A bit of hope

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I've lived with Tardive for over three years now, thus far, it's only affected my speech and on some occasions my neck, thus I sometimes have sudden movements of my head.

I've always been a fighter and in this particular instance, shall remain so, in fact even more so.

On about the second year of living with TD, I had an idea, I've always loved music, more especially jazz.

I purchased an alto saxophone and began to teach myself to play.

This has graduly helped my speech to improve, why ?, glad you asked. In theory the idea was to retrain the muscle groups in my mouth thus rerouting the signals of the brain.

In playing a sax, one must train a particular group of muscles called the "ombichure".

Each day I would take the mouthpiece alone, and just practice holding it in my mouth,after which I would actually attempt to play the saxophone, which in the beginning wasn't too good, sounded rather like someone blowing air through a dead bird, however over time this has greatly improved and so has my speech.

Yes, I have yet a long way to go but I can hear and feel the difference in my speech and so does everyone around me.

This regiment alongside of following the input of my doctor and a positive mental attitude has helped me to belive in myself and find hope again.

The best is yet to come.

Cheers.

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2 Replies

  • Posted

    Hi, it is always so wonderful to hear of a success such as yours, especially when accompanied with the achievement you have made.

    I too love jazz and Grover Washington jnr is a favorite of mine so your interest in the alto sax was of interest to me too.

    There is much to be said for looking to muscle improvement to overcome our problems, many aches and pains can be overcome with regular exercising so it was no surprise to hear of your overcoming your problem.

    What a good lesson for many of us for I do think this is becoming an increasingly lazy world mostly thanks I suspect to the pocket computer we all seem to nurture in our daily life.

    Thanks for your message it was most refreshing.

    Regards, Dave.

    • Posted

      Thanks Dave.

      I'm very old schoolish, during those times we were very much hands on so taking the bull literally by its horns is nothing new to me.

      Yes these are truly nervous times in that we so heavily rely on technology for even the most simple of things.

      During earlier times we learned to heal with herbs, certain foods or other methods but we were self sufficient nonetheless.

      I sincerely hope that this post will encourage someone.

      Thanks again.

      Yawnee.

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