Ok, I liked my little saying from last week, so I'm going to begin this week with another...

The happy heart runs with the river, floats on the air, lifts to the music, soars with the eagle, hopes with the prayer.
-Maya Angelou

I think that this has been a type of theme for me this past week. I've have been sorting through a lot of changes in my life and it has been a small struggle. I can't say how many times I looked at that saying this past week. I think that it will probably be my theme for the next several weeks and I'm OK with that.

So much to do! I'm still not caught up on the things that I need to be but I think that I'm still OK on time(as far as when things are due). This week was helpful to me because it began to make me think more about my topic and what kind of research I needed to do. The Library Searching assignment was a lot of help. When I met with Mrs. McComas on Wednesday, I found that my topic was a little broad (and I figured that it was). So then, I was faced with setting down and figuring out exactly how I wanted to break my essential and foundation questions down.

So, without further ado (man, I hope I spelled that right), here we go.....

My original question was: What are some possible causes of dysphagia and how can I help make clients with dysphagia more comfortable?

I thought of this originally because I wanted to know about what happened to the swallowing mechanisms and the different stages of swallowing of someone who is suffering from dysphagia. I'm also interested in the different types of diet modifications that can be made and how the caregivers can be involved to help follow through with these kinds of changes. So, I have set and thought it through and here's what I have come up with....

Essential question: What kind of support from the client and others is necessary for treatment to be successful?

I thought that I could still tie in the different diet modifications, swallowing stages, and how to use the family and care personel in order to follow up with treatment. I think that it is necessary for others around the client to help them stay on track due to the fact that they may want to cheat a little bit, or the family may not realize the full importance of the dietary modifications. With this in mind, I have come up with these foundation questions:

1. What are the different stages of swallowing?
2. What could go wrong during the different stages of swallowing?
3. What are the different types of diet for clients with dysphagia?
4. What are the different techniques that could be used in order to make swallowing easier with or without dietary modifications?
5. What can I do that will better explain the disorder to the family, client and others to help them make the proper adjustments?

I thought that maybe I could make one of my genres a brochure that would sum up all of this information for the people involved with a patient of dysphagia. I thought that I could have a "meeting" with them (I thought that this is where the powerpoint presentation could come in) and "hand out" the brochures. I could then write a journal entry from the clinicians point of view about what happened in the "meeting". I feel like Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movies (giant "laser" on the moon that I will call my "death star") OK, it was funny to me. If you haven't seen this movie, please do.

Well, this is the thoughts for my week. If anyone has any ideas or revisions, please let me know. Or if this just doesn't make any sense what-so-ever, let me know.

Kara