My partner Stephen had a stroke in 2020 . He has right vocal palsy. Exercises provided by Speech and language unfortunately has made very little difference . Also his swallow was affected and his right side of body . I was hoping that there might be be somebody on the forum who had a similar experience with vocal cord paralysation that could share their journey.
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Hi @Annabella1 and welcome to the forum. Although I have experienced a “sampling” of this, as I had a “mini” stroke 2½yrs ago. My swallowing issue righted itself in the first 6mths. Speech took longer and although I’m fairly understandable now, I do still have an issues with aphasia, so it’s a work in progress. Because I’m a quiet person I tended to neglect that side of things in favour of the physical aspects to regain my independence…which I now have. But even since that time I’m finding little changes are still happening in my vocals, around my mouth and even my face. Tension/tightness in the face and around the mouth have been relaxing. Still have some issue with the back of the throat, I still have to be a tad careful when swallowing as there is still a frequent tickle at the back of my throat.
The only sort of exercise I started doing myself because I found it helped me was:
I used to push my tongue down hard to the floor of my mouth thus tensing muscles and pushing the larynx down hard as I could. I would even allow my jaw to drop open but kept my lips closed. That’s the best way I can describe this to you. But why I was doing it was because I always felt like the back of my throat was closed up tight and I was trying to stretch it all open again. I never even thought to look in a mirror to see if that was actually so. And I did this many times throughout the day, particularly when I was eating or drinking anything.
I know its been a few years for your husband already, but don’t give up hope. There’s still time for these issues to right themselves as the brain continues to heel and grow.
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@Annabella1 just popping by to say hi & welcome. Sorry to hear your partner is habing these issues. Hopefully someone will pop by with some experiences to share.
Best wishes
Ann
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Hi @Annabella1
Welcome, sorry you’ve been occasioned join us
I can’t directly give you any advice either but I did try searching the forum for “speech and lang” in double quotes so it searches for the actual phrase and there are over 50 posts.
The magnifying glass at the top of the screen will allow you to put the phrase in - do put it in double quotes though 
I would guess reading through those will give you a some perspective
possibly messaging the authors of them directly if they are not current frequent users may help too if they have their notifications turned on
Ciao
Simon
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Thank you for your helpful suggestions. Unfortunately Stephen’s swallow was also damaged by the stroke and although his main diet is via a peg tube he does have a small coffee and a square of chocolate for a treat . However he has to be extremely careful that this does not cause him to aspirate,
Annabella
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I was fortunate that I didn’t have anything like that, but the aspiration was a bit scary. Yes, we’ve all done when we’ve inhaled food or liquid, even our saliva. But when there’s that constant risk with every bite or sip you become very reluctant to take anything. No wonder I lost so much weight. For me it was only a matter of a couple months but for your husband it’s nearly 3yrs living with it.
I just put this brief description here for anyone reading who doesn’t know what it is…saves them having to look it up.
I think we all experience a certain amount of muscle atrophy after strokes; I know I lost an awful lot of weight through that. Your husband being peg fed will certainly attribute to certain amount of wastage of his throat muscle too. So by doing that sort of exercise I described above, could hopefully help build up and strengthen his throat muscles again. I take he’s been doing all the exercises the Speech & Lang. therapist has given him?
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You probably already know about these, that were helpful to me. Still have to be careful and keep my head down to swallow, and my voice is raspy and throaty, but I can finally get the EEEE sound out a little more, and sing a little very poorly. Although the following pictures are for respiratory issues, they strenghten throat muscles which helps. Voice still getting better at almost two years.
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Oh those 2 bottom ones are very familiar to me. My mother recently had 2 ops to remove cancer in both lungs and these have been one of her daily exercises.
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There are lots of posts on here about peg feeding too
When I searched I got the search saying “50 plus”
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Thank you much appreciated
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