Rachel is a young girl who at 23 months old had a near drowning accident on Thursday, May 5, 2005. She was in the PICU for two weeks, inpatient rehab for 6 weeks, and outpatient rehab and therapy in Duluth until that fall when we were able to move her back up north where she goes to outpatient therapy and school.
She has a trach and a lot of the time we're able to use her Passy-Muir speaking valve so that she's able to vocalize. She sounds like a baby Chewbacca most of the time but is able to make a "Da" noise for when she wants Luke.
She also has a feeding tube that she gets all of her meals, meds, and water through.
Her latest big goal in speech therapy is to use her computer that will talk for her if she looks at a picture on the screen. She's doing very well with it. When she wants to.
Sometimes I'll mention a vest treatment and that's a vest that inflates with air and vibrates to help mobilize the gunk in her lungs so she can cough it out. To Rachel, we call it her "wiggle vest". She also has foot splints to prevent her hamstrings from getting too tight, hand splints for day and others for night that help prevent her from holding her hands in little fists all the time. She also has a torso brace to prevent her spine from continuing to curve and delaying or preventing surgery to place a rod in her spine.
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