Speech

Dennis had an appointment today to assess whether he qualifies for another round of therapy. Unfortunately, the therapist says she cannot do anything more for him at this point. He just needs to keep up doing his mouth, tongue and voice exercises on his own. Of course he can do this, and he does them with Raquel, and whenever we are in the car, but it's different as having someone critique him and let him know how he could improve.

Dennis is difficult to understand on a good day and near impossible to understand on a bad day. The guy loves to talk. He babbles all of the time about nothing and tries to tell me things I simply don't care about, one tiny iota. For instance, he will tell me the scores, each morning, of the hockey games the night before. I do not know one single person who cares less about sports than me. He babbles about anything and everything at any time. This was not a significant problem before, but now, I try so hard to understand him and when I find out he is simply babbling, it can irritate. Ya, ya, ya, just another opportunity to laugh.

There are so many parts of this disease, syndrome that I hate. The speech is one of those things. Dennis and I use to have story time at night. I would name a word, and he would put me to sleep with a story that the word reminded him of. This was fun and relaxing. Now it is work. So much work. I am always asking him to slow down, swallow and repeat. Slow down, swallow and repeat. It's getting tiresome both to hear myself say this and for Dennis to constantly hear this; slow down, swallow and repeat.