Anita,

This has happened to me as well. Clark and I share commonalities in treatment for sure however my speech issues are now more due to the partial facial and tongue paralysis then anything else. When I had the cranial nerve switch graft done they took all of the nerve that controlled half of my tongue and grafted it into my facial nerve to try and restore facial function on my right side. Now half of my tongue doesn't work and my face still has no function.

I did see a speech pathologist and she was amazing, I highly recommend it. She gave me plenty of tricks an tips (many I knew from my childhood as I spent 6 years in speech therapy to help correct a horrible speech impediment) to help improve speech quality and it has helped immensly however I still cannot speak for long periods of time nor can I speak very loud. I do have to repeat myself often as well.

After my mandiblectomy though my speech was very bad due to my tongue being anchored by scar tissue. The surgeon who performed my nerve graft clipped the anchoring tissue and also did more grafts inside my mouth to loosen things up a bit in there, all of it improved speech.

I hope Clark finds solutions!

Eric