Surveillance

I've enjoyed watching people most of my life. Whether it's sitting in the stands of a sports event, walking through the corridors of a state or national CSD (communication sciences and disorders) convention hall; if it's not playing tourist during my occasional playing hookey days in the "Windy City", then it's enjoying a new route between stops on my home health schedule - seeing what people are doing, how they're dressed, what are the secrets they're sharing, but that I can't hear - !! People - watching, it's my jam, my marmalade and my preserves, too. Years ago, I had figured out that watching and listening to others was my primary learning style. Shyness plus my stuttering and my endomorph body type, made it an easy decision to watch and learn, over diving in and getting involved. It could have led to stalking people, or worse? I was too afraid to do more. "I like to watch", says Jerzy Kosinski's character Chance. That fit me.

Of course, years of hindsight would tell you: that's too bad; it was regrettable that this kid didn't find the strength, or didn't get the push from behind, to step up and make more acquaintances and friendships. It wasn't my style, how I saw the world, what greased my gears to make it through my life. My style had made it easier to analyze, break down and rebuild my batting style as a leisure baseballer. Watching how other gardeners design and manage their garden plots, helped streamline my own plant care. My parents each showed signs of hearing loss, from the time I had gone off to college, so their communication struggles gave me insights on how I might help others with similar problems when I became a professional. I was getting experience in surveillance. Through watching and listening, I learned to identify problems and head off any problems becoming worse. Surveillance I learned - I could do for both fun and profit.

Surveillance, commonly known as "screening", isn't a reimbursable service for most clinical professionals. Yet it is one of the more powerful tools CSD clinicians might pull from their toolboxes. A screening clinic that opens its doors for free, to all members of the community, has a magnificent opportunity to provide service to persons who might never know about what CSD professionals do. The opportunities to teach and counsel the people who volunteer to meet with you can germinate into increased clinical caseloads, increased exposure to the entire healthcare system, and increased hope by communities for their needs being addressed. New fiscal support systems need to be developed, so that surveillance - properly known as secondary prevention - can make the CSD professions as well - known as labubus, and more fun to use. I like to watch. I like to help.

There's not enough room

A local healthcare system, the flagship of which is a tertiary care hospital that trains physicians, ancillary healthcare clinicians and biomedical basic scientists, is running a television commercial. Of course, the patient featured in the commercial has had a terrific outcome. She's training to be a trapeeze artist; can you believe it!? And it's her surviving a massive brain tumor that makes the TV promotion memorable. Brain tumors are so scary. I got my first exposure to the mystery and the horror of brain tumors when I watched as a kid, the series "Ben Casey". It was a sterile portrayal of hospital life - no disinfect stink, not much of the clamor of carts, and doc's, of course, don't show the pressure of time on their faces. Miracles, of course, were achieved, in less than 60 minutes each week. That's productivity.

The pressure of time is always there, once you find out there is a brain tumor in your head. The tumor victim might be heard saying: I wasn't born with it, was I? I didn't know it was there until my eyesight started to glitch up, or I found myself losing my train of thought, or - that I vomited all over my prom tuxedo, when I was picking up my date! Why couldn't I have known about this earlier? My head hurts almost all the time now. Is it growing? I'm afraid! I'm afraid it will get so big that I won't know, I won't know what is happening. Please get it out. Take it out, please. PLEASE!!

When there's something found inside you, something that threatens to take over your control of your body, mind and your spirit. panicking is natural. It's natural to want autonomy over ourselves. Pro athletes asserted autonomy, thereby declining vaccines during the COVID pandemic. Everyone who advocates for reproductive health, including the right to abortion services, feel they need to be in control of their bodies as well. Vegans, members of religious sects, owners of semiautomatic weapons, proud owners of old Samsung Galaxy phones and brave Cybertruck owners - they all want to survive and be left alone. Can't the person who finds out there is an invading mass inside her head - isn't she deserving of that same kind of control? Doesn't she deserve to be free of the threats to her identity?

I hope everyone everywhere, who is living or even just discovering that there is a rogue element inside their heads, can find calm and hope that we in the CSD community want their identities to be kept whole. Given that all our identities evolve with development and experience, we'd still want amy person living with a brain tumor to draw on their powers for self - care, the resources of the medical community that are available to them, and the nurturing and uplifting support circles who help every tumor victim tap their deep history, for growing a post - tumor future.