How Speech Therapy Helped Me

Back in the spring of 2023, I told my new MS specialist that, for years, I’d been having problems voluntarily swallowing at times. This mostly occurred at night, while lying in bed.

During the day, whenever I blew my nose, my airway snapped shut, and I had to blow it a second time. I also choke on pills, water, and food. At times, it seems like I choke on nothing at all! Eventually I developed a fear of choking, which made my mouth and throat muscles tense up, causing additional swallowing problems.

My path to getting speech therapy

What’s more, I have severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and chronic insomnia. I failed using a CPAP machine after struggling with it for months during 2022. I’d asked my pulmonologist, the specialist who diagnosed and treated my OSA, what plan B was, and he said there isn’t one. I’ve had sleep apnea for a long time, he said, and I didn’t die. So, I can just live with it. After which he pretty much fired me as a patient.

I was desperately sleep-deprived and couldn’t believe I just got thrown under the bus by a medical professional. So, in the summer of 2023, my MS specialist wrote an order for speech therapy at the local hospital.

Exercises I did with the therapist

My speech therapist listened to my experiences and fears, and started me on some exercises. After taking a good breath, she had me sustain “AH” for as long as I could, then “SS” and “ZZ.” Other exercises were sticking out my tongue, moving it rapidly from side to side, bringing it up to the tip to my nose as far as I could, and pointing it down towards my chin as far as possible.

The hardest one is where I hold the tip of my tongue with my front teeth and swallow. Another is to swallow really, really hard. She had me do these to strengthen my tongue, vocal cords, practice diaphragm breathing, strengthen my core, and condition other muscles in my neck and mouth.

Different challenges

The other kind of exercises, however, were very different. I was given lots of addition and subtraction equations, as well as word challenges, such as:

• Write down every four-letter word you can think of in 5 minutes
• Another test was a handout with a word printed on each of 25 lines. I was to write the antonym (word meaning the opposite) of that pre-printed word, followed by another sheet, only this time write a synonym (word with the same meaning)

Confused by these seemingly irrelevant exercises, I asked the speech therapist what equations and word games had to do with speech therapy. She said it is the cognitive piece of the puzzle.

Our brains are responsible for muscle movement, and multiple sclerosis affects the central nervous system such that it can affect different areas of the body. So, all the exercises I described alert me to what condition those muscles are in so I can practice making a correction. With knowledge and repetition, I can target what I know are weaknesses and apply an exercise that will help.

The impact of speech therapy for me

Strangely, the exit test when my sessions ended showed not much improvement from the start of therapy. However, as of this writing, one year after therapy ended, I’m still better able to swallow while in bed. And I no longer have anxiety about swallowing liquids, pills, and food. They all go down more easily now. Even though I don’t do the exercises I learned, I still feel that therapy helped me.

Have trouble swallowing, speaking, or feel that your head and neck muscles have been affected by MS-related nerve damage? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below. And please consider talking to your doctor about whether speech therapy would help you.

Already been down that road? I would love to hear about your experience with speech therapy!