Is it just me, or are people speaking at a faster clip nowadays? Yeah, maybe it’s just me. It seems I’ve become hypersensitive to the various speeds and rhythms we use to communicate with each other, especially now that I live with dysarthria, a symptom of ALS that affects…

I use many strategies to keep myself engaged in life and avoid getting pulled down mentally by my ALS. Being a “go-along” is one of those strategies, and it’s a perfect partner to showing up. But being a go-along — that is, accompanying my husband on his various errands…

A partnership between Rolls Royce and the U.K.-based Motor Neurone Disease (MND) Association is helping people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) preserve the sound of their voices simply by reading a book into a computer. Called voice banking, the process is a way to record a person’s voice…

ALS is a life-changing diagnosis, and like many newly diagnosed patients, I was disappointed and frustrated at what felt like a standstill in medical progress against the disease. “If they can send humans into space, why can’t they cure ALS?” I’d lament, Now, 11 years later and with still…

What’s my big wish as we all move forward with pandemic life in 2022? To live in a world with better communication skills. Specifically, to improve how we listen to each other. Because from where I sit, there’s a whole lot of telling going on and not enough waiting to…

It feels like a win when we can figure out how to include my husband, Todd, in game nights. He is paralyzed because of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), so any game that requires writing or moving is a challenge. That would include most games, but we can make some…

About four years ago, ALS impeded my speaking ability. Like more than 80 percent of all ALS patients, I now have dysarthria, or what I refer to as my “ALS voice.” It’s a slurred, slow speech pattern with a nasal tone and imprecise pronunciation of consonants. For…

Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) or speech-language therapists (SLTs) do much more than help people with speech problems such as stuttering or mispronouncing words. For children and adults with neuromuscular disorders like spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), muscular dystrophy (MD) and amyotrophic lateral…

Speech-language pathologists (SLPs) or speech-language therapists (SLTs) do much more than help people with speech problems such as stuttering or mispronouncing words. For children and adults with neuromuscular disorders like spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), muscular dystrophy (MD) and amyotrophic lateral…