8/2/2005 Newark, NJ Vicki Hyman The Star Ledger (www.nj.com) Robert O'Brien was staring at the mirror when he saw it -- a small crease forming in the corner of his mouth -- on the side of his face that had collapsed three months before. O'Brien, a retired Montclair police officer who now is security director at Ramapo College, had developed Ramsay Hunt Syndrome, a neurological complication of shingles that paralyzed the right side of his face. He drooled, slurred his speech, had difficulty moving food around in his mouth and had to tape his drooping eye shut at night. Some patients recover spontaneously; O'Brien was told there was nothing that could be done to help him. His wife, Jane, had studied speech therapy in college and knew that it could maximize his recovery, so she contacted a speech language pathologist at Mountainside Hospital in Montclair. Janet Kalina-Suarez had just been trained on VitalStim, a new device that uses electrical currents to stimulate inactive or atrophied muscles in the neck to facilitate swallowing. Therapists using VitalStim have reported promising results with stroke patients, those with neurological disorders such as ALS, Parkinson's Disease and multiple sclerosis, and those who had been treated for mouth or throat cancer. The device reportedly helped people when traditional treatment and therapy had failed; it even helped patients who had trouble swallowing their own saliva. As Jane O'Brien described her husband's symptoms over the phone, Kalina-Suarez thought he could benefit from the therapy, as well. It took [...]