Connect
Speech Therapy can be very important for folks with PD, for 2 reasons
There are 2 reasons why speech therapy is important for folks with PD.: : (1) Communication: PD can change your voice. Your speech may be so hoarse that people who hear it think you most certainly had begun smoking in utero. While they can't imagine the logistsics of pulling that off, they can't imagine another way to explain it. And if folks can't understand what you say, they become reluctant to engage in conversation with you. It's just too hard.
(2) The muscles you use for speaking are the same ones you use for swallowing. You may have noticed that the standard way of getting food into your belly involves your mouth and throat. And if those muscles atrophy you must find some other avenue for your food to get into your stomach. Eating a nice steak, a potato smothered in sour cream, and perhaps a lovely salad or dessert is a very nice way to gain sustenance.
But if the primary pathway doesn't work very well, you may aspirate food into your lungs and develop pneumonia. You may not mind the first hospitalization for penumonia, but by the time the number of hospitaliztions reaches a 2-digit number, you might not be too keen on it.
Then the alternative is to have a port into your belly, mix some nutritional but not particularly tasty substances into a blender and put a funnel into that port in your belly and have your food by-pass your mouth and throat entirely. You might be able to deal with that for a while, but I imagine that, particularly around the holiday season, you might wish you had been a tad more diligent with your speech therapy excercises.
I have had this discussion with myself fom time to time, but alas, I can be about the most obstinate of creatures to ever have walked the earth and as I hear my voice getting more and more hoarse, I grow increasingly anxious about the consequences of my lackadaisical approach to the whole thing.
One of the best exercises involves a water bottle and a tube. You fill the water bottle about three inches. The tube is maybe a foot or 18 inches long . it is roughly the diameter of my thumb. You must put the tube in the bottle and blow into it as you sing.
This brings back memories of family dinners every Sunday after church. We often went to the local cafeteria which had lucious fried chicken of fried fish, and Jello salads, fresh vegetables, and desserts to die for. Sometimes kids get bored even at a meal involving these delights, and they decide that putting a straw in their coke and blowing bubbles into it will help beguile the tediium of the meal that seems to be well on its way to the longest meal in all of Christendom. This behaviour would not be tolerated by the adults.
So this particular exercise brings back memories of the punishments that followed blowing bubbles in my coke in that long-defunct cateteria.
It also requires singing. If my life depended on it, I could not carry a tune in a wooden bucket. I'm certain that I could make a living by charging people to NOT sing at their weddings. And, while singing at a wedding requires your physical presence, not singing at that wedding can be done from anywhere and (theoreticallly) you could not sing at many weddings simultaneously.
Alas, that's another enterprise that didn't pan out for me. Since my singing caused others pain, and I didn't enjoy it mself and rarely do it, I have no lyrics. And, of course, there's the profound lack of will do to it
But, after having several conversations with myself regarding the possibility of having a port in my belly for whatevery remains of my lilfe, I've almost convinvced myself to work on it. My speech therapist is young, caring, charming and really commited to helping her clients develop ways to normalize their lives as much as they can, so I'm sure it pains her to hear me getting increasingly worse .
Having put myself in time-out numerous times, I think I have come up with a solution. It's a common song with very easy lyrics (Its lyrics are simple - 12 words.) And unlike the songs on American Bandstand, it's not necessary to be able to dance to it, nor are the lyrics reqired to be touching. So I think I'm going to surprise my sweet speech therapist Monday morning when she comes to endure yet again my recalcitrance and I surprise her by singing my song to her. I'm sure you'e heard of it and most likely have sung it s time or two yourself. The first line of lyrics go like this, "99 bottles of beer on the wall....." Do you think she'll like it?
Like
Helpful
HugInterested in more discussions like this? Go to the Parkinson's Disease Support Group.
Connect
@barryl
@jatonlouise I am very sorry if what I said gave you offense. My response was intended to be honest and light-hearted and funny. That's how I interface with the real world because, frankly, if you get some distance on the whole thing, much of real life involves dealling with things that have very little impact on the real world. For instance, the man from Texas (where I spent my formative years) who wanted thes tate legislature ro pass a bill forbidding public schools from putting litter boxes in the school's bathrooms to accommodae any students who practiced the lifestyle of the Furries (people lwho prefer to act like dogs or cats, for example.. perhaps some identify with snakes, so I don't know what bathroom provisions for them must have been) .An astute legislator asked him if he could name any schools where this had occurred. He could not, but this idea poppoed into his head, "'This bill witll prevent that from ever happening." The legislator rightly told him that he was wasting the legislators' time and the taxpayers' dollars with this bill when there are serious issues to be addressed.) But I digress. It is my firmly held opinion that each individual gets to decide what goes onto their major issue list and what goes on their minor issue list. Nobody else has a vote in the matter .I'm not sure how my words left the impression that I was being critical of whatevery you had on your major issue list. It's none of my business. I, too, share your frustration at what passes for customer service. At the same time, for me, there are only 24 hours in the day and I have to decide how much time and energy I have to devote to a particular issue. It's even morev critical now because my 82nd birthday is on a fast traian and will arrive in 5 months, w hich is a blink of the eye . And every hour of becomes a greater percentage of the time I have left on the planet. Some of those hours have to be spent just tending to my body and the various potions and activities I must do to keeping this old battered body on this side of the grass so I can enjoy my family and all the things that I love to do aa little longer. And I'm susre what I consider a major issue would seem to be absurd to a normal person. There's a first name that I loathe, because a person of twith that name brought so much misery into my childhood that it took 3 18-wheelers to deliver it. I will avoid indiviiuals with that name. I don't give a fig how batsh*t crazy it seems. I'm glad the company I worked for only put first initials and last names on the doorplates jusst outside our office doors. If they had used first names I might hve periodically stayed late to remove all the plates with that name and thrown them in the trash. But they didn't use the first names so I wasn't compelled to do that. I can imafine my carrer trajetory would have been negatively afftected by such behaviour. We all have to deal with sosrting out our issues and allocating the time, money, and energy that wwe c onsider appropriate to deal with them, The only thing that might come into the decision is whether people lin our lives who care about us would like to have some fun with us from time to time and maybe we do owe it to them to consider how we divvy up our time and energy ato deal with our issues and how much to spend having fun with them and being there for them. The only advice I would dare to have is to consider what the right balance is for yourself, is and how some day when you look back on your choices, you can feel comfortable with how you allocated your time.. May all those folks who dropped your
calls sstep in dog poopoo in their best shoes on their way to interview for their dream job,
@barryl By the way, the individiual cusstomer service representatives are not who's dropping your calls. (I managed a customer Trouble Center for a t elco a zillion years ago) Top management decides how many humans they are willing to place in the Trouble Center, based on how much any increased cost will affect their bonuses. It is most likely that there is somes software programmed to drop a call if you've been on hold for 30 minutes (and if it's e xactly 30 minutes EVERY time you call, it's probablynot a human droppiny you, so I s hould have said that "the executives who decided to program their incoming calls to the customer service to drop after 30 minutes are the ones who should step in dog poopoo in their best shoes on their way to interview for their dream job." I'm goint to make some suggetions abour that in a sseparate post. I recently stayed in a nice hotel that has tried to conform to the Americans with Disabilities Act, but they havent done it on a "Boots on the ground" sort of way, so they miss the target sso tune in again to the same station for a post on how to address problems with customer service. A general, overall direction is "Start at the top - w ith the highest level executive whose name you can find" because, as much as your distress is justified, you need to take it to the folks who are usually causing the problem and are the only ones who can really fix the problem. My motto: Go BIG or GO HOME!
@jatonlouise - Thanks very much for the information. I'm struggling now with a new watch that I ordered, after returning two (much less expensive) Chinese knock offs because they were IMPOSSIBLE to program. I wanted a smart watch that I could set reminders for taking gobs of pills at 4 different times evey day. I finally broke down and purchased a Samsung smart watch to pair with my Samsung cell phone. (~ 10X more expensive than the cheap ones). It finally arrived from my cell phone company. It came with ZERO instructions. It had a USB-C one one end and a magnetic attachment for the watch end for charging the watch. BUT NO USB-C CHARGING BLOCK to plug the cable into.
So I ordered the charging block and now have that. The watch is now charged to 100%!!
I called Samsung tech support to help be get the phone paired with my phone. A HUGE WASTE OF TIME.... NO help. They are useless.
I called customer service at my cell phone carrier, and was getting the VERY BEST customer service EVER!
She helped me for TWO HOURS STRAIGHT. I now have the phone paired with my phone, and all of the preference options set. Now, a problem with my password being blocked!
I'll try again on Monday after customer service opens. Hopefully I'll be able to get the same C.S. representative again. She's my new best friend!!
Barry Litchfield
-
Like -
Helpful -
Hug
1 ReactionI’d like to recommend Parkinson Voice Project for speech therapy to help with both speaking and swallowing. They have on-line home practice, either “live” or recorded. There’s never a charge - they work on a pay-it-forward basis. They also offer full speech therapy services throughout the U.S.
https://parkinsonvoiceproject.org/program/parkinsons-speech-exercises/
Whater you do, don't reveal her name, because if her VP fins out who speent a fulkl 2 hours with just 1 customer, sh's gonna be in trouble/ 😉