Let Me Call You Sweetheart, you Stutterer ...er ....er ...er !..

 

About the stuttering / singing phenomenon, and in reference to the young man that was on America's Got Talent that stutters, but can sing:

(Country Singer Mel Tillis is a great example of a person that stutters - a lot! - and sings effortlessly.  He also uses singing instead of speaking, when necessary, to get a point across that he can't otherwise express through speech.)

Any Speech Therapist  - or any astute nurse! - will tell you that many people who have had strokes and can speak very little, if at all, can still sing effortlessly.  The same thing is true for many who have had brain injuries in the areas of the brain that produce speech.

I have personally used this technique to communicate with a particular stroke patient.  She was 62, and had a stroke.  The only words she could say were "NO!" and "Uh - HUH!"  I walked into her room in the nursing home, and I opened a Valentine card that had a micro chip in it.  When I opened the card, it played the music to "Let me call you sweetheart.... I love you!"  My intentions were to trick this stubborn lady into SINGING to me her wants and needs, because she could no longer speak.   I walked into her room, opened the card, and the music started to play.  **I** sang, "Let me call you sweetheart......", and before she had time to stop and think about it, this patient responded with the last half of that sentence in the song,  in a beautiful singing voice, "I LOVE YOU!" 

THEN.... She started to cry, and sing out, "Thank you, oh, Thank you, Michael, you showed me that I CAN DO IT!"

There is, however, a darker cloud to this story.  There was also a patient with Dementia that was on this floor.  She wondered the floor for hours, and often raided and rummaged other patients rooms (a typical Alzheimer's behavior).    Every other day, I could hear the clanking of this patient's 4-footed cane coming down the hallway, and I knew she was going to complain about SOMETHING, and I knew what that 'something' was!  

She could come over to the nurse's desk, point her cane over the desk at me, and then point it down the hallway towards her room and SING cheerfully,

"Michael, get that crazy BITCH out of my room!"

I knew that she wouldn't leave me alone, and let the issue rest until I went down the hall to her room, and removed the 'offending' resident.  

I would just roll my eyes at my 'singer', and as I started to pull myself away from the nurse's desk, and from my charting, she would sing to me, "Ah - HA!  That's what you get for teaching me to sing!  Ha ha ha ha!"

(GROAN!)

- Michael