Hi folks!

Every six months the hospital I work at has testing for employees to meet all the annual mandatory requirements for OSHA, JCAHO, and other regulatory agencies. Since I am a secretary in the education department, I get to talk to each and every one of our 2800 employees at least once a year. Wednesday and Thursday was for nonclinical employees and next Wednesday and Thursday the clinical employees will be attending.

To get to the point... I am so tired of talking! Does anyone else get exhausted from talking with their new different and exciting form of tongue? My tongue starts to feel very thick and unwieldy, and my speech slows way down. I am not whining here, just curious if others are affected similarly and if the difficulty lessens with time. As always, I am grateful to have this rather than the alternative!

Sincerely,
Lisa

I didn't have a glossectomy but during the radical neck, the ENT damaged the nerve that runs the right half of my tongue. The result is a tendency to slur if I am not careful and with low saliva things get sticky and the words become hard to pronounce. This is tiring after alot of talking and sometimes results in a sore tongue from friction. I keep a small dropper bottle in my pocket filled with Biotene which helps.

My tongue movement is better now than 2 years ago so you might expect things to get better over time.

They say that wisdom is when you listen more than you speak so this perhaps is a blessing too. :p

Thanks Mark! That was another "A-ha".

Be Very Thankful that you can talk........I haven`t spoken in 2 years.............count your Blessings.....Packer

I am very thankful, Packer. My thoughts are with you. I really hesitated to ask the question because I do realize you and others have it so much worse. I don't mean to be insensitive if I came off that way.

Sincerely,
Lisa

After my first surgery in 1987 when I lost about 1/4 of my tongue I was lucky to regain my normal speech again. Since I taught college and later worked as a business consultant I did a lot of talking. I often described having "tired tongue" very similar to what you describe. It did improve with time but there was always some fatigue after long periods of talking. In 2001 I had more of the tongue removed and have more difficulty alhtough as Packer notes, at least I can still talk. My speech is more slurred and sometimes the effort to talk is more than I want to deal with. For the most part its still hard to get me shut up.

I figure I'm good for only a certain amount of words per day, then, like a cheap D-cell battery, the chops give out. Speech gets slurred, pronunciation goes to heck, and my brain blows a fuse trying to correct it all. Not good when I'm trying to give an oral presentation for work.

In the evening, even worse, especially after I'm past my daily word limit. Couple of weeks ago was trying to order a banana split - shen shou twan (tranlated "banana boat") and it came out Chen shui bian (roughly the name of the president of Taiwan). Waitress just looked more confused than they ususaly do when I try and order in Chinese, wife had to straighten the whole mess out. We all just had a good laugh over that. Finally got the ice cream though.
Bob

Thank you for sharing everybody. Just wanted to update you on how things went this week. I work with a great group of nurses, they stepped up and did most of the talking for me! I primarily focused on getting all the data entered and complete. I have to say, Hobo, the hardest thing for me to pronounce is the phone number folks need to call for community education...I get a lot of their calls in error. 676-7777! YIKES...

Lisa