American spirit award

It seems like self-promotion is one of America’s great national pastimes. People are constantly hawking their accomplishments ..myself included. I’m getting tired of it and try to catch myself when I do it. I guess this runs counter to the mantra that says: just go for it ..nothing ventured nothing gained. But saying whatever comes to mind, regardless of merit ..and expecting affirmation .. makes me feel kinda’ empty.

Day ten

Wednesday August 15 ~ Speech Therapy:  My speech therapist has got me playing games-for-the-brain on the computer. ..detecting birds that momentarily appear in the forest while keeping my eyes on the trail. Learning to use my peripheral vision while staying focused on what’s ahead. Although this may not seem like it involves verbal skills ..Holly is dealing with my attention and tracking abilities, which are involved with conversation. These exercises also contribute to my physical therapy. Noah (PT) encourages me to trust my peripheral vision more. He prescribes ‘smooth pursuit’ exercises and recommends I avoid making ‘fast tracking’ movements that diminish my eyesight and throw me off-balance.

Day nine

Monday August 13 ~ speech therapy: My speech therapist isn’t just dealing with my speech. That’d be too narrow-focused. She’s also dealing with the mental skills that underlie speech. Skills I need to translate concepts into spoken words as well as words back into concepts. We get past the slurry speech issue and begin working on verbal memory, which I know didn’t work all that well to begin with. We take turns conjuring-up words for items in the food department (lexical retrieval) ..and repeat the growing list of items back to each other as we go (verbal short term memory). We play a game like charades to see how fast we can explain words before the other gets it (semantic processing). It’s fun working with Holly.

Day eight

Friday August 10, 2012   Speech therapy  I have a Speech Therapist who leaves me speechless. She’s drop-dead gorgeous. So I'm like ..how’s this gonna work ..? Brilliantly it turns out. Seems my slack larynx isn’t hitting all the ‘fricatives’ it needs. In my rush to say something pertinent, I’m speaking gibberish. She offers me a simple remedy. Slow down and breathe. Sequence words before sending them out for production. Allow my vocal cords to concentrate on delivery and not word selection. I guess I used to rely on the sound coming out of my mouth to make that determination. Worked OK till the delay at fricatives made me trip over my words. In order to avoid that ..I’m doing an end-run around the troublesome sound, which causes me to slur my words. She cleared that up nicely. Even though I walk like a drunken sailor .. I no longer talk like one