reading problems

[sailingtom]

I’m 59, and have always had problems reading, some days I can read almost anything with ease and on other days, I struggle to complete a page and skip a lot of words.  I remember a doctor saying that he thought I had a mild case of Cerebral Palsy.  Can CP be the cause of my problem? Any thoughts?

[Capital H]

How about dyslexia, that is the most usual cause of reading difficulty, indeed ones capacity varies for when one is fatigued ones concentration is lacking and so what is possible on one day is not necessarily consistent.

Problems with reading are many and varied, anything from a problem with focusing on the page itself due to weakness in the muscles that cause the eyeball to accomodate or to act together in binocular visionto the more complex issues of word recognition and decoding.

[Quixotic1]

Capital H is correct.  The problem could be with the actual tracking of the eyes which may be harder in times of fatigue.  Does it feel like your eyes dance around on the page skipping from one place to another?  Or it may be how the brain is processing the words you see - also worse in times of fatigue.  Do you have other small areas where things are more difficult?  Clumsiness, language problems, attention problems?

That you have always had problems -even if they were intermittent  - is reassuring that it is not a dengenerative process.  Very mild cerebral palsy or mild dyslexia?  Neither term is specific for a certain disorder.  They both indicate static (non-deteriorating) problems in areas of brain function that are present from birth.

At 59 you have likely developed adaptive ways around the problem.  Sometimes those adaptations work better than others.  Either problem, "cerbral palsy" or "dyslexia" does not mean anything bad with regard to how well your brain will function as you age.  Is that what you were asking?

Quix

[sailingtom]

Yes, in fact I do at times have some speech problems.  It seams to happen when I’m a little nervous,  I know what I want to say in my head but it comes out a little mixed up and I do have trouble pronouncing some words.  How does one overcome dyslexia?  I also have problems with spelling.