAND

ADIA TRINKALA AND THE OTHER schoolchildren gathered around the instructor on the playground and waited excitedly for the new game to be revealed. Like most young children, Nadia was eager to please. When the teacher called out a set of instructions, the throng of excited children ran away quickly, scattering around the playground to complete their task. As her peers began to follow the requested steps, she alone stayed rooted in place. It wasnt until she was in her 20s that she told her mother what had happened that day. She was probably 7 years old, says Dianne Trinkala. She said that she didnt understand what the teacher had told them. That was the start of her feeling kind of slow. I asked her why she didnt tell us. She didnt know. This was in the mid 1970s, when Nadia Trinkala was a bright child earning good marks in an elementary school in Brunswick. She had blonde hair, bright green eyes and a generous smile. By all accounts, she was very clever. She wasnt a troublemaker in school; if she had called attention to herself, her story might have taken another direction entirely. I used to say, Nadia pay attention, but thats what parents say to young children, says Dianne Trinkala. We didnt know she had a processing problem, she didnt know. She had to study harder to get good grades; we just didnt realize how hard it really was. As she got older, it got worse. Almost four decades after a young Nadia Trinkala stood by herself, confused on the playground, her body was found on the banks of Peebles Island, a state park nestled between the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers, part Albany and part Saratoga counties. Hikers discovered her body laying next to the turbulent waters on Friday, April 8, 2011. She was 44 years old. Living a mothers worst nightmare, Dianne Trinkala identified her only daughters body at a morgue in Albany. She was wearing her winter coat, and her sunglasses were on top of her head, she says. It looked like she had just died. She looked so peaceful. If Nadia Trinkala was finally at peace, there in the cold morgue, what battles had she escaped from? ITS FAIRLY RECENT, THERE WERE maybe early studies from the 80s, but even the concept of Central Auditory Pro-

Nadia Trinkala
Ray Felix

Darkness Invisible
Radiant, generous and full of ideas, Nadia Trinkala played the roles of artist, entrepreneur, healer and friend so well that few knew she was being worn down by a mysterious lifelong disability

JUNE 21-27

BY ERIN PIHLAJA
cessing Disorder didnt come into play until more recently, maybe in the late90s, says Maria Lifrak, a New York state licensed psychologist who is also certified by the American Board of Professional Psychologists as a neuropsychologist. Lifrak has been the director of Comprehensive Neuropsychological Services in Albany for 27 years. Not much at all was available 20 years ago, Lifrak says. This whole area of brain functioningits developing now, but its very complex. Were just kind of scratching the surface at this point.

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Nadia Trinkala was tested for CAPD sometime in her 20s, when there was much less understanding of the disorder and fewer resources available for it than there are today. Weve grown accustomed to hearing cases of developmental disorders such as attention deficit disorder and dyslexia in school-age children, but its not always easy to spot the signs, and since CAPD is still in early stages of study, the task of narrowing down a diagnosis can be problematic. If a child is in school and they are obviously having difficulty learning, then the question is, Whats the problem here? says Lifrak. Is it an attention deficit disorder? Is it an intellectual problem? Gradually weve been able to see that there are some kids where it isnt either one, its that the child isnt processing auditory information correctly or completely. Its not always easily identified; it might take some trial and error to figure it out. Once it is suspected that a child has CAPD, tests are given to determine how well the child can hear. If thats ruled out, then you go to brain functioning. The brain is a very complex organ, theres a lot of different structures and theres different levels of processing and so forth, says Lifrak. Generally speaking, its difficult to determine at what point is the central auditory process not working right. Is it in the analysis of the complicated sound patterns, or is it in the understanding of the verbal language? There are many different elements of what could be the central auditory processing deficit. An audiologist, and sometimes a speech therapist, will perform very specific tests that pinpoint where the processing is impaired. This tricky process is what the field of CAPD study has evolved to today. Back when 7-year-old Nadia Trinkala stood alone on the playground, her childs mind didnt understand why she couldnt figure out what her teacher was saying. It was being different from the other kids that left a mark on her impressionable being, and she began to hide the shortcomings that caused her pain. Weve seen this with people who have dyslexia, or any kind of impairment like this, says Lifrak. They try to hide it, because it feels like a stigma, that starts when youre a child. Children always want to be at least as good as everyone else, and if theyre not they try to hide that. Even the

2012