Dear Mari

totally understand about needing to talk. pdoc is my sounding board. i can talk to my parents... but the results can be unpredictable. i no longer have accessible friends i can see face to face.

regarding the speech. i am guessing she was being frank and that she was speaking in your best interest.

here is something you can do to investigate for yourself. either your mac or your phone probably have the capability builtin. the phone should be able to let you record a voice memo or vocal command. record yourself. play it back. see how it sounds to you. often when we speak we don't objectively "hear ourselves" ... in a recording it is as though we are hearing someone else. this technique is used in teaching foreign languages, to make students aware of the differences between their own pronunciation, and the correct pronunciation. recording/hearing my own the outgoing message on my voicemail once is what clued me in that at times i still have a British "lilt." LOL. i also know a non-native speaker who balked when she recorded herself speaking English for the first time. She'd been fluent for years and had never realized she had an accent - she asked me, "Do i really sound like that?! ")

being open about speech therapy seems like a good thing, even though i don't know how you sound. tdoc was not saying you have to do it. however, i think after the stroke you went through some really heavy denial about its impact. even to the extent you were aware of difficulties with verbal exchanges, this in itself made it difficult to get through the bureaucracy of making appointments. to top it off the particular the speech therapist that you did attempt to go to didn't seem to work out. i remember the process was very frustrating, and more than you could handle at the time. many things were difficult at the time, and you were in shock.

you were told something about a window for speech recovery. well fine, and i'm sure for optimal results that can be true, but do remember that speech therapy is not that far off from taking a class in speech, enunciation, or learning foreign language sounds. you would be relearning anyway which is easier. i am saying that it isn't an all or nothing deal just because you didn't go within the window they suggested, and that if YOU decide your speech needs improvement, i believe it CAN be done. you'll need a therapist who is kind, patient, and has open views. (i personally think these should be requirements for all therapists, but alas... )

that said, perhaps right now is not quite a good time to move on this... maybe let the impact of this anniversary go by. but when you are feeling more yourself again, perhaps do the recording yourself experiment, and give it a thought.

~ waves ~