I take Gravol, an anti-emetic, for pain relief. I have hydrocephalus, and the headaches I get are caused (probably partially) by low intracranial pressure (ICP) and slit ventricles. When my pain is very high (above a 7 on the pain scale), the only words that come out of my mouth are obscenities. Furthermore, one of the side effects of Gravol is extreme drowsiness and difficulty talking, including stuttering and holding my breath (particularly when I’m most sleepy).
Consequently, I have great empathy for this man.
I have also had speech therapy, but it was not for stuttering. My voice is normally very high and soft to begin with, and this makes it more so. Having spastic cerebral palsy (CP) means my entire body is tense a lot of the time, and it follows from this that my shoulders, neck and throat are also tense; so go the muscles of the diaphragm.
People who don’t know me well sometimes tell me they have difficulty hearing me. More than once, when speaking on the phone with a stranger, they ask if I have a cold or if I am crying. To them, my voice has a sniffly or nasal quality; to me, it sounds normal. I don’t really like talking on the phone because it makes me nervous, so odds are that makes it harder to speak.
There have also been times when patronizing condescending twats people think I’m much younger than I am, simply because of the sound quality of my speech and the spasticity of my limbs. I am over 25, and have more than once been mistaken for being, at best, younger than a teenager. and, at worst, a developmentally delayed 8-year-old. I am not the only person to have experienced this treatment. Wikipedia’s article on cerebral palsy has an entire separate section regarding misconceptions:
Spastic cerebral palsy, the most common form of CP, causes the muscles to be tense, rigid and movements are slow and difficult. This can be misinterpreted as cognitive delay due to difficulty of communication. Individuals with cerebral palsy can have learning difficulties, but sometimes it is the sheer magnitude of problems caused by the underlying brain injury that prevents the individual from expressing what cognitive abilities they do possess.
Disturbingly, this section’s source was taken from a website (which you can find in the reference section to the Wiki article) that lumps cerebral palsy (which is a constellation of symptoms) under the much larger general rubric of “developmental disabilities”. I don’t think that’s a good idea, or at all an accurate way to go about it. Having cerebral palsy does not guarantee the patient will have developmental disabilities, and hearkening back to what I said a few paragraphs back, the source of the Wikipedia reference needs to re-examine their findings. Assuming that patients with CP have a learning disability does a great disservice to those of us who do not. (Again, that’s another “first question” I’m asked – another example of a symptom linked in the public’s mind with cerebral palsy that is inaccurate.)
I’m not crying constantly.
I don’t have a cold.
I’m well over the age of eight.
I can wipe my own ass, and I cook my own food.
I’m married, and highly sexual. (Yep, disabled people HAVE SEX! And we love it!)
I don’t have a developmental disability. My GPA was 3.89 in university before I had to start taking all of these fucking painkillers.
And for all these reasons, I’m not here to inspire you.
Should I assume that just because you live in Texas, you enjoy wearing large white cowboy hats and stomping around in giant leather boots? Of course not.
I eventually got so annoyed by having to explain these things (to people I didn’t know and would probably never meet more than once) that I started speech therapy in 2008.
Many of the exercises that Logue has Bertie (King George VI) practice in The King’s Speech were exercises that I did:
- -Timing how long I could say vowels for while using a stopwatch (“Anyone who can shout vowels at an open window can learn to deliver a speech.”)
- -Deep breathing with the diaphragm (“Up comes Her Royal Highness…and down c0mes Her Royal Highness…”)
- -Loosening the jaws by making silly noises with them
- -Stretching the shoulders and neck by rolling them forwards, around and backwards
- -Practicing vowels (“Mmmmmmmother…fffornication!”)
Oh, come on!!!!
I hope you have enjoyed reading this bugger fuck shit post.
