Originally Posted by Juanitad

My face muscles were the first to go about 12 years ago. I noticed I had difficulty chewing anything that was not soft (steak, apple, etc) and also, that I would wake up with my pillow soaked with saliva. Also, I started to choke a lot more; I put it down to "swallowing down the wrong pipe", but I now know that I was having difficulty swallowing at all.

After diagnosis, I did okay with medications for about 5 years before I started having more difficulties with mg overall. The last 2-3 years, I have had more and more difficulty with talking. I am an accountant and one of the tasks I enjoyed the most about my job was training new staff members and holding training seminars for the entire office so they would understand the reports the accounting department produced. I started losing my voice while I was talking and when you can't talk above a whisper, it is difficult to talk in front of a group, so I had to turn that over to my assistant. Also, talking on the phone when you can't speak above a whisper is impossible.

I retired about 14 months ago on disability and my speech problems were one of the reasons.

My family understands and they can tell before I can that my voice is going and they tell me in the nicest possible way to "shut up". However, I live alone and don't have anyone to talk to during the day, so when I do get visitors, I can't seem to shut up! Oh well...

Good luck with your seminar!