Angela’s Brain Stem Injury Blog

songs during my speech therapy and other pictures

i really enjoy working with lily, my speech therapist (SLT), because she’s very enthusiastic and great. plus she just came back from her additional speech therapy education, so she’s on the ball!! she uses her cell phone to look up english words when she gets stuck and can’t think of the english word. i also like that she teaches me chinese words in our sessions because she learned speech therapy in chinese and i don’t mind! i actually like having a chinese lesson in our sessions. she brought a japanese pop song this morning for part of our session. it’s good for me to start singing because it helps with my breath control also. so i’m very happy to be learning a song. i’m not very good at it though.

chinese learn songs through do re mi fa so la ti do, so they can just write 33 666 43231 and they can make sounds from the numbers. i had to write it down so i would remember what 4 is (it’s fa); 1 is do, 2 is re, 3 is mi, 4 is fa, 5 is so, etc. you get what i mean, right? so the japanese pop song is called oriental cherry in english. lily has a great voice also, so it’s fun to sing with her. :-)let me show you songs that lily, my SLT, is teaching me. the singing is good for my voice and moving my tongue and such in my mouth because my tongue is still crooked. it helps me work on getting my voice exercised so that it does get higher, like it used to be before i got injured and sick in 2003.

let me show you songs that lily, my SLT, is teaching me. the singing is good for my voice and moving my tongue and such in my mouth because my tongue is still crooked. it helps me work on getting my voice exercised so that it does get higher, like it used to be before i got injured and sick in 2003.

• happiness song and the cradle lullaby song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYzmymvl-os

• another one is oriental cherry and tidal=ying1 hua1 and chao2

• you2 yi4 di4 jiu3 tian1 chang2=long life of friendship

• song4 bie2=see somebody off

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHygJmkFfzE

• xiao3 cao3 =grass

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVhxyPHElRE

i am very very disappointed that tiantan puhua hospital does NOT have the vocastim collar which is extremely beneficial for speech therapy. i talked with patients from nanshan hospital which is south of here, near hong kong, i believe? and they have the vocastim collar there! i was actually looking forward to using it since patients from the nanshan hospital told me how they used it every day for half an hour and it helped a lot! some patients even bought their OWN vocastim collars so they can use it on their own! the collar basically is electrical stimulation to help muscles work properly, and christine gray who’s the one who told me about it said vocastim helps muscle function and “I can only imagine that helped my larynx & throat muscles work better.” this is christine with the vocastim on.

i wish this hospital had one. i asked lily about it and she said she requested this hospital buy one last year but nothing was done. hopefully since i brought it up to kotan today, i do hope they will get one so i can use it before i leave here!!! let’s hope that!!! i know there are lots of patients who would benefit from using this vocastim collar!!! ME INCLUDED, OF COURSE!!!

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the nurses here in the south ward come to visit every patient in the mornings around 8-8:30 and i got a picture of them one morning. you can see here.that’s sarah on the left, irene, sunny in the front and ally on the right. i’m glad they got their english name tags about a week ago so it makes it easy to see who it is. before, they just had numbers on their name tags so i couldn’t remember their names! i kept asking their names at first and then i gave up! luckily they all have their english names written on their name tags! here’s another picture of the nurses here in the south ward.

on friday mornings, all the senior doctors and junior doctors come to visit their patients. this is the time patients can ask the senior doctors questions. well, the junior doctors come visit us every morning also and if you have any questions for the senior doctors, they can be asked then. xi is my main junior doctor. also the terms of senior and junior doctors….i made those up to explain their status. haha :-p i think the senior doctors are also called the directors of your case. it’s easier for me to just say senior and junior doctors, you know? here’s a picture i took last friday when they all came to visit me.that’s wendy (the patients’ on-hand international department member who goes around to see the patients every day also) on the far left, then dr. wu, dr. wang, amy, xi, jackey in the brown dress and lily, my speech therapist, on the far right. i have to show wendy again because she had a pretty shirt on today….

remember i told you that i’m the worst patient for the nurses to get veins for my IVs and blood? well, i am silly and videoed sarah taking my blood. the day after my stem cell injection last wednesday, they take a blood sample the next day, so this was thursday morning. the nurses usually come around 6-6:30 in the morning to check your blood pressure and inject something into your IV needle so that your blood doesn’t clot and cause trouble for the IVs later. the nurse early in the morning didn’t get enough blood for the sample, so sarah had to come during my speech therapy session and get more blood. if you are squeamish about blood and blood-taking, you SHOULD NOT watch this… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5LksIEcD1g that shows sarah getting my blood.

this is my back after i took the bandaid off on friday night when i was allowed to shower. my leg with the IV needleand my IVs.they had to stick my IV needle in my wrist yesterday but that went bad already after a day! sigh. this is sarah getting me again. hubby must’ve taken lots of pictures when sarah was on duty…i got another picture of irene.she and shirley are the great ones for finding veins for hard patients like me.

last thursday, isabelle made coffee time for the patients and their families in the computer room which is in the rehab center. here are a couple of pictures for you…and

also last tuesday, they started offering yoga in the PT room (don’t you love that spelling??? YOGO!!) but unfortunately i couldn’t go last tuesday because i had just had dinner of a big mac meal set with koo and susan and basil and thursday was the first coffee time, so today was the first time i was able to join the class. i used to do yoga in tokyo and london, so i know my yoga. this was good because it really challenged my balance which is one of my problems–ataxia. it was interesting and i made a suggestion that the instructor (carrie, i think her name is) also speak english. lily was in the class tonight and she was doing brief english translations for me and agnes, a hungarian patient here. carrie said that on thursday she will speak both chinese and english. i do hope so!!
ok that’s enough for this blog. wan an! ;-)(=good night)

3 comments June 12th, 2007