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Health News: Speech-Language Pathologist, Kayla Welker and Treating Patients of All Ages

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This is Health news from Helen Newberry Joy Hospital and healthcare center. Today, we’re talking with speech-language pathologist, Kayla Welker. Kayla, who do you usually see on a typical day at Helen Newberry Joy? My job is really cool because I see a variety of people in a variety of settings so I can see people as young as babies, toddlers, and school-age children. I can see teenagers, I can see adults, I can see residents in long-term care facilities in patients that come in with Strokes brain injuries things like that. And then I see children for outpatient services difficulty producing their speech sounds language acquisition. So really anything from birth to old age. So quite a variety. It starts with infants and youngsters. Is it primarily developmental challenges for them? Speech sound errors expressive language understanding and following directions children can also have feeding difficulties. So sometimes kids who have autism spectrum disorders have food aversion. We work with that vocabulary attention memory sometimes kids stutter next tell us about the stroke or traumatic brain injury language problems can arise so difficulty saying what they’re trying to say or difficulty with receptive language understanding things comprehending directions issues with word-finding trying to come up with what they want to say things coming out of their mouth fluently. Like they want to stay then they could end up with problems with attention memory those cognitive aspects of communication. They can also I’m have swallowing difficulties after a stroke to so we do a lot of work with dysphasia, which is trouble with swallowing. So we work with that a lot as well. What if you’re unable to swallow or speak absolutely, I’m in communication is the essence to our daily lives and me we need communication and we need to be able to swallow as well to eat in to swallow to communicate with our friends or family for a job just for our overall happiness. So to not be able to do those things is pretty detrimental a devastating to just everyday routines for all from their primary caregiver to make an appointment with you. Just let them know what sort of symptoms you are having and a lot of times it’s pretty easy to get an order put in at least for the evaluation for me to take a look and see what’s going on and see if it is something that I can help with or not. So you can go see your physician and I’ll put in the order for you and then you’ll schedule an appointment with me. I’m at the rehab center in the basement of the hospital here in Newberry on Mondays and Thursdays. Thanks to speech-language pathologist Kayla Welker for talking with us today.