Medical Speech Pathologist & Neuro-Communication Coach
✦ Call Us At: (323) 300-7079 ✦ Email: shabamiricoach@gmail.com ✦ Call Us At: (323) 300-7079 ✦ Email: shabamiricoach@gmail.com
Transforming Medical Speech Therapy
Using client-centered approaches to empower your independence.
A private practice offering both in-person and online services.
Adult Medical Speech Therapy Services
Welcome to our Adult Medical Speech Therapy Services, where we specialize in providing comprehensive care for adults facing communication and swallowing disorders due to medical conditions. Our dedicated team of experienced speech-language pathologists (SLPs) is committed to helping you regain and enhance your speech, language, and swallowing abilities, enabling you to improve your quality of life and independence.
Our Services
We understand that medical conditions can significantly impact your ability to communicate and swallow effectively. Our services are designed to address these challenges through personalized therapy plans that cater to your unique needs.
We offer a wide range of therapies to support individuals dealing with various medical conditions:
Medical conditions
- Head and Neck Cancer and related swallowing disorders.
- Stroke.
- Traumatic Brain Injury.
- Parkinson’s and other long-term degenerative neurological disorders.
- Swallowing Disorders
- Vocal cord dysfunction disorders including vocal cord nodules, muscle tension dysphonia, vocal cord tremor, spasmodic dysphonia.
- Neurogenic Fluency Disorders.
Reasons for Speech Therapy
Aphasia/Stroke
Aphasia is an acquired language disorder that negatively affects a person’s communication ability. If you or someone you know has Aphasia, it is important to seek treatment. Many resources are available to help individuals with Aphasia improve their communication abilities. Although a diagnosis can be difficult, treatment options are available, and Aphasia does not have to be permanent. With the right support, people with Aphasia can enhance their communication skills and enjoy entire, happy lives.
Symptoms
- Difficulty finding the right words (anomia).
- Speaking in short phrases or fragment sentences.
- Difficulty in using appropriate grammar in sentences results in nonsense or jargon speech.
- Substituting one word for another or one sound for another.
- Difficulty understanding conversations.
- Writing sentences that need to be clarified.
Aphasia Therapy
- Target Audience: Adults who have experienced a stroke or brain injury
- Focus: Enhancing language skills, including speaking, Comprehension, Reading, and writing
Speech therapy can focus on improving particular language skills, learning compensatory communication strategies, relearning language, and practicing everyday communication.
We can help you and your loved one reconnect and communicate better by relearning language and speaking skills or introducing alternative communication methods.
Dysarthria
Dysarthria is a motor speech disorder with neurological origins that affects the muscles used in speech production, including the lips, tongue, vocal cords, and diaphragm. This condition impairs the ability to articulate words properly, leading to slurred or slow speech that can be difficult to understand.
Symptoms
- Slurred Speech: Words may sound unclear or mumbled.
- Slow Speech: Speech may be slower than usual.
- Rapid Speech: Some may babble, making speech difficult to understand.
- Monotone Speech: Lack of variation in pitch, loudness, or intonation.
- Difficulty Moving the Mouth or Tongue: Problems with coordination and movement of speech muscles.
- Breathiness or Hoarseness: Voice may sound breathy or hoarse.
- Nasal Speech: Speech may have a nasal quality due to improper closure of the velopharyngeal port.
- Altered taste: Changes in taste sensation
- Drooping Mouth: Drooling or difficulty smiling on one side.
- Loss of Facial Expressions: Difficulty making facial expressions.
Causes
● Neurological Disorders: Neurological disorders such as Tay-Sach, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and Huntington’s disease can cause motor speech disorder.
● Stroke: This can cause damage to the areas of the brain involved in speech production.
● Brain Injury: From trauma or surgery.
● Infections: Infections such as encephalitis or meningitis can cause symptoms of dysarthria.
● Tumors: Pathways that affect speech in the brain or along the nervous system.
● Muscle Diseases: Such as muscular dystrophy.
● Nerve damage: such as Bell’s Palsy.
Dysarthria and Slurred Speech Therapy
- Target Audience: Adults with speech disorders resulting from neurological conditions
- Focus: Improving clarity of speech, muscle strength, and coordination
Our goal in treating dysarthria is to enhance communication effectiveness and improve the individual’s quality of life.
Apraxia of Speech
Apraxia of speech (AOS) is another motor speech disorder in which a person has difficulty planning and coordinating the movements needed for speech. This condition is not due to muscle weakness or paralysis but rather a disruption in the brain’s ability to send proper signals to the speech muscles.
Symptoms
- Difficulty Producing Sounds: Trouble with initiating and forming sounds correctly.
- Inconsistent Errors: Speech errors are often inconsistent; a word might be pronounced correctly one time and incorrectly the next.
- Groping for Sounds: There is a visible struggle to form sounds, including repeated attempts and searching movements with the lips, tongue, and jaw.
- Slow Speech Rate: Speech may be slower than usual as the person tries to articulate words accurately.
- Distorted Sounds: Sounds may be distorted, substituted, or omitted.
- Improved Accuracy with Repetition: Repetition of sounds or words can sometimes improve accuracy.
- Difficulty with Longer Words and Sentences: Greater difficulty with complex words or longer sentences compared to shorter, simpler ones.
- Automatic Speech: Automatic or well-practiced phrases may be easier to say than new or less familiar ones.
Our Speech Therapy techniques are focused on improving the planning and sequencing of speech movements. Home Practice is an integral part of our therapy. We provide training and home exercises to reinforce therapy sessions.
Our primary goal in treating speech apraxia is to improve the individual’s ability to communicate effectively and to enhance their quality of life.