‘Not Just Dots On a Map’: SLPs Speak Their Truth From the COVID-19 Battlefront

Tuesday, March 10. Speech-language pathologist Fatima Warren was grocery shopping with her grandmother when she first noticed the painful body aches. Chalking it up to the rainy day and an earlier workout, she ran a hot bath. Wednesday, March 11. Warren woke up with chills, fever, and worsening aches. She drove straight to the closest ER in her hometown of Lexington, Kentucky. There, staff ran numerous tests, but not for COVID-19. The 45-year-old didn’t qualify because she hadn’t traveled outside the country and couldn’t name a contact with the virus. Thursday, March 12. Worried about infecting her 13-year-old son and 87-year-old grandmother—who lives with them—Warren shuttled between the ER, urgent care, and the local health department in pursuit of COVID-19 testing. Meanwhile, she fought shortness of breath. “I kept taking these big deep breaths out of nowhere,” she says. Fast-forward a week: Warren self-quarantined to protect her son and grandmother and finally received a COVID-19 test after badgering the health department nonstop. It came back positive. The operator of a mobile fiberoptic endoscopic evaluation of swallowing (FEES) clinic, Warren last ran FEES on a patient Feb. 19 and doesn’t know how she contracted the virus. She also can’t fathom why it was so hard for her, a health care worker, to get tested. Unfortunately, other SLPs on the health care front lines are encountering similar obstacles as they rush in to help infected patients in hospital...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Tags: Slider Speech-Language Pathology Uncategorized acute care Cognitive Rehabilitation Dysphagia FEES Health Care MBSS personal protective equipment skilled nursing facilities Swallowing Disorders Source Type: blogs