Day 350 - First Speech Therapy Appointment
Wednesday, December 15th, 2021
No nurse for the rest of the week since our M, W, F nurse is on vacation. Dad and Mom made the trip with James to the hospital for his Speech Therapy PO Evaluation.
Speech-language pathologists evaluate a patient's communication, thinking processes, and swallowing abilities. Therapy provides patients with skills to improve their attention, memory, reasoning, and understanding of language and speaking, as well as helps patients eat and swallow safely.
While at the hospital, we ran into one of James' Occupational Therapists. He has grown some in the last few months! During our appointment the Speech Therapist tested James' ability to swallow by allowing him to take some water from a spoon. This was his first time using a spoon and he loved it. Mom does do oral care with James at home which is using a sponge qtip dipped in sterile water. It was always really hard to tell whether or not he was swallowing. The next step would be a swallow study. However the risk is that he would be swallowing barium and if he aspirated it would be dangerous. The Speech Therapist did not want to schedule a swallow study without speaking with the Pulmonologist regarding cuff deflation. James has an inflated cuff of 2ml of water in his trachea. Currently we are not supposed to deflate it for long periods of time. Once she contacts the Doctor we will be able to discuss next steps.
Just some photos of later in the day, James was exhausted from his outing.
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