This November will be 4 years since my husband was diagnosed with OC. Lately, we have noticed that the quality of his speech is deteriorating. It is becoming difficult for me to understand a lot of what he is saying. And I find that I am consistently asking him to repeat himself. I know that when he is tired, it is worse.

I just wanted to hear from others to see if this is a common development. He will be having one more plastic surgery on the 24th of this month. After the dust settles from that, he is going to make an appointment with a Speech Therapist. I am hoping that he will get some advice and exercises to improve his speech.

Any thoughts?

Anita

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

Thanks, Eric! I wonder if some of this is from radiation, you know, the gift that keeps on giving. Clark makes most of his phone calls in the morning. After a good night's sleep, his speech is definitely clearer. By the end of the day, when he is tired, it is more challenging for him to speak clearly and for me to understand him.