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Speech, language and communication difficulties
A guide for patients and carers
Speech difficulties: Personal experiences
A most moving and eloquent account of a profound communication disability as a result of dysarthria is that of Jean-Dominique Bauby. Bauby suffered a brain stem stroke, resulting in ‘locked-in syndrome’, which rendered the former editor of Elle magazine unable to speak and only able to move one eye. As a result, he saw the speech and language therapist who set up his alphabetcommunication system as a ‘guardian angel’.
Bauby said the system he used is:
‘...a simple enough system. You read off the alphabet...until with a blink of my eye I stop you at the letter to be noted. The manoeuvre is repeated for the letters that follow so that fairly soon you have the whole word, and then fragments of more or less intelligible sentences...The invisible and eternally imprisoning cocoon seems less oppressive’.
He describes pronouncing the whole alphabet on his birthday as the best gift he could have had, although the exhausting exercise ‘left me feeling like a caveman discovering language for the first time’.
‘...a simple enough system. You read off the alphabet...until with a blink of my eye I stop you at the letter to be noted. The manoeuvre is repeated for the letters that follow so that fairly soon you have the whole word, and then fragments of more or less intelligible sentences...The invisible and eternally imprisoning cocoon seems less oppressive’.
He describes pronouncing the whole alphabet on his birthday as the best gift he could have had, although the exhausting exercise ‘left me feeling like a caveman discovering language for the first time’.
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Contents
- Introduction
- What is communication?
- Why do neurological disorders affect communication?
- Language difficulties: What is language?
- Language difficulties: What is aphasia?
- Language difficulties: Speech and language for people with aphasia
- Language difficulties: Recovery
- Language Difficulties: Progressive aphasia
- Language difficulties: Personal experiences of aphasia
- Language difficulties: What can you do to help a person with aphasia communicate?
- Speech difficulties
- Speech difficulties: How is speech affected in people with neurological disorders?
- Speech difficulties: Speech and language therapy for people with dysarthria
- Speech difficulties: Medical and surgical treatment
- Speech difficulties: Personal experiences
- Speech difficulties: What can you do to help communication?
- Other communication problems
- Further reading
- Other organisations that may be able to help
