Chris Kamara has opened up about his late diagnosis of apraxia of speech
(Picture: PA Wire)Chris Kamara has revealed he “stupidly” delayed getting checked for his speech condition, which forced him to quit his job on Sky earlier this year.
The 64-year-old sports pundit left Soccer Saturday at the end of last football season, after announcing that he has apraxia of speech in March.
Kamara received the diagnosis after suffering symptoms of slurred speech for over a year.
Apraxia of speech (verbal dyspraxia) is a condition that affects a person’s physical co-ordination, making it particularly difficult for sufferers to carry out planned movements, such as speech and pronouncing words correctly.
Kamara said that his slurred speech made people around him often think he was “drunk”.
Doctors told Kamara that his speech condition could have been avoided altogether, if he had got checked sooner, which he regrets, and now fears he’s let his family down.
The former midfielder told The Sun: “The doctor said if I’d gone in those first two or three months and had my thyroid checked then I might have been okay.
“But because I left it, everything happening in the body - the balance, the muscle weakening - came from the fact I didn’t tell anybody.
“I feel I’ve let my wife and family down by being a dinosaur and not getting checked out.”
Kamara started noticing symptoms in March 2020 but ignored them, as he said he was “in total denial”, and proceeded not to tell his wife Anne and their two sons, Ben, 35, and Jack, 34.
The family soon picked up on something not being right, as he kept conversations with them short.
The sports host was urged to visit the doctor eventually by wife Anne, who grew concerned after seeing him on The One Show in December later that year.
“Eventually, you think, ‘I’m going to have to face this,’” Kamara continued.
“’I didn’t want to. I thought I could hide it. Now, people tell me they knew there was something wrong, and I thought I was masking it.
“It was my therapist who said to me, the day I accept my condition is the day I will start healing. It took me a good 20 months to do that.’”
A blood test revealed that Kamara had an underactive thyroid, which can lead to speech problems, and he was prescribed drugs to combat these at first.
It was after his thyroid stabilised and his speech difficulties remained that Kamara was diagnosed with apraxia of speech.
Kamara now has hypnotherapy two sessions a week in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, helping to better regulate blood flow to the brain.
The commentator left his role at Sky as the live broadcasting required proved more and more difficult with his condition.
He returned to co-host The Games and Nina Warrior UK this year, and now works on pre-recorded television shows for ITV.
