Job Notes

So it has been a little bit since I update my work life. Things are chugging along and I still find myself in transitions working in different facilities, but still with plenty of work. As an update, that 42 year old woman who had the brain tumor removed and couldn't swallow is now eating and just had her feeding tube taken out, so exciting! Anyhow, I have been doing more work in the long term acute care setting. This is where many people are sent because the hospital (which is a short term acute care) loses money if really sick people stay there a long time, they like to transfer them to the long term acute care. So we get a lot of people who are on ventilators, severe health problems, strokes, need extended antibiotic treatment, etc. Really sick and health compromised people. My job involves a lot of swallowing evaluation and treatment, and these things:

I love these things. They are called Passy-Muir speaking valves. It was invented by a man that was ventilator dependent and wanted to be able to speak. It's a very ingenious and simple valve that is placed in line with the trach and ventilator tubing, which allows the air to come in, but as you breath out the valve closes off and forces the air up and over the vocal folds (please don't call them vocal cords, a speech therapy pet peeve) and out your mouth. So this is what makes my job fun. I get to put this on people who are still on a ventilator and give them a voice for the first time in weeks or months. Once they do well with that and are off the ventilator support, then I evaluate the swallow. Once again, they love me because I give them their first ice chip, first drink, first bite of food in several weeks or months. I find since I have stopped doing outpatient work, that I really enjoy the acute care work more, you can see the improvements faster and that can be extremely gratifying. So that is your speech-language pathology lesson for today.
In other news, Mark passed his Certified Respiratory Therapy exam and takes his Registered Respiratory Therapist exam on Friday. He has started applying for jobs and I am hoping it won't take too much longer for him to start working. I am planning on cutting back to two days a week after Christmas, which I realized when I went into Costco yesterday and saw all the Christmas decor up, is just around the corner! Yikes!