Watch out for unmoving objects...

So, it's end of the month and with that comes crazy billing and redoing all my paperwork. That's all I was doing Thursday morning at the nursing home, plus trying to see the patients. So by the time I rolled into the hospital around 1:00, I was exhausted, having no idea I was going to end up working a 10 hour day. I had a swallow study late afternoon down in radiology. Now for those of you who don't know what this is, let me brief you. Most of you know that one of the main jobs for a Speech Therapist in the hospital is swallowing. Pt's have a stroke or trauma, or dementia or something, and they have difficulty swallowing so the food/liquids are going into their lungs instead of their stomach. So the doctor's call me in to determine if they are aspirating (food going into lungs), and if so, what are they safe to eat. I can determine that to a certain extent at the bedside. But sometimes I have to take a patient down to radiology, put them in front of a fluroscopic machine, and take an xray video of them swallowing different consistencies of food and liquids to determine what they are most efficiently and safely able to swallow.

So I was in the fluroscopic radiology room cleaning up the barium and the food this afternoon after finishing a swallow study. It wasn't a great one- the patient had aspirated everything I gave them (thin liquids, thickened liquids, puree consistency applesauce) so I was deep in thought and tired b/c I knew it was 4 and I had at least 2 more hours of work. I am building this up so I don't come off as a complete idiot. I turned around and began walking full speed towards the trash can, and I ran SMACK into the huge expensive fluroscopic video machine. I mean we are talking big heavy equipment, so of course I blacked out and saw some stars and had an instant headache.

Now, I run into walls all the time and I constantly have bruises on my leg for bumping into tables, but this one takes the cake. I now have a raised bump on my forhead, coviently close to my hairline so it doesn't stand out. It can go with my still-healing Nair burn. Wow.