Music Therapy
The speech cords were re-activated again…. It was meant to happen, and it did on my birthday on September 4. My husband had brought me some Apps for music therapy while I was in the hospital - it was a song application programme for my iPad which had a close-up of a mouth singing the words (a lot of resources are available on the internet). It could go faster and slower just as one pleased. The right side of my brain was unaffected by my stroke, whereas the left side was affected. But the part of the brain that is activated by music (and singing) is the right side of the brain, while the speech function is located in the left side of the brain. Hence the benefits of music therapy for re-learning to speak. I sang ‘Happy Birthday to You’ softly, oh so softly, at first. The look on my husband’s face – it was absolutely incredulous followed by beams of joy! I knew I could talk again, so I was relatively calm but I felt happy. It was the best birthday present ever.
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I was able to have music therapy lessons at the insistence of my husband (who had done a lot of research about the benefits, particularly for the left brain). He asked the doctors about starting one-on-one classes and they said of course, but you will have to pay for them. The payment was not the issue - he just wanted me to get well.
So I started music therapy classes the week after I sang ‘Happy Birthday to You’. I had classes once a week. We sang popular songs. My music therapist played on the guitar while she got me to sing songs. On another occasion, she had me repeat after her the rhythms on a Xylophone for kids (I was rather good at this – the music therapist seemed surprised!). We also worked on the singing pronunciation of words. When the singing was fast, I would sing the words in a garbled way.
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Aphasia - I Can't Speak Out Loud...
I could formulate my thoughts after the stroke, but speaking out loud was my main problem. I could not produce those words out loud. They would vanish from my head and I was stuck there with only the words “um”. It was very frustrating, but then I thought to myself "this will take a long time but you must stay with the programme and you will see it will improve''. But I occasionally had doubts that I would ever speak properly. I would go to my husband and he would reassure me that it would take some time.