Speech was affected slightly, or so I thought, but speech therapy issues have told me otherwise. Always good with complex words but sometimes get tripped up with some of them. Took me a while to say vanilla beans as a response to my wife's question. For me that's frustrating.
Hey Ray,
Have you listened to the aphasia podcast, you may find it interesting.
Does fatigue impact your speech?
Diana
Thanks Diana
Had a look at the transcript. Very interesting. Speech therapist says the muscles in my mouth are not cooperating with my brain. Started with facial droop and slurred words, then 2 episodes of diplopia. All lasted for a short period of time. Seems like I can pronounce the words correctly by themselves but in a sentence I often struggle with words which never caused me problems. I have lists of 4 and 5 syllable words and some of them really cause me problems even though my language has always been complex. And, yes, sometimes when I am tired it takes more effort. Here's the strange part, I am learning Hebrew and have no problems with pronouncing it.
Hi Ray, interesting what you are experiencing. Especially, that you are learning Hebrew (I guess a new language for you?). From my experience, after stroke, I have short-term memory issues (hence, remembering new things), so gave up on the idea of learning a new language after stroke. But, I have not forgotten any languages I've known before the stroke (spent 21 days in ICU, loss of sight, learning to walk again, etc.). Our brain is a very strange organ and I truly believe that it can recover! I read once that the human brain uses different parts of the brain to learn a language - hence, an accent when we speak a language we learnt later in life - compared to our 'mother tongue'.
Thanks Michael. I have always had high level communication skills and for 17 years was part of the team that writes the Bills for the Queensland Parliament so suddenly striking problems came as a surprise. Curiously, it doesn't;t seem to have affected my study of the Hebrew language which requires learning a new alphabet (or aleph beit) and learning to read from right to left. I understand we only effectively use about 10% of our brain's capacity so there are pathways we can find to get around some of our problems. No, it's not my mother tongue but it certainly is challenging. So I suppose what I am doing by continuing in that area is pushing my brain in a way instead of sitting back and saying 'oh dear'! Seems everyone of us has different experiences and I wish you will in dealing with yours.
Hey Ray,
This is a bit off topic, are you interested in becoming an advocate to support our government advocacy efforts?
Your experience in govt could be helpful.
If you are, email me on media@strokefoundation.org.au
Diana Kerr
Sent an email. Seems interesting. Need more information.
Thanks for your email Ray. The team got your email. Someone will be in touch.
Diana
Hi Ray,
Thank you for posting!
Would you know if the speech pathologists diagnosed you with apraxia of speech? This describes difficulty initiating and executing voluntary movement patterns necessary to produce speech when there is no paralysis or weakness of speech muscles.
If this were the case, then longer words and sentences may be more difficult for the brain to organise the sequence of movement accurately.
Perhaps, when learning a new language, you may be more likely to be using single words and short phrases and therefore less likely to run into difficulty saying the words correctly? Does this sound like something that is happening?
Feel free to reach out to us on StrokeLine. I will give you the phone number 1800 787 653 (Monday- Friday 9am -5pm AEST) and email address strokeline@strokefoundation.org.au, which you may prefer.
With kind regards,
Kath, StrokeLine