Speech Therapy can be very important for folks with PD, for 2 reasons

I really enjoyed reading this-your sense of humor makes a serious topic much easier to engage with.

You're absolutely right that speech therapy isn't just about having a stronger voice. For people with Parkinson's, it's also about protecting swallowing function, reducing the risk of aspiration, and maintaining quality of life. Those daily exercises can feel repetitive, but they really do add up over time.

And yes, I think your speech therapist will probably appreciate the effort more than the song itself! "99 Bottles of Beer" may not win any awards for lyrical brilliance, but if it gets you practicing consistently, that's a win. The best exercise is often the one you'll actually do.

For anyone looking for professional speech therapy support, Proactive Care offers speech therapy services with therapists who work on communication, swallowing, and personalized rehabilitation plans. You can learn more at proactivecare.ae

Thanks for sharing such an honest and entertaining post-it’s a great reminder that while Parkinson's presents challenges, a little humor and persistence can go a long way. Wishing you and your speech therapist a successful (and hopefully entertaining) session on Monday!

Great comments and love the humor. You obviously live by my motto, I am not waiting for the storm to pass, I am going to learn to dance in the rain. You motivated me to schedule my speech therapy. Thanks, Joe

My wife has begun to have swallowing difficulties.just looking into speech therapy options.
Does the process help measurably, maintain function; improve function or slow progress. ?
Is it necesssry to find a Dora h therapist that specializes in swallowing difficulty due to Parkinson’s symptoms?

@jackcol315 I'm no expert on this topic, but I'm happpy to share my thoughts, in hopes that some of the words I stri ng together might actually have value, or perhaps spark some ideas in your head that will take you where you need to go 😉 Maybe the best person to ask might be a speech therapist. There is is a boatload of things that are extraordinarily complex that you never really think about when you're having a chat with someone while eating a sandwich, Like how the muscles do what they do and how you make them stronger to overcome thngs like speech defects or about just how the muscles do what tthey do to make all these things doable Most folks just take this for granted.... until youfind yourself taking 15 minutes to get a s single bit of food fom your mouth to your stomach. Some of the exercises the therapist may ask you to do may seem a tad strange. One of them that I found myself very averse to was where you take a water bottle and a piece of plasstic tubing about 10 inches long. You sing a song while blowing bubbbles in the bottle. I doubt that I'm the only person who did that as a child when we went to a cafeteria for lunch after church s who yielded into the temptation to blow bubbles in my CocaCola and remembers being soundly chastized, with threats of some dire punishment upon returning home if I didn't stop embarassing the entire family, so it's a bit hard to do that when you're expecting to have somebody pinch your arm really hard to get your attention without causinsg a scene in the cafeeria full of other people ,many of them fellow church-goers. But doing that exercize strengthens your throat muscles and helps you swallow and talk (although not at the same time),And when you can't carry a tune in a wooden bucket, singing while anyone is within 8.5 miles of you is something you try to avoid and the only thing I have aung as an adult were songs I sang to my son as a small lad (and he seemed to go to sleep really quickly and now I realize it was his only way to stop this horrible torture.) I don't know whether that was a clever strategy on my part or not, but it worked in any case.

Hello @jackcol315

Speech therapists can usually help people with both swallowing and speech problems. Has your wife met with a speech therapist yet?

As background, what other PD symptoms are bothersome for your wife?

She has only minor movement issues.
In recent weeks has become more prone to loosing balance. Has fallen .dementia like symptoms: very fogetful. Almost no ability to make a choice/decision.

"99 bottles" would be a very long song to practice your singing, anf of course, very annoying to everyone else!

Im being referred to a speech therapist by my ENT (swallowing expert). We're gonna try that next.

@barryl I suppose the good news is that my jusband is half deaf and most of the time at home he doesn't wear his hearing aides. our dear cat passed away a few weeks ago so it won't be botheri g him either. (although he may have decided that as long as I was singing that song, he would just punch out - he was 16 years old, (about 80 for people age,) And we live in a 100-year-old house that has been divided into 2 flats. oour neighbors are also old and deaf and they are retired and spend lots of time going hither and thither for weks at a time, so it doesn't trouble them much. In fact, our entire little piece of Heaven in Berlin is mostly old folks who have hearing issues and live in these really old buildings with 14 inch walls, so the chances of somebody being bothered -is -pretty slim, and even if they are, by the time they've looked up the number to call for such nuisances, they will only remember that they were mildy annoyed at something, but can't remeber what it was. (By the way, we actually have 'Quiet hours" in Germany. The bins where you can drop off glass ottles, jsrs etv. have a signe that says you can't put bottles in them betweeen 12 noon and 3 pm. (nap time for kids and old folks. You ccan't mow your grass on a Sunday and you can' be loud after 10 pm. Of course, the smart folks just invite their neighbotss to their parties so they aren't likely to complain . They likely will foget they they were re botherd within 3o minutes after it bothered them, And I 've got my act of "I'm just a poor old half deaf octogenarian with Parkinson's and Mild Cognitive Insufficiency so I'm really sorry if I upset anyone." down pretty good now. I may take it to Broadway, or the Johnny Carson show, but he quit doing it after he died.. But surely there's some other show with those attractive young lads like Trevor Noah (or is it Noalh Treavor?)_I could even get my speech therapist to intervene if necessary. But most of our friends and neighbors are in the same boat as we are in figure that we've got so much more we wanna do and we're running out of time and energy to do it, that wasting it on on complaining about the smal lstuff doesn't seem to be a good invesstment of our time. And every day 1 live an hour is becoming a bigger percentage of the time I have left on the planeet and I'm disinclin,ed to use it on the little stuff. Maybe I shoul survey the neighbors and see if they have any sons that accomplish the same thing (the younger folks who have small children migh sugest "The Wheelss on the bus fo round and round". Maybe I should googlel the lyrics and see if it's any easiser on others than than 99 bottles - Or I could alternate the songs. but I'm not sure whether alternating 2 bad choices is the equivalent of 1 good choice. But I never have understoood that busines where 2 negative numbers multiplied uield a a e posistive number. - sounds like a flim-flam to me.so what was it I was talking about?

@jatonlouise- The 'minor' inconveniences seem to add up to to 'MAJOR issues for me. I try to not complain about the long 'on hold' on the phone with horrible music or continually reminding me that 'they'll be right with me, or advertising stuff I have no invest in. Or the worst.... hanging up on me after about 30 min on hold, forcing me to start over.
These just keep happening way too frequently. THEN THEY ARE MAJOR ISSUES for me.