When I initially had my stroke a SALT (speech and language therapy) assessment was done very quickly to see if I was safe eating (initiallly soft foods: soup and custard) then biscuits, this was in hospital 2 beyond that speech was never really mentioned again

Until month 5ish when during a home OT session we were sat in my lounge with my mum present, the it sat on my living room floor and I was explaining I found the phone harder to use now, my mum said my voice was much quieter and a bit dull sounding which I’d never really picked up on, I’d realised I couldn’t shout anymore but that was it. The OT said she would get onto a Speech therapist when she went back to the hospital, this was a Friday lunchtime.

The following Tuesday my physiotherapy session at the rehab unit was interrupted by a lovely woman named A salt. We sat and made silly noises. Talked as quiet and loudly as we could. She then gave me some homework sheets focusing on breath control and diaphragmatic breathing.

We met again a week later and she was thrilled with the progress, we’d set long term goals around phone calls, being in noisy venues like pubs and trying to get more tone. I’d already become more comfortable using the phone and she set me more homework to practice noise making and breathing again.

Our next session was somewhat experimental as in Lucy had never tried it before, we had a teams session so she could remain in work, it was a bit more difficult as she couldn’t see my breathing as clearly and sometimes the audio wasn’t especially clear for her to listen.

I’d spoken about how I thought there had been progress and that people had commented on my voice being better.

Since then I’ve been out for lunch in a noisy cafe and had a night out in a loud bar with a terrible singer on too, so I think that’s all the challenges complete and Lucy had already said I was close to discharge I think this week will be the end of our time together after 3 weeks, I just wish we’d have known about her months ago

We had our final session 4 weeks after starting, I was now happily using the phone, I could hugely increase the volume of my voice and I had more inflection too. I’d been in very loud places and people could hear me. The therapy had worked L said it was the fastest she’d ever gone through the process and could tell I’d tried and engaged where I could. We had a lovely one armed hug to finish and I thanked her for being brilliant.