An SLP is like a taxi driver

 I think occasionally, of the total number of persons I have served during my SLP career of....thirty-eight years this August. If you had lined up all my consumers over all the years, their standing in line six feet apart, I can imagine the queue would have extended from my home, to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. My practice often has been a far - flung galactic outpost, far from the prestigious healthcare institutions, the University training grounds and the well-funded school campuses. The opportunities that have come along, and the circumstances that have steered the work from job to job, from condition to malady, have steeled me to a realization about a speech-language pathologist:

 

an SLP is a taxi driver, taking the person served from a temporary to a transitory location. But I almost had a lapse of awareness, for the present day. You might also say, an SLP is a ride - share driver. 

Get the call, pick up a fare, head straight for the destination wanted. In spite of the desire of  the professions to make patient care in CSD "person - centered", or "personal", clinical work day - to - day is a series of pick up, travel, disembark; pick - up, travel, disembark. There is no inherent reason to act otherwise, though your job is to help your passenger grow more confident, more independent and more in control. We drivers for better communication and swallowing; we are to get our passengers from Point A to Point B in a timely fashion, and precisely finding the destination.  The consumer wants it. The support circle is waiting. Those who pay the rider fare expect you to arrive on time. The managers of your business have more fares ready to pick up. 

But the journey! Oh, the places you'll go! The courage to be found, and the sights to be seen....those moments of insight, of pain relieved and strength bolstered....the journey is the thing, and it is why you are hired. Your consumer, your passenger shows you the way to go. It's your expertise in piloting, that gets the passenger to the endpoint (s)he wants. The sights on the journey; they make it almost sad that the journey has to soon be over. 

And it does have to end, and it does end. The alliance, the bind forged at the start of the galactic journey is dissolved. But another passenger, another consumer needs you now. The galaxy awaits.