Think LOUD

One of the things that has surprised me about Parkinson's Disease is how many areas of the body are involved. For example, people with Parkinson's tend to lose their ability to speak loud and may eventually reach the point where they cannot be heard at all.

To reduce the possibility of that happening I have been referred to the Speech Pathologist in Kaiser's rehabilitation unit. I have now had 3 sessions with Karen Low and expect that I will have several more as she attempts to get me to speak louder and louder.

The equipment she is using is somewhat dated using an old Shure microphone interfacing through an analog to digital converter with a 385 DOS computer with a menu system that is keyboard oriented.
But it does the job of measuring pitch, dB, and time. With it Karen tries to get me to talk louder and slower without going into SHOUT mode. That is harder to do than you might expect. In fact when I've tried my LOUD voice out on people who know me all say that if they heard me talking that way they would definitely assume that I was mad with someone.

Still, I don't want to lose my voice, my method of communication with most other people. So I will continue to think LOUDLY and try to speak up without looking like I'm mad.