Therapy Notes

Today I met with the speech therapist again. My humming is definitely getting stronger. In fact, in sacrament meeting I tried humming the bass line instead of just mouthing the words. I did so-so. My range was only F down to say A, so I couldn’t do all of it, and the notes I did were admittedly rough. Not singing for a year has definitely taken me from marginal to poor. I mean, I can hear it, and I can usually settle on the right pitch, but it is certainly not effortless to get there.

Anyway, the therapist continues to remain optimistic. I asked her how many times per day I should be doing the drills. She said “At least twice.” I do them just about once every waking hour. Was that too much? No, the more the better. I told her about this strange inner ear pressure problem that I started having a week ago. It just feels like your ear needs to pop, and it happens every day and lasts for about 20 minutes. I said, “I’m just all messed up in there.” She said, “Your voice is not as ‘messed up’ as you think it is.” I found that as encouraging as it was funny. Do you think she can tell I’m a bit stressed over all of this? Unfortunately, the anxiety is counter-productive.

I learned some more practice techniques. She did tell me that I shouldn’t refrain from normal speech to relax the throat muscles. Instead, I am to try to learn how to speak minimizing their interference. Although I speak two languages, I only know one way to talk, so this is extremely challenging.