Hi Emily!


Honey you are in the right place for advice and support on this topic! Our speech is generally one of the prices we pay for survival my dear so I no longer get frustrated when conveying the "why" my speech is affected now.

I grew up with a massive speech impediment, so bad that my older brother had to interpret for me Kindergarten through 2nd grade. I was in intensive speech therapy for six years before I got to a place where I could speak clearly and the incessant ridicule eased up a bit. I can still hear kids running around mocking me yelling "No deew oah wabbits pathing by!" (no deer or rabbits passing by)the infamous line from my third grade school play.

I conquered my speech and insecurity issues after that and went on to use my speaking prowess to become successful in my careers in corporate America in both the hospitality industry and commercial technology sales to enterprise size businesses. You can imagine my mental and emotional state after treatment and surgeries becoming disfigured due to the right side of my face being paralyzed (as well as half of my tongue) when my career was built on how I looked and sounded as much as my expertise.

Today part of my duties volunteering for OCF involves public speaking at the Awareness Walks, addressing hundreds of people, building partnerships with other organizations and even presenting at Universities. Coincidentally fellow OCF'r JenSLP (a speech and language pathologist) and myself just presented to the University of Washington's Speech and Language Pathology graduate students this last Friday concerning working with the new younger demographic of Oral Cancer patients.

The fact that myself and Jen could present to that class and be clearly understood is a testament to how hard we've both worked and how closely we've worked with our speech pathologists, they truly are an important part of our recovery in both the eating and speech department. I would also share that I'm very upfront with people when speaking with them about being a stageIV oral cancer survivor. That information has always given me an "edge" in talking with people, it generally makes people more patient and understanding of my speech issues and usually gives me an advantage in getting what I want

Long story short Emily, keep working, vent when you need to and draw strength from the other survivors on these forums my dear.

Hope that helps,

Eric