Michele & Sherry Update Page

Today Michele handled the blue thickened juice just fine. Tomorrow is blue nectar followed by watery blue. These are liquids they add a blue dye to test how she is swallowing. When she drinks them if her swallowing is working right they should go to her stomach and there should be no blue coloring in her trach tube. If there is then the blue stuff might be going down "the wrong pipe". The path to the lungs and to the stomach are right next to each other in the bottom of the throat. There is a flap that closes to protect the airway. They use this test to make sure that muscle didn't get lazy.
After finishing the blue liquids then she will get the cookie test. Where they coat or mix them with barium and the watch her swallow with a video (x-ray). I not sure if the nurse was kidding or not but she said the blue spaghetti was pretty wild.
Michel sat up on the side of the bed for a while in therapy as the therapist worked different muscles. She also got the size of her trach tube reduced from 8mm to 6mm and will try the talking tube tomorrow. She tried it today but it didn't work as the hole from the trach has to shrink down to the 6mm to prevent air leaking around it