I went to my first voice therapy session today. It lasted one hour and consisted of me making an "aaaaahhhhh" sound for about 15 times, holding it as long as I could, reading words, trying to reach a certain loudness target and watching on a monitor how close I could come to that target. I didn't know I could make such sounds and it felt like (or "heard like") they were coming out of some dark, deep chamber somewhere in my body and although they were emanating from my mouth, some mechanism, other than me, was making the noise. I believe I might have been possessed.
The most common speech problems experienced by PWP are reduced volume (hypophonia), reduced pitch (monotone), and difficulty with articulation of sounds or syllables (dysarthria). If you are a PWP then you can’t speak as loudly as others, it is more difficult to convey emotion when speaking and it is a problem for you to form the words you are trying to pronounce.
The voice therapy I am involved with is called LSVT (Lee Silverman Voice Treatment. If you are of a mind to, you can see the treatment in action here.. It is quite intensive at 2 hours per week for 8 weeks (but I think I have already blogged about LSVT, So I am not going to go into detail). However, it should help me and lord knows, it is no use talking in a quiet voice that nobody can hear.
As that old Yankee, Yogi Berra, commented, "it was impossible to get a conversation going. Everybody was talking too much."
I have a sore throat!!! Too much aaashhhhing!
It is now 2 hours later and I have just returned from the law courts where a clerk said to me, "I'm sorry. I didn't hear you. You speak so softly."
WHAT! BUT I..... DAMN SORE THROAT FOR NOTHING!
I need to find an outlet for my frustration.
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