Those who stutter find hope

Talking to Cris Muirhead of Searcy, Ark., it's easy to understand why the 38-year-old man who stutters has spent most of his adult life out of earshot.

"It's very frustrating," he says. "Sometimes you go to a rah-rah-rah-rah-rah-rah ..."

His voice turns into a mechanical warble like a CD player that is stuck. Muscle spasms in his throat pump out bursts of air as he tries to will his vocal cords to defeat electrical impulses from his brain. The signals are to blame for the biological short-circuit that is largely a medical mystery.

Waiting for a person who stutters to finish delivering a thought can be awkward. There is a temptation to finish the sentence. But from the perspective of the person who stutters, interrupting is rude.

"... rah-rah-rah-rah-restaurant and try to place your order," he continues with complete fluency. "The waitress tries to finish your sentence for you, but that is not what you want. That's insulting."

Muirhead's wife, Crystal, has watched in silence for years as her husband drank sodas and ate food he didn't want. But as one of 3 million Americans who stutter, takeout food is the least of his problems.

The bigger issue for Muirhead has been his livelihood. He has mostly worked in silence — in a factory making dental bridges, in the fields with animals or in a truck hauling manure and fertilizer to golf courses.

"Normally, people who stut-stut-stut-stut-stut-stutter work in jobs where they don't have to talk to the public much," he says.

A tiny, hearing-aid-like device called Speech-Easy that fits inside Muirhead's ear changed his life in 2003. Muirhead now works as an emergency medical technician and is studying to be a paramedic. Lives depend on his ability to communicate with strangers in an emergency, and he's able to do that now.

SpeechEasy does not cure stuttering, but it has allowed him to go from verbally tripping on 85 of 100 words to struggling with fewer than 10 out of 100. "It's such a big difference," he says. "Things I thought I could not do, now I'm actually doing them."

People helped by this kind of device are something of a medical mystery. A study is being launched this week by the Stuttering Foundation of America to try to determine why some benefit and others do not. The study could help scientists understand stuttering and allow therapists to better predict who might benefit.


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