Kristin's first post!

Welcome to our new blog! 

I'm excited to introduce myself and tell you a little about how Bob and I know eachother.  I'm an SLP working in an inpatient rehabilitation center.  I see mainly adult patients with stroke, TBI, and spinal cord injuries.  We also get our fair share of cancer, Guillain Barre, Parkinsons, MS. . .  I love working with adults.  Rehab can be a grueling setting to work in, but I find it really fulfilling, challenging, and interesting.

I'm hoping this blog can be a great place to share ideas and questions, and to have discussions and get feedback and ideas from other SLPs.  Feel free to comment often- including questions or requests for a specific post.  We love comments!


Bob and I met when we had a study group together way back in our junior year of college.  We kept joining  up for tests and projects, and over the next four years of undergrad and grad school we studied together for every test and paired up for every single project.  Our study styles just meshed well and I know Bob was a great help to me all throughout.  He put up with my crabby attitude on those late night cramming sessions, my many dating tales, my goofy humor, and my procrastination.  It's great to have a friend to lean on in those tough graduate school years!  Bob is a total hoot, he's witty, he's super smart, he's an extremely caring and compassionate clinician, he loves people, and would have been voted "Mr. Congeniality" if there were such a thing in the Communicative Disorders Department.  Bob is laid back, good-natured, and fun-loving.  I'm looking forward to his posts!


As for me, I'm into running, reading, blogging, singing, and eating good food.  As an SLP, my favorite things to work on are apraxia and aphasia.  I won't tell you my least favorite quite yet.  I like to do a lot of patient and family education, I'm aggressive when working on dysphagia, I'm passionate about AAC, and my favorite therapy tools are the VNS and the WALC-2 for those of you who know what I'm talking about.  I dislike plantar fasciitis, people on the train with poor hygiene, heavy metal, daily therapy documentation, cold weather, crusty bread, and stubbing a toe. 

XOXO
~K

Super Duper Attacked

Recently Mattel Toy Company sued Super Duper because they used the word "say" and "and say" in some of their products. Mattel felt that people would become confused with Super Duper products and that Super Duper was riding on Mattel's "coat tail" to get profits.

Outrageously, Super Duper has been order to pay $3.6 million dollars to Mattel and destroy half million dollars worth of product. This isn't exactly a large company.

If you are a speech therapist then you know the wonderful therapy products that Super Duper puts out. Therapy products, not toys. Well, I found a website entitled Speak Up for Say that gives a list of things that you can do to support Super Duper. I have to say, I love Super Duper products and I use them everyday! I think Mattel's arguments are unfounded. They're just plain greedy. Its ridiculous. Anyway, I just thought this was important enough to write something real quick.

A Little Clarification

Just to clarify on some of the stuff I want to do with this blog. (What Kristin does is another matter).

I would like to write about educational speech therapy ideas, struggles, amusing anecdotes, and speech related ramblings. I'll also review therapy material and webpages from time to time as well as give little guides to parents with children with communication disorders. I'll admit right from the get go that I am not the most creative speech pathologist in the world and there are people that have a far greater expertise in different communication areas. Education speech language pathologists have to be a jack of all trades. We get to work with a little bit of everything. I'll attempt to point you in the right direction to get more information on any given topic that I write about. 

And I reserve the right to occasionally rant on a non-SLP related topic, but I'll try to keep it to a minimum.

Oh, and my attention span is short sometimes. I'm bad about proofreading. (Yeah, I don't know how I got through grad school either). I'm in the middle on an intervention, so bare with me.

Bob

♠ ´¨)
¸.•´¸.•*´¨) ¸.•*¨)
(¸.•´ (¸.•` (¸If at first you don’t succeed then, sky diving isn’t for you!

First Post

Pathologically speaking is a brand new SLP (Speech Language Pathology) blog for other SLPs and people interested in the medical and educational practice of speech language therapy. There are two of us that will be writing on this blog. As for me, I'm Bob Bateman. You can follow my daily adventures on twitter at Speechbob. I work with kids from preschool age to the 6th grade in the public schools. I have 3 kids of my own with one on the way. I'm always trying to figure out how to balance work and home in an on going juggling attempt. I'm particularly interested in AAC, fluency, narrative language therapy, and trying to stay on top of the growing pile of papers on my desk.

I'm excited to join the SLP blogging community and I hope that we can share some great therapy ideas. I may more often give stories of life as an educational SLP (without giving specifics or names as to not break any confidences of course).

That's all for now. I'll let Kristin introduce her self.

Bob Bateman

♠ ´¨)
¸.•´¸.•*´¨) ¸.•*¨)
(¸.•´ (¸.•` (¸If at first you don’t succeed then, sky diving isn’t for you!