Increased trouble with speech and memory - stress or something else?

I’m coming up on three years since my SAH and was lucky enough to have pretty manageable post-surgery issues after my aneurysm clipping. I got my headaches under control with amitriptyline and the slight delay I had finding words seemed to go away.
Since this spring, however, I have noticed a pretty distinct worsening of my ability to hold fluid conversations. I find myself scrambling to find alternatives for the words I want to use but can’t get a hold of. My tongue almost feels paralyzed, and when do I finally vocalize, it comes out in a burst and isn’t always intelligible. Has anyone else had this kind of speech problem?
My short-term memory has also suffered recently. For example, I’ll watch a few episodes of a TV series then take a break for a couple days, and when I return to watch it can barely remember the plot. Same thing with books I’m reading.
I am an elementary-school educator and have been under a lot of stress since the start of the pandemic. Could that be the cause of this speech and memory decline? Or could it be something else? I started teaching again last week (we are following a hybrid model, which is proving to be even more stressful than fully virtual) and not being able to speak clearly is problematic!
Any ideas or advice are much appreciated!

Welcome to our group Ms. Karmy! So glad you found us.

I developed speech issues after my rupture. Aphasia and stutter with the initial rupture in 2013, the Foreign Accent Syndrome with the second coiling as well as becoming a chatter box. When I was in Neuro ICU, my BF brought me a simple to read mystery. I couldn’t remember the meaning of a lot of words. Thankfully anyone who passed my bed would kindly tell me. I had been a prolific reader and college educated. When I would be around friends/family, they would try to give me the word I was trying to say. If it wasn’t the word my brain wanted, I lost them all. My speech and thoughts still worsen with stress, not enough rest, and not enough protein/hydration.

I’ve been to Speech Therapy three times. Ms. Stacey, my local Speech Therapist is wonderful; however, she got my Neurosurgeon to say I can’t cook unsupervised. I don’t hold it against her, it’s true. I get lost in simple recipes. Ms. Amy at Wake Voice got me the FAS with the specialist. Then back to Ms. Stacey for what she called a refresher course.

Some tricks I’ve learned - take a deep breath before saying a sentence. If you know some form of relaxation breathing, practice it all the time. Use your hand to give you a rhythm for your words, either a repetitive tap or where you use your hand like a conductor, but slow and small like a 4/4 beat (sorry I can’t remember the word) You can tap on your knee or desk so it’s not so obvious. Ms. Amy used music to help with speech issues. Ms. Stacey taught me to keep reading, even if I couldn’t remember what I had read. It helps to not lose your words. Use the dictionary if needed, easily available by typing the word on your smart phone. Use brain games. Look over your calendar every morning start with the day and date, then what you need to do. The repetition helps us to remember.

Eat protein. It used to be difficult to find things that had a sufficient amount of protein but it’s not anymore. In fact I just saw an ad on tv about a small individual serving yogurt with 15g of protein! I think it was Oinkos. Ms. Stacey would have me drink a bottle of water if our sessions were an hour. When they were longer for the evaluations, I would drink two. It’s amazing how much that helps, within minutes really.

The most important thing though is to contact your surgeon and let them know what’s going on. They may want to do an MRA just to be on the safe side.

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Kristen - Since I am not yet three years out, I can’t say if what you’re experiencing is typical or not. I can say that I had the problems that you site initially after my event. As I healed, and went through OT, the problems seemed to resolve themselves with some residual effects continuing to this day. If you didn’t use OT after your event, you might want to discuss the matter with your GP. That said, I agree with Moltroub, let your surgeon know of this new development as there could be a reason.
Take Care and God bless.

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