Voice
Your voice may be very damaged by your injury. Your Speech Therapist will work with you on returning to your old voice. There are many different speech issues, learn about the different issues below:
Aphasia
Aphasia is an issue with your brain where you lack access to your words. If you have aphasia and struggle with words, you know what you want to say, but you can’t access the words in your head to pull it out and say it. This disorder has nothing to do with your ability to pronounce words, it only refers to your ability to access your language. Your speech therapist will work with you to regain access to your language. Aphasia occurs when the injury is in the side of your brain where the language is stored. If you are right-handed, that’s the left side of the brain. If you are left-handed, your language is on the right side of your brain.
Dysarthria
Dysarthria is slurred speech, many brain injury survivors struggle with slurred speech, your speech therapist will work with you on recovering your pronunciation. Initially, this will be super frustrating because people struggle to understand you but nurses won’t immediately offer a pencil to write down what you want to say since patients with aphasia can’t write in order to express their missing language. Not knowing what language disorder you were struggling with, the nurses won’t initially offer you a pencil. Some survivors recover normal speech except for a few specific shapes their mouth has to make. If this is the case for you, your speech will be totally normal until you come across a word that contains the sounds you struggle with.
Ataxia
Ataxia is a speech disorder where you have difficulty coordinating the muscles in your mouth to speak properly. It goes along with having trouble with breath support for your words, your family may mention that your voice sounds weaker than before your injury. It might wear you out to talk too much, feeling more like you’re doing cardio than just speaking. Your words might not flow evenly at the cadence you had before your injury, this will improve as your vocal chords strengthen.
Strengthening vocal cords can be done with exercises that require them to move rapidly and tightly like you feel during full laughter. This stroke survivor is struggling with ataxia, making her speech sound labored and awkward:
