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Post for June 13, 2018
Today we returned to Ndejje University, so we only saw one girl today. We first went to her home and talked some with her mother while her sister went to the school to bring her home. Unfortunately, she was very upset to leave school because it was her first day. If she was unhappy, it was not going to be a good assessment. We then decided to go to her school to see if that would help her to be calm and cooperative. On the way to class we talked about the difference between dysarthria and apraxia. This was brought up because her mother had told us of her speech difficulties and her leg weakness.
Dysarthria is a movement problem where motor movements for speech are broken. Apraxia can sound similar but results from faulty motor planning for movements. These two may seem similar but have different causes and therefore they must be treated differently in therapy.
Once at the school, a group of girls were brought in to the room so that she could feel less shy. Dr. Brady asked her to stick her tongue out in different directions and pucker her lips. These tasks were very difficult for her and she couldn’t do some of the tongue movements. Again, Mrs. Deborah was asked to have the girl repeat simple numbers in Luganda so that we could hear the normal speech compared with the young girl’s. Lastly, the group of girls were asked to repeat Pa-Ta-Ka quickly. It was strikingly different from how this girl struggled to do it.
Dr. Brady told us that is was most likely apraxia, then gave her teacher some advice for how to help her in class a bit. As for me, I’m never going to confuse dysarthria and apraxia again.
Every person we talked to in Kiwoko was an amazing learning opportunity for me and I was sorry to go.