Life Before Cancer, Part 7

Learning to talk when you are much older is a real challenge. If your a parent, think back to when you were teaching your kid to talk. You kept trying to get them to say something and the only thing that would often come out was some garbled ga-ga that you interpreted to mean, "Holy shit, my son just said Da-Da" LOL

Learning to talk for me has meant going to a speech therapist for intensive therapy. The mode of learning is a lot like having a conversation. A lot of what I do involves trying to have a conversation. The whole process starts with simple things like learning the alphabet, working on annunciation, and pronunciation. You start to learn simple phrases and words. Usually things like greetings and responses. In a lot of ways, it was exactly like learning ASL except this time I was speaking instead of signing.

Sometimes we would be working with books where words were sounded out phonetically and other times we would use video or audio tools to help me figure out how words should sound. A lot of the time it was a case of, "Listen and repeat" or as the French would say, Ecoute and Repetition.

The biggest hurdle for me was getting over my self consciousness around the sound of my voice. Initially I felt like I sounded like a frog with a throat infection. It made me very uncomfortable attempting to speak. Over time though I got comfortable with the sound of my voice and it became my own. Not something or someone elses...just mine.

One of the other big hurdles was my parents insisting on making me respond to them using words. Only occasionally would they use ASL with me and if I went to use it with them, they would often not respond until I tried to speak first. It may sound mean, and at the time I felt like it was but I know now that they were doing the right thing.

Don't get me wrong, I am still using ASL from time to time and I usually do it AS I am speaking. This way Caleb learns ASL and I dont forget how to use it myself.

There are somethings I still struggle with and they are mainly the letters, "S" and "C". The letter C only messes me up when it is used as a soft C. I dont know why it is such a challenge but it is, and I am working on it.

Many months of speech therapy have gotten me to the point where I sound a lot like the deaf people you hear on TV. They have a certain way of talking and if you have seen them on TV you know what I am talking about.

Speech therapy is a big topic though and there is a lot I could say about it and a lot I could tell you.

What I have given you here is just an overview. Maybe you could tell me if there is something specific you want to know about and I will be happy to shed some more light on it for you.

Well its Friday, the big weekend is here...I can hardly wait. I hope everyone has a great weekend and as always...

LiveSTRONG!