Swallow Study

Sophie had another swallow study this morning. In a nutshell, this is taking an xray movie of her throat while she drinks something. This is easier said than done, since it's hard to get her to drink right now. Throw in weird medical equipment and people she doesn't know and she's none too happy. Oh, and it was a giant mess since the liquid is barium and the therapist added some orange/pink kool-aid stuff to it to flavor it, and it stained everything: her clothes, her face, her hands, etc.

Anyway, the results are that she is cleared to drink thin liquids. We no longer have to thicken them for her, not that it helped much anyway. The therapist said that her throat muscles are okay and that she has the ability to swallow just fine, but that her upper gag reflex is very sensitive. They were doing this study to see if a different course of treatment was necessary to help with throat muscle development, but it's not needed. But I think this will give them a better idea of what's needed with her therapy and now they know what to address and can be more effective... I hope. We should get the formal results and recommendations soon.


Also, as part of a different therapy evaluation, we're trying to get her to mimic basic sounds more. She's good at things like "da da da" and "dee dee dee", but hasn't really responded with anything else, though. We have found that we can get her to raise both arms up if you do it and ask her to copy you. She does this I think if she's feeling shy or excited about seeing someone new.