Speech Therapy

      SPEAK OUT!® is a highly effective speech therapy program developed by Parkinson Voice Project.
    Yesterday and  Today I had speech therapy. The therapist comes to my home, I like her a lot!  She thinks my perception of how I sound is off.  Everyone's perception is their reality. With Parkinson's, everything is off.  I think she is loud when she is speaking but she says she is using a normal conversational voice. My ears sort of hurt when she spoke in what I considered a loud voice!  I am doing the SPEAK OUT program.  (SPEAK OUT!®  is the first step in Parkinson Voice Project’s two-part therapy approach.  SPEAK OUT!® typically consists of twelve individual speech therapy sessions conducted by a speech-language pathologist. Together, the patient and the speech-language pathologist work their way through a series of speech, voice, and cognitive exercises outlined in a comprehensive workbook provided to every patient in the U.S. as a gift from Parkinson Voice Project. Each therapy session lasts 40-45 minutes. The primary goals of SPEAK OUT!® are to strengthen the muscles used for speaking and swallowing and to teach patients how to speak with intent. Once patients complete SPEAK OUT!®, they transition to the second part of Parkinson Voice Project’s program called The LOUD Crowd®).   A normal conversational tone is 70 decibels, I find that a bit loud.  She said I speak normally about 65-68 decibels so I am only a little below standard! There is another program called LOUD but she doesn't think I need that one as of now.  Only Dan says he has trouble hearing me. My friends seem to hear me just fine. I talk to my sister all of the time and she hears me just fine!   My niece's baby shower is on Sunday so after my speech therapy my sister Kathy and I went shopping to get more things for the shower.  We got paddle boards to play games and we got prizes. Kathy found beautiful glasses and she bought four of them for one game. I showed her the paddle boards.  She had planned to have  about 20 people at the shower and now about 45-50 are coming. She needs more chairs. I posted something on Freecycle for folding chairs and a woman responded and told me to come and pick them up. Kathy's husband went to get them because Parkinson's wasn't in the mood to go pick anything up today. She said that the chairs are really old and rusty but she is spray painting them for the shower and then will discard them!
        Last night I had difficulty getting into bed. I kept sliding down the side of the bed. I had to really propel myself forward to get onto my bed. I kept slipping down the side of it, so so frustrating!!
         Today I am going to attempt to send $100 to Olya's sister Sveta in Ukraine. It is strange to say "my daughter's sister" because my daughter's other sisters are also my daughters!  They are very poor. Normally I get my friend Lena to do it but she is working full time and just bought a new house so I don't want to bother her.  After I send the money I will ask Lena to email her. I say attempt because I am not sure how to write the address in English. Sveta sent me a translation of the address into English but it is not the way we write addresses in the U.S.
               


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