Flashback Friday- San Francisco Edition

Well our trip 2 weekends ago didn't turn out quite as we had planned! Mark got sick on the way to the airport (bad tomatoes? perhaps) and threw up when we got to the airport and then spent the next 4-5 days in the bathroom. Well not 24/7 but pretty close. It's kind of a miracle that we even made it on the plane, because as we were going through security, they pointed out to me that my license had expired and I needed a second form of ID. Yikes!!! Fortunately I still had my SS card in my wallet, but I had actually been thinking earlier in the week that I needed to take it out though I still hadn't done it! (I'm still trying to figure out how I have managed to have an expired license since last November!)
Anyhow, Mark was a trooper though and we still went on our sailing cruise around the bay. I highly recommend seeing the Golden Gate that way! Mark looks normal in the above picture, but the cruise was 1 1/2 hours and he was miserable most of it. He was feverish and it was cold and he was shaking the whole time.
Here we go under and around the bridge.
It really is quite an amazing piece of engineering.
Sea lions in the bay, they were pretty entertaining to watch. We didn't do too much else because Mark wasn't feeling so great. But that was really okay- I actually got to read a book over the weekend, so it was a great weekend for me. I was excited to go and find a good seafood place, but we actually found a great little Italian place and Thai place near our hotel that we enjoyed more than our seafood on the Wharf.
We went to San Fran because I had a conference to go to for work. I am now officially Vital Stim certified! Here's a youtube video clip about it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aar2anLC4uc . It's a fairly new technology in the speech field for treating swallow disorders, using electrical stimulation directly on the muscles and nerves. I had used it under the direction of another speech therapist, before I was certified, on a young man that had been in a car accident. He'd gone through the windshield and had severe lacerations to his head and neck. He came to me with a feeding tube in his stomach and could not have anything by mouth. The xray I did of his swallowing showed the worst swallow I have ever seen. So bad that he actually couldn't swallow, the muscles and nerves were so messed up that when he tried to swallow, everything would get pushed back up into his mouth, absolutely nothing when down to his stomach and little bits would get into his lungs. He also had a paralyzed vocal cord because of the damage to a very important nerve in his neck. So I worked really hard on him for nearly 3 weeks and used the electrical stimulation on certain parts of his neck, in addition to traditional swallow treatments. And a miracle happened, the next xray I did on him he was swallowing, still not perfect, but amazingly better. His mom was crying and hugging me, and I was nearly ready to cry too. He was discharged home the very next day and the last time I talked to him he was eating and drinking without any restrictions. So that kind of made me a believer in the use of this particular treatment, but I don't think it's for every patient.

So here are Five Things I Learned About Myself In San Francisco:
1. I'm not a fan of public transit- all I can think about is germs. I'll keep driving, even with high gas prices.
2. I don't like to be cold! 10 years in the desert has made me soft, and SF just felt cold the whole time.
3. I don't know as much as I should in my field.
4. I know more than I thought I did in my field.
5. In comparison the the jam packed housing in that city, I have a sizeable backyard and I promise not to complain about it being too small for at least 3 months.