Hi All,

I just wanted to vent a little and see if anyone has any advice! I have returned to work recently, and have really been feeling down about my speech. I have been through a lot, and I am very grateful to be alive, but I am so self-conscious about my speech and just don't know what to do. I am in a client-service industry, so I am speaking to and meeting different people all the time. I know when I am talking, even if people are understanding me, they are sitting there wondering what is wrong with my speech. I don't mind at all telling people that I had cancer, but it is always awkward to bring up and I haven't quite mastered that. I usually say something along the lines of "sorry if you have any trouble understanding me, I had oral surgery recently", but then people usually always ask what happened and I have to go into the whole story. I had slightly over half of my tongue removed and reconstructed, and I was just wondering if others with my surgery also feel like this, and if it ever gets better. I went to speech therapy for about 3 months after radiation, but I really feel like I hit a plateau and there was not much more that could be done. It has been 7 months since surgery, and I am just wondering if this is as good as it will get? Assuming the cancer doesn't come back, am I going to have to be explaining to everyone I meet for the next 60 years why I speak like this?

I will be meeting with my plastic surgeon in a few weeks, and I am hoping to see if there is anything else he can do to help me improve. Don't get my wrong, I am usually pretty understandable, but if I am in a loud place, or there is background noise, or I have words that I can't pronounce (typically ones that have a lot of "L's" or "Th's"), people have difficulty understanding me and the anxiety sets in.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Emily