After your preliminary information session, it’s time to do an initial evaluation of your voice.
Let’s kick this program off!
The first thing we’ll ask you for is a patient intake form. That will provide us with your medical information, speech symptoms, and employment information.
We’ll then evaluate your present skills and abilities. We will assess your volume, pitch, quality, sustained phonation, respiratory support for speaking, overall intelligibility, prosody, and facial expression. I’ll ask you about your swallowing abilities. To do this, we’ll ask you a series of simple questions, you’ll read a passage, and you’ll be asked to imitate your therapist. A strong, loud, more confident voice will be modeled for you. You may be pleasantly surprised to hear your voice become stronger quickly!
We’ll also look at your strengths and weaknesses and talk about how we might make improvements.
Finally, we’ll make a video to record where you are before we start treatment. This will establish a baseline from which we’ll measure your progress (and celebrate your achievements!).
Please feel free to invite a family member or caregiver to the evaluation. Your support team is an integral part of this process, and we welcome their presence with us.
Together, we will make a plan.I’ll take the lead!
Having identified your strengths and weaknesses, we will customize a plan just for you. We will create exercises to increase your breath support – the foundation of speech and swallowing.
I’ll show you how to increase your volume through modeling and cueing. All you have to do is “do what I do” to move forward on the path of achieving goals set specifically for you. I’ll model for you what I want you to say and do.
We will work on sustained vowel sounds and increase your pitch range projecting your voice with confidence. We move to repeating words and phrases and increasing the difficulty of your tasks quickly. All the while, you will sound clearer, louder, and more intelligible!
My patients are pleasantly surprised when they hear the return of their voices after such a short period. You will see improvement on our first visit together!
Here’s your next step… The first thing is to call me so that we can schedule your information session: (832) 617-2797. Once you’ve done that and the evaluation, we’ll proceed to one-on-one therapy where we’ll strengthen your speaking and swallowing muscles.