"Donna Metler" wrote in message
. ..

FWIW, mine is actually considered a "cognitive disorder NOS (not otherwise
specified)", because it's a sign of actual brain damage, as opposed to the
more physical speech problems which I also have due to cerebral palsy. I
also have no natural pacing control on my speech, which means that unless
I
concentrate on it, I really can get going quickly, and tend to lose
control
of inflection and volume, too. All of which gets worse under stress. One
side effect of the cluttering is that when I'm really emotional, I often
can't get words out at all, and end up in total tears just from sheer
frustration.

Oddly enough, this is EXACTLY the same stuff as with my DD. She also has
very mild brain damage (enlarged ventricles) and extremely mild CP. So mild
she's a cheerleader at school, but when she was little, she was quite
affected. She just lucked out and got a magnificent PT at 4 months of age
and her brain was able to be rewired. She also tends to lose control of
volume... it gets louder and Louder and LOUDER until you feel like you want
to aim the remote at her and turn her down. And the more stressful she is,
the flatter her tones and the louder she gets.

All of it's gotten much better as I got older, but it took many years of
pretty intense speech therapy to get here, and for most of it, speech was
considered to be my most significant disability, because it was much
harder
to accommodate than the physical stuff.

Yup...exactly.

M