Speech recognition

Everyday living
1

Hi all

Had a new (to me) symptom some time ago which was weird and wondered if others had come across it.

I was having a difficult (and hence very stressful) discussion with a friend (now former friend) re my MS and some of my resultant behaviours. As she was telling me some “home truths” I found I could no longer understand what she was saying. Her speech sounded just like a low-pitched hum. I could not pick out individual words or meaning. It happened a couple of times and obviously didn’t help our attempt at resolving our difficulties / differences.

Has anyone else experienced this weird symptom? I suffer from dysphasia which affects speech but haven’t experienced not being able to pick out words in others’ speech.

Haven’t experienced this since so guess it was the high stress situation which caused it?

Thanks for your time.

2

I suffer from expressive dysphasia and dysarthria but I’ve never experienced anything like that. I was curious so I did some research. It seems that you may have had something like receptive dysphasia, which is when there are problems with comprehension.

I suggest you mention this episode to your neurologist and/or MS nurse, although I’m not sure what could be done if it was an isolated incident. Having said that, if it keeps happening you could end up not being able to communicate with anyone, so it might be best to push for some kind of investigation.

3

Thanks for this. More or less what I thought. It was scary at the time though, as you can imagine!