Hi All!
I got back from the doctor's a bit earlier than I expected so I have some time to Blog. It really is like an addiction!
Let's see - I told you about medical disability . . . okay. I stopped teaching in January of 2007 and started really concentrating on my speech therapy. I became a therapy fanatic. I had a list of exercises (breathing, inhale sounds, etc.) from my therapist and instructions to do them four times at the least and once an hour optimally. I went out and bought myself a timer. That timer was set to 50 minutes and each time it went off - so did I! I ran through my list of exercises and then reset that timer. Sometimes it seemed like that darn thing ran my life! I would stop in the middle of almost anything (I didn't set it after seven in the evening to give myself a break!) and do my exercises.
My therapist was very happy with my progress. Now I was able to do some simple words speaking on the inhale - while breathing in. From there we went to phrases and within a few months I could literally talk on the inhale. It took me a little more time and made my mouth extremely dry all the time but . . . I could talk! During this time my speech therapist and I continued to try the exhale (or "normal" voice) with no sucess. We agreed that maybe the inhale voice would be all that I would ever have so I kept practicing to increase my endurance. I would read outloud at least two to three hours a day and kept that timer going to remind me when to do the vocal exercises.
About five months ago I noticed something weird happening while I was reading outloud. Every once in a while, a word would "pop" out on the exhale. Popping is literally what it felt like. I would be going along on the inhale and then - pop! - a word would come out "normally!" At first it was very unpredictable and I couldn't do it on demand. However, it became more and more frequent as time went on.
Then I let my speech therapist know that words were popping. She decided that I should try to talk only on the exhale - something I hadn't done for a long, long time. I was very frustrated! Whenever I tried talking on the exhale things came out in a whispery voice which seemed to crack and fade in and out. What in the world was my therapist making me do? I sounded much better on the inhale and people could actually hear me! Some of them DID think I was mentally challenged but . . . .
That's all I have time for now.
Trisha
4 comments:
Huh. I saw a speech therapist for several months before being diagnosed with SD. I couldn't even do most of the exercises but I did try. She never had me try to speak on the inhale... in fact, I was just trying to figure out how to try it and my daughter is laughing at me. How do you do that? Do you still speak on the inhale? I need to go figure out how to listen to your podcasts!
Speaking on the inhale takes a lot of work in little, timy baby steps. You start with just the "E" syllable and work your way slowly up. It works the vocal chords so that they don't loose muscle tone (??) and lets you be heard. It is very, very freaky at first and DOES sound very funny! I am sure that your daughter would enjoy giving you a hard time about it. I don't speak totally on the inhale now but I still do exercises where I do some inhale work (e's mostly.). The inhale work makes it easier to speak on the exhale.
Let me know if you figure out the podcast!
Trisha
Since this is your blog, when you are logged in and looking at the comments there is a little trash can at the bottom of each individual post. You just click on it and go from there. When you post on other blogs that will show up for you under your comment but not anyone elses. Hope that helps! You can delete your extra comment and this one too!
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