Monday, December 7, 2015

Medical Badges and Slurred Speech

Today I saw a really cool medical badge.

It says "THE BEST MEDICAL ID BRACELET I HAVE FOUND! YOU CAN SET UP YOUR ENTIRE MEDICAL RECORD WHERE IF SOMETHING HAPPENS ALL THE MEDICS HAVE TO DO IS SCAN YOUR BARCODE AND THEY HAVE ALL THE INFO AT THEIR FINGERTIPS! BEST PART IS THEY COME IN ALL SIZES, COLORS, AND STYLES! I LOVE MY ENDVR BRACELET! MINE WAS $20 GET 20% OFF TODAY BY TYPING DIABETES20 IN THE PROMOCODE! www.endevr.com/store/?af=werenotdrunkweha "

I love this idea. When I first had my initial MS flare up, the first thing I told my boss was "I AM NOT DRUNK" . I was petrified and didn't know what was going on with me but needed her to know that I wasn't drunk.  Oftentimes people may confuse the slurred speech of a multiple scleroses patient with that of a drunk person's speech, but it is not.

Speech disorders are very common with MS.  The brain stem has a lot to do with it.  With MS, you have lesions in different parts of the brain and that can cause changes in the speech pattern.  It could be very mild and almost undetectable or it can be darn right outrageous and uncontrollable. I've had moments where I've even had something that sounded like Turrets.  There's nothing quite like having your tongue, mouth, cheeks, face go numb.  When tremors are apparent it's almost impossible to get things sounding "normal".



For me, when I notice it, I automatically try to slow my speaking down.  I've been to speech therapy before and it helped a lot with coping with speech problems period.  I also have bouts where my accent will change, but i'm used to that also. 
So when you hear me slurred out, just know I'm not drunk. I'm just being me. 

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