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For those who have Verbal Apraxia knows how frustrating it can be. I was diagnosed with Oral Apraxia when I was three years old. All my life I felt different, that something was wrong with me. Before I go any further let me tell you what Apraxia is. Oral and Verbal Apraxia are both neurological speech disorders. It’s not known how this disorder is found in children, but it can be common in Adults after a stroke or injuries to the head. It’s a fight trying to communicate with others. See an Apraxic knows what they want to say in there minds, it just never comes out that way. The only way I knew I had a speech disorder was when I heard my self on tape. I never liked hearing my self on tape I never believed that was me talking, but it was. I started to think about my speech and saying words over and over in Speech Therapy. I even started to look at others and tried to mimic their movement of speech. All of that still never help me, I still had Apraxia. There were times when my body would freeze up for no reason. I was trapped in a body that couldn't speak. Apraxia is a funny disorder all it effected was the movement to make speech. Like the jaw, lips, tongue and vocal chords. It takes all of these muscles to make speech and it only takes one of them not working to make your speech unintelligible. I accepted the way my speech was. I did learn how to slow my speech down so others could understand me.
Last Year I went back on-line to find if there was anything on Apraxia. It wasn’t the first time I looked online for help, but this time I found help at the Cherab Foundation. Which normally helped children with Verbal Apraxia. The foundation was waiting for someone like me to show up. The person was Lisa Geng, one of the authors of “The Late Talker”. She asked if I could write a letter on their page. So I wrote about my story growing up with Apraxia. I received so many letters from the group, Lisa wanted to help. After reading the letters sent from parents. I also wanted to help, but first I needed help with my speech. Lisa called me back the next day, she found a Speech Therapist that worked with adults that wanted to help with my Apraxia.
The Speech Therapist was Elizabeth Sullivan. I called her to set up an appointment, thinking that speech therapy never helped me in the past. I had to give it a try, there was nothing else that I could do. I went there and found out there was a lot more to Apraxia then just a disorder. It turned out I had been talking the wrong way for so long, my muscles used for speech had been weaken. We needed to get the muscles of the tongue and lips working again, and working right. For that, we used some simple tools, like a straws and bow-horns to exercise the lips and Fruit Loops to exercise the tongue. At first I thought this wasn’t going to work. Well, I was wrong, and I felt my muscles working. It became easier to sound out words I had trouble with and could never dream of saying. It doesn't seem like much saying a word, but if for 20 years you knew what the word meant , but no matter how hard you tried you could never say it out loud. With that in hand, I began to write a book about my life in hopes of one day helping a person in my situation. No one should have to go through what I did. And for those of you who have, I hope you get the right help for this disorder. Elizabeth asked me what I wanted to do with my speech. My response was just to talk better, just to have someone understand me without asking “what”. Now a year later, a few old friends had come up to me and asked what I had been doing this past year, they said, after our conversation “ We can understand you”.
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Read Growing Up With Apraxia, By Jason Saari
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