I have had the great fortune of knowing Jaime Hammond for the past 15+ years. Jaime has served a few roles in my life. First as a clinical practitioner for my children and then later and currently for myself as well as a colleague as we both worked with children who have special needs. As a mom, I loved the way that Jaime allowed me to sit in on the session and took time to explain what she was doing with my daughters and why she was taking that approach to work on their issues.
Jaime worked with my youngest daughter who suffered from swallowing issues from birth. She was two years old before I was able to take her to Jaime by referral, but instantly Jaime was able to help her gain strength in the areas where she had structural issues with her throat so that she choked less and didn’t struggle daily. Jaime also told me that she approached my daughter's situation as if she were a child with a pallet issue because of the mannerisms she had when she ate and swallowed. Later, through medical exams, we found out that she did, in fact, have a misshaped palate, and a cleft larynx, which was causing her a lot of the swallowing issues. That was proof positive for me that Jaime was the best individual to serve myself and my children.
My middle child was an early talker, had a vast vocabulary, and was mainly comprehensible when she spoke at the age of three, she began to stutter and away that was different than most children stutter. She would get stuck on a word or a thought, and could not move past it to tell her stories. Initially, we were concerned about cognitive issues, although there was no other sign at that time to make us have this fear. Jaime did a battery of tests with her and determined that her speech issue was more of an attention issue than something speech or cognitively related. After our first few sessions with Jaime, we noticed our daughter was stuttering, less and less, and had a much higher success rate of sharing her stories with us without getting stuck on her thoughts or ideas.
Both of my girls graduated from Jaime's therapy and have always been welcome back if or when new issues arise. So, when I had a spinal cord injury in August 2021, and I had to start taking central nervous system depressants to turn off the neurological firing in my body, I felt as though I were someone with early onset, dementia or somewhat like a stroke patient because I was losing my thoughts, I couldn't think of words to use, my brain was making me say the wrong word for everyday objects that everyone uses and my working memory was almost non-existent. As a professional, I needed to talk about topics in cognitive processes, brain science, learning practices, various categories of disabilities, etc. However, since my word find was awful, if I didn’t have a script in front of me in meetings, professionally, there was no way that I could get my point across. Also, just as my daughter, I have had swallowing problems for years. I found out that I have a disorder called occipital neuralgia, and I also have a congenital deformation of my cervical spine, which causes misalignment of spine creating issues in my vocal folds and the structure of my throat, thus causing me voice and swallowing issues daily.
I started going to see Jaime myself in hopes to improve my life, both professionally and personally. Jaime gave me material to read and educate myself on what was happening inside my brain. She also talked me through some very scary situations that I was afraid would affect my life from there on out. Every session allowed me to gain pieces of myself back. She helped me find the missing puzzle pieces of my functionality and get my body and mind back to a better place. To this day, almost 2 years after I began receiving therapy at Tell Me, I still see Jaime 2 days a week. I can’t imagine what I would do if I could not see her for therapy. She has really helped me find coping strategies for times when my medication makes me feel as though I am cognitively unable to function or when my body decides to not work the way its supposed to work. I feel like Jaime works to normalize my situation for me that truly has made me feel alienated at times from peers and colleagues. I am not able to work yet since having my spinal cord injury and life inside of my body can be very difficult from a pain or functional standpoint. However, working with Jaime has been a blessing that has given me some form of functionality back into my day to day life.
In the 15+ years I have known Jaime Hammond, I have seen her work with very difficult cases. She has a natural ability to love all of her clients and so effortlessly find activities to help them improve their speech, language, communication and swallowing abilities. I am grateful that she was able to help me in some pretty scary situations for myself and my family and I have seen so many other stories of her success within our community. She is a fountain of resources for those with speech. language, communication, sensory, attention or swallowing issues. I have referred countless friends and students to Jaime and I have heard good stories of success after they began seeing her. Our community is so blessed to have such an amazing resource here. I know my family will always be grateful for her services!
