A LITTLE INFORMATION ABOUT ME.................
I went to Geneva College in Beaver Falls, PA and graduated in May of 1998. Cory would say while he graduated Cum Laude...I graduated Thankya Lordy....Funny Cor! I absolutely loved Geneva and its campus...and we hope that our own children will attend as well. Cory and I met our freshman year. I remember thinking how good looking he was and thinking that he would never even consider me. We got to know each other a little better, and then we dated for the rest of college. He did try to break up with me once...and I had to chase him...we had couples counseling with the college chaplain Rev. Tim Russell. It was at our last session that Cory proposed...Rev. Russell married us that June...and we live happily ever after..:)
My area of study is called Speech-Language Pathology. This really is an area that is extremely broad. I did my "internship" at Butler Memorial Hospital. My day would start out by going over the hospital sheet that tells you who is admitted and for what. I would look for those folks who were diagnosed as having Pneumonia, Strokes, etc... Sometimes we would visit these patients, and then ask the Drs to order an Speech Evaluation...some would, some would not. Other things that I would do is find patients that had strokes and show up at Breakfast time and feed them thier breakfast. At this time I could gage as to whether they could make a bolus...this is when you chew your food up and it forms a ball before you swallow. Of course some patients had no oral control. Also I would watch to see that they did not have food packed in their cheeks..Stroke patients can lose a lot of feeling, and sometimes their tongues just will not work. Later in the day, I might visit with some patients and have them read to me...making them overenuciate each word. Oral Motor Exercises are VERY important after having a CVA...I also did other things such as fluency. I would work on sounds with little kids. Our goal is to start with the sound itself...like T...and then T in the initial position of words like toy. then in the medial postion..bitter...then the end...pocket...then we move on to sentences and such. I also did some work with the downsydrome. We did some lifeskills things like mock interviews...that sort of thing. I also would feed some of the Trach patients. In order to find out if they were aspirating their food, you put blue food coloring into thier food, and if blue comes out...they are in trouble. I did quite a few things with Speech Pathology at the hospital in different capacities...but my all time favorite is......
DYSPHAGIA......I loved this, and wish I could have spent all of my time here. It may seem very boring...but it just intrigued me. The above is a photo of someone having a swallow test. For some reason or another, they come in choking or coughing....or have Pneumonia....so what we do is to give them a barium swallow test. First it is water consistency. we give them that, and watch it go down their throat with the radiologist. the next consistency would be a nectar consistency, then a pudding consistency, then we dip a cookie in barium and have them chew it up. That part is really cool, because sometimes they had no oral motor control at all and it would just be everywhere all over their mouth. You would do this test in those consistencies until one of them caused them to aspirate. Then you would make modifications to how they eat/drink. They might just need to put their chin to their chest with each swallow, or we would have to thicken their liquids to the consistency that they did not aspirate...can you imagine drinking your coffee with a pudding consistency???? Another part that was so amazing to me was to feed an elderly person some water consistency barim...watch it go down her windpipe...and see them NOT CHOKE! This is why I look for the Pnuemonia patients...all of the sudden they are wondering why they have Pneumonia? I wonder to myself how many of the elderly have died from not knowing that they were aspirating...and whatever condition they came in with, then they got Pnuemonia on top of it...It makes me so sad. I would say that if it were possible that I would want to be in this field entirely...I can't explain it...I just love it!
I went to Geneva College in Beaver Falls, PA and graduated in May of 1998. Cory would say while he graduated Cum Laude...I graduated Thankya Lordy....Funny Cor! I absolutely loved Geneva and its campus...and we hope that our own children will attend as well. Cory and I met our freshman year. I remember thinking how good looking he was and thinking that he would never even consider me. We got to know each other a little better, and then we dated for the rest of college. He did try to break up with me once...and I had to chase him...we had couples counseling with the college chaplain Rev. Tim Russell. It was at our last session that Cory proposed...Rev. Russell married us that June...and we live happily ever after..:)
My area of study is called Speech-Language Pathology. This really is an area that is extremely broad. I did my "internship" at Butler Memorial Hospital. My day would start out by going over the hospital sheet that tells you who is admitted and for what. I would look for those folks who were diagnosed as having Pneumonia, Strokes, etc... Sometimes we would visit these patients, and then ask the Drs to order an Speech Evaluation...some would, some would not. Other things that I would do is find patients that had strokes and show up at Breakfast time and feed them thier breakfast. At this time I could gage as to whether they could make a bolus...this is when you chew your food up and it forms a ball before you swallow. Of course some patients had no oral control. Also I would watch to see that they did not have food packed in their cheeks..Stroke patients can lose a lot of feeling, and sometimes their tongues just will not work. Later in the day, I might visit with some patients and have them read to me...making them overenuciate each word. Oral Motor Exercises are VERY important after having a CVA...I also did other things such as fluency. I would work on sounds with little kids. Our goal is to start with the sound itself...like T...and then T in the initial position of words like toy. then in the medial postion..bitter...then the end...pocket...then we move on to sentences and such. I also did some work with the downsydrome. We did some lifeskills things like mock interviews...that sort of thing. I also would feed some of the Trach patients. In order to find out if they were aspirating their food, you put blue food coloring into thier food, and if blue comes out...they are in trouble. I did quite a few things with Speech Pathology at the hospital in different capacities...but my all time favorite is......
DYSPHAGIA......I loved this, and wish I could have spent all of my time here. It may seem very boring...but it just intrigued me. The above is a photo of someone having a swallow test. For some reason or another, they come in choking or coughing....or have Pneumonia....so what we do is to give them a barium swallow test. First it is water consistency. we give them that, and watch it go down their throat with the radiologist. the next consistency would be a nectar consistency, then a pudding consistency, then we dip a cookie in barium and have them chew it up. That part is really cool, because sometimes they had no oral motor control at all and it would just be everywhere all over their mouth. You would do this test in those consistencies until one of them caused them to aspirate. Then you would make modifications to how they eat/drink. They might just need to put their chin to their chest with each swallow, or we would have to thicken their liquids to the consistency that they did not aspirate...can you imagine drinking your coffee with a pudding consistency???? Another part that was so amazing to me was to feed an elderly person some water consistency barim...watch it go down her windpipe...and see them NOT CHOKE! This is why I look for the Pnuemonia patients...all of the sudden they are wondering why they have Pneumonia? I wonder to myself how many of the elderly have died from not knowing that they were aspirating...and whatever condition they came in with, then they got Pnuemonia on top of it...It makes me so sad. I would say that if it were possible that I would want to be in this field entirely...I can't explain it...I just love it!
3 comments:
Butler has improved a lot since you were there. Where you had to ask for patients to see then, they are automatically consulted now for certain diagnoses- stroke,tia,or pneumonia.
The docs have seen the value and responded accordingly.
That is really good. I know that it was a work in progress. Dr. Channapatti (?) would always order evals for patients and sometimes we would wonder why? There was one Dr. that was quite mean to the speech path...we would write Please order a speech eval on a chart...and he would write back in big letters...NO!!!!! I can't think of his name...oh well. Anyways...I am glad they got it straightened out...we shouldnt have to look at the admissions sheet and go and scope them out ourselves just to get clients...
Your site is on top of my favourites - Great work I like it.
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