Dysarthria

Danny has some brain damage. I describe that in the focal cortical dysplasia page. There are lots of things that are impacted by that, but in Danny's case an obvious one is speech. The muscles needed to make certain sounds are weak. Some people with a diagnosis of dysarthria have trouble coordinating their lips, palate, jaw and vocal chords. That can make their speech sound slurred, breathy, jerky--just plain hard to understand. Luckily, Daniel's dysarthria is very mild. While it could get worse with time, if it's because of the mitochondrial disease, that's unlikely. It's more likely because of a one time event in his brain. That could have been from a stroke which CAN occur with mito disease, but that's a 'nother page!
Only a physician or a licensed speech-language pathologist can diagnose dysarthria. It is treated by using exercises to strengthen the face and mouth muscles, learning new ways to make sounds or break up words, or to come up with other ways to communicate. Danny does a great job of not getting too frustrated when someone (even I) don't understand him, and trying until we get it. Now that he's older he understands that he can try to explain things a different way, which really helps.

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Last update: May 6, 2007