Speech therapy Round 2

A frequent conversation starter between me and anyone new:

"Hi, I'm Don, glad to meet you." 

The response, "Hello Dan, It's nice to meet you."

The first few times I used to think "what is wrong with these people, can't they get my name right?"  This has been going on for about a year now. With more and more people from all walks of life thinking my name is Dan, I've decided to either do something about it or buckle to the pressure and change my name.  

 My second visit to the speech therapist was just as interesting as the first (see the previous blog for that adventure.)  It would seem my facial muscles and tongue have been taking advantage of the lower amount of signals from my brain and have been getting lazy.  The exercises my therapist gave me will help whip them into shape. Some examples:

• Open your mouth - come-on...  wider (I'm starting to sound like my therapist!)
• Stick your tongue out - further - feel the stretch
• Now try to touch the tip of  your nose with your tongue.
• Purse your lips and say ooo....
• Now make a very wide smile and say eeee...
• The LSVT LOUD® training was interesting .  Holding an ahhhh sound with your mouth wide open for as long as you can up to 30 seconds.  Repeat - a lot.  Then start low and ramp up to a higher pitch again holding for up to 30 seconds. Repeat.  Now reverse it and start high pitched and end low. Repeat.

Do these for a while and you can really feel it in your throat.  Just like exercising, the muscles get tired.
One of my initial signs of Parkinson's was the ability to trigger a tremor by holding my hand out straight and twisting my wrist. It's part of cogwheel rigidity.  Well, I've run into another trigger from this last exercise that's supposed to give me back some control and flexibility in my face. Scrunch your lips up like you are going to blow a kiss.  Now shift that smooch as far left as you can.  Now as far right as you can.  Do that 10 times.  When I try, I trigger a facial tremor.  I can't always get my lips to go right without some twitching and tremoring. Frustrating.

Parkinson's will continue to degrade both swallowing and speaking as well as many other symptoms. Unfortunately, the goal of these exercises for is only to prevent me from getting any worse.   Nothing yet can reverse the degradation.  
So if we can't reverse it, what's the goal?  For me, it would be to reduce the amount of people asking me to repeat something.  Short of that, it just would be nice to be called Don again.