Swallowing 101 and a New Use for Rosary Beads

Had my last visit from Sharon, the hospital speech language therapist who has been reprogramming my swallowing mechanism to avoid the discomfort eating certain foods.  Now I know better, at least when it is just the two of us enjoying our evening meal.  I find when I am eating in company I forget about swallowing hard, as I found out the hard way when Eli was here for lunch. Iced water with a slice of lemon is supposed to be good too ie cold and sour facilitates the contraction of the throat muscles.

 I have some exercises that I am doing twice a day and practice is making perfect.  My rosary beads are coming in handy for counting the number of times I have done these exercises. 

Swallowing

I am in training this week and next week for increasing the size of my swallows so that I don't get my food sticking in my craw at inconvenient and unexpected times. It happens with stodgy food like white bread rolls and potato and also with hard foods like apple and pears off our pear tree. Might have to stew them and bottle them next year. But hey I will have learnt how to do big swallows all the time by then and be able to eat what I like.

Turned some apples into an apple cake yesterday to deal to the apples and some dry old Madeira cake into a delicious trifle which slipped down easily.

The speech language therapist from the hospital who deals with swallowing difficulties too turns up each day with her laptop and electrodes which are taped under my chin then the ten lots of five big swallows are graphed. I can see what it takes to take a big swallow. Normally the brain alerts you when a big swallow is required but in Parkinson's this does not happen so I have to be mindful all the time and do the right thing.

Coffee Time

Met up with the women in the Parkinson's group at the garden centre cafe this week. Our new field officer was there and is a very nice person and it is good to have someone we can now check things out on the phone with or in person as they arise so they don't grow into problems or worries.

The same day I went to a Speech Language Therapy group meeting in which communication difficulties and swallowing problems, of interest to me , were discussed. Have got a couple of exercises which hopefully will help. One is to repeated 30 times, 3 times a day for 6 weeks! It is a head lift exercise done by lying flat on your back, raising your head about 4 inches, holding for three seconds then lowering your head.