We had a friend bring a kid's "Doodle Pad" in to the hospital when my husband had a trach. It was great for short messages and saved a whole forest of trees worth of paper. I highly recommend it

I started thinking my above post was not very clear. A "doodle pad" is a small Magna Doodle. The one my husband had was about the size of a notebook and had a handle for carrying. The stylus was attached with a string. He could write short messages and then slide the bar across the bottom to erase it. His handwriting got sloppier as he started writing faster, but the only real problem was that he wouldn't always show everyone in the room what he had written before he erased it. Somebody would be laughing at his joke and no one else got it. His friend's found it at Kmart for less than $10