Leslie,
Thanks for suggesting she look for my other posts. Kathy and I have been PMing off and on for several months and I have asked her to bring the discussion back to the forum so it might benefit any lurkers or future larygectomees looking for info. Hopefully she will find some others who have had this surgery that are experiencing her kind of problems. I never did so am not very useful.

Basically she is having alot of swelling which is not allowing her to talk or use her tep nor can she eat or swallow anything. Since this surgery was done to allow her to eat, not because she had cancer, she is not getting the desired result and the inability to talk is frustrating her even more. The speech dept where she is does not teach esophageal speech which I find bizarre and she, like I, can barely use the electrolaryx.

So any of you lurkers out there who are larygectomees or even you folks with temp trachs who have had swelling that has closed off your esophagus, please weigh in on this and answer Kathy's questions as they come up. I will answer all questions as best as I can but we need more than one woman's experience here.

Thanks,
Eileen