🎙️ Podcasts By Dr. Kirk Adams: Interview with Vanessa Abraham, Speech Language Pathologist https://drkirkadams.com/podcasts-by-dr-kirk-adams-10-23-2025/

In this candid episode of Podcasts by Dr. Kirk Adams, Dr. Adams sits down with speech-language pathologist, author, and ICU survivor Vanessa Abraham to trace her extraordinary arc from clinician to patient and back again. Abraham recounts the rare Guillain-Barré variant that left her paralyzed and voiceless, the disorientation and aftermath of Post-Intensive Care Syndrome, and the painstaking work of reclaiming speech, swallowing, mobility, and identity. She explains why she wrote Speechless, to humanize the critical-care experience, and makes a compelling case that communication access in the ICU is a basic right, not a luxury.

The conversation moves from story to strategy: how lived experience reshaped her practice, how she founded A Neu Healing Therapy to bring neuro-rehabilitation innovations to survivors, and what clinicians, hospital leaders, and families can do now, build trauma-informed teams, ensure reliable ways for non-speaking patients to be heard, and measure recovery by dignity as well as function. Throughout, Dr. Adams draws out practical takeaways and a wider systems lens, leaving listeners with both hope and a concrete roadmap for more humane, effective care.

TRANSCRIPT:

Podcast Commentator: Welcome to podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams, where we bring you powerful conversations with leading voices in disability rights, employment and inclusion. Our guests share their expertise, experiences and strategies to inspire action and create a more inclusive world. If you're passionate about social justice or want to make a difference, you're in the right place. Let's dive in with your host, Doctor Kirk Adams.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Welcome, everybody, to podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams. And I am said Doctor Kirk Adams talking to you from my home office in Seattle, Washington. And I have a I say amazing guest today, Vanessa Abraham, who's a speech pathologist who's not only practiced speech pathology but has experienced the need for speech therapy herself, and I'll let her tell her story. I did want to acknowledge Mai Ling Chan, who is the source for me knowing Vanessa. Mai Ling is a an amazing disability advocate and she has created a platform called Exceptional Leaders Network ELN and it's a very small monthly subscription fee to be amongst some amazing people and get to spend some, some focused time with Mai Ling as well. So I, I met I met Vanessa through the ELN and she has brought her talent, skills and passions to the world to help support individuals who need support in their in their speech and articulation. And she's developed some amazing new technologies. And I was just speaking to the disability ERG at Russell Investments here in Seattle yesterday. And we talked about the fact that anyone can join us as disabled citizens at any time and people can become disabled and non-disabled, and it's very fluid.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And we talked about the difference between impairment and disability. For instance, I have a visual impairment. I'm blind, I can't see, but if I have my Jaws screen reading software, my Refreshable Braille display, and my computer with the tools I have, I'm not in a disabling situation. If you take those things away and I just have a regular computer with no screen reading technology and a monitor, I am in a disabling situation. So Vanessa, I just want to turn it over to you. I know you were working with students in public schools for quite some time, and then something, something really transformational happened in 2019. And if you could take, take us, take us through your journey. Where? Where have you been? And where are you at now? Where? Where do you hope to take things? Where are you planning to take things and what? What's what's working well for you? And are there any any challenges you'd like us to know about?

Vanessa Abraham: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me here today. And you're right. My journey began in 2019. So a little over six years ago as you mentioned, I am a school based speech pathologist. I work with school aged kids with communication challenges. So anyone from using things like text to speech or eye gaze, augmentative communication devices to students that may be working on stuttering and producing smooth speech or articulation. So that's kind of where my world has been for the past 15 or so years, just working as a school based speech pathologist until one day 2019, when I became the patient in the bed receiving speech therapy. And that's really when my world got turned upside down, where I realized what it was like to have a communication impairment not only a communication impairment, but a voice and swallowing impairment, too. And I required extensive speech therapy. How it all began. I talked extensively about this in my book, speechless, that I launched about ten months ago. Launched in January. It began just as a virus. And this virus slowly paralyzed my brainstem and spinal cord. As you said, it can happen overnight. It's very fluid. You just never know what tomorrow will bring. And for me, within a week's time, I was intubated and in my. Or on my way to ICU you at UCSD, San Diego where my life completely turned upside down. And as I said, I became the patient in the bed. Never imagined when I was in grad school that I would be the one sitting in the chair having a barium swallow study. And eventually I was to.

Dr. Kirk Adams: What is. What is that?

Vanessa Abraham: So the barium swallow study is a study that you do in the ICU or in the acute setting that looks at your swallowing muscles. How? And it tests your swallowing. Are you safe to swallow? Are you safe to be eating orally? For me, due to the nature of this virus that was paralyzing my brainstem, spinal cord, it paralyzed all the muscles in my neck that are used for voice and swallowing. So I was no longer able to swallow food safely. My vocal cords experienced significant atrophy, so they weren't working quite as well as they should be. My upper body was paralyzed. I was not able to move my right arm to right, to point, to do much of anything. And this all happened within days or a week. I was fine. I was out, like I said, I was. I talk about this in my book. I was out camping with my family, and then all of a sudden I woke up and I thought, I've got a cold. I need to go home. Well, that cold quickly progressed into this upper body. It's called what I have is the pharyngeal cervical brachial variant of Guillain-Barré. So most people with Guillain-Barre, their feet have extensive paralysis. My feet were fine. I was actually able to walk. I just couldn't move my upper body or swallow foods. So, again, I was the patient in the bed. I had to learn to talk again. I used I gaze, I used text to speech. I had to write my words down and eventually I used this thing called a passy-muir valve.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Vanessa, I'm I'm pretty immersed in the in the blindness world, and I, I've spent a lot of time with the deaf blind community, but the the speech and communication challenges are, are not as familiar to me. So you mentioned eye gaze. You mentioned text to speech. You mentioned, I think augmentative communication devices. Could you, could you just spend a few minutes talking about the various technologies?

Vanessa Abraham: Yeah, absolutely. So eye gaze. I was not able to communicate verbally. I was also not able to use my fingers to point to gesture. I was pretty locked in, so the only way I could communicate was by looking at a word on a piece of paper or looking at a letter like Y for yes, N for no, or the word yes and for no. And my family had to track my eyes.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay.

Vanessa Abraham: They would ask me a question like, are you in pain? And I had to look at the word yes. And they would track my eyes to see because I wasn't able to point to the word yes. And I progressed from using eye gaze to being able to point to letters on a piece of paper. When my fingers were able to move a little bit better, I was able to point to letters for like, yes, or you know, when I had a burning question what's happening to me? I could type in every letter for a sentence. It was a very slow process to communicate that way, and very frustrating. However, it was a modality of communication for me, which was very important. I progressed from using the the little letter board to writing on a whiteboard, and eventually I was able to use my phone. And being a speech pathologist, I knew that there was greater technology out there than just writing things on a piece of paper. So that was a point where I decided to ask for my phone. I asked my family and give me my phone. I want to download a text to speech app, which I did. I got a free app and I just was able to type very fast questions on my phone and ask questions, and after that I was they gave me the speech pathologist there, gave me a passy-muir valve to trial. That's a valve that goes on your tracheostomy that allows you to vocalize. So that was the point that I was able to communicate with the tracheostomy. And that was a very, very hard, scary period of my life, learning just to go up again and hear my voice again. That was something I'll never forget, honestly.

Dr. Kirk Adams: How long was that process from waking up intubated and paralyzed to being able to use the the valve?

Vanessa Abraham: Close to a month, three weeks or so.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Three weeks of hard work, I imagine.

Vanessa Abraham: Oh, extremely hard work. Extremely hard work. And eventually that was removed, and I was able to vocalize without any type of assistive technology. But that's when I also had to experience a lot of speech therapy for voice. So I did that, and I did a lot of swallowing therapy, probably for about, oh, let's see, three, four months of swallowing therapy before my peg tube was removed and I was able to swallow foods orally, safely. And from there on out it was just a lot of rehab, a lot of physical therapy, a lot of occupational therapy. Speech therapy lasted about 4 or 5 months. And then I was able to once I was able to eat food safely, then I was discharged from that therapy. But it was a experience that I'll never forget. I've really learned as a speech pathologist what medical trauma is, and the associated depression and anxiety that goes along with being critically ill. And an experience in the ICU when you really weren't planning on that. I talk about this thing. It's called pics Post-intensive Care syndrome. I talk about that pretty extensively in my book, and that's the psychological aspect of an ICU stay. And a lot of the depression, the suicidal ideation that we go through, a lot of the brain fog and forgetfulness that ICU survivors go through. And that's just something that I never learned about in grad school as a clinician.

Vanessa Abraham: I've never I never really realized that this existed until I got out of the ICU and I was experiencing all of this myself. And the doctor and the ICU met with me. And she goes, Vanessa, I think you have this thing called Pics Post-intensive Care Syndrome, and she sat down with me and explained it to me and I said, yes, I definitely am experiencing all of that. A lot of that suicidal ideation where my, you know, my life was completely flipped upside down within days. I was very healthy. I never experienced anything more than like a runny nose my whole life, maybe an occasional flu or cold or something, but definitely never experienced trying to rehabilitate back from a swallowing disorder, a communication disorder, paralysis. It was very, very hard journey to to say it lightly. And six years later, I am a lot better. I still advocate heavily for pics and pics. Survivors, ICU survivors. I do a lot of speaking about it now, just trying to educate the next group of graduates and schools and families as well. It's really important to me to, for family members to understand that their loved ones that are getting out of the ICU have experienced trauma, and what that trauma may look like for them.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Is that send them fairly newly identified. I, I've been in the disability spaces a long time. I've certainly heard about trauma informed design and trauma informed programming, but I've never heard the term before.

Vanessa Abraham: Yeah, I'm so glad you asked that because it is. Well, yes and no. Is it new? It's something that's not talked about heavily. However, it has been out there. Okay. I am working with a group of individuals that are working on getting an ICD code for picks right now, and we're really hoping that that will be out in 2026. Okay. And if that happens, then it will really it'll really put picks pics on the map. It'll get people to start talking about it and understanding it because as you know, people haven't heard about this. They don't understand. They think that you got out of ICU, you fought, you lived. You should be great and grateful and happy and and look what you accomplished. And that's right. Yes, I am grateful. My team was phenomenal. They saved my life. My family was wonderful. However, I'm not the same person. No one's the same after they've experienced trauma.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Right? Right. And my trauma came early in my life. Just to let you know, my retina is detached. When I was five and I had a lot of surgeries and was hospitalized for lengthy periods of time between age six and 12. And I was speaking with a therapist some years ago dealing with some issues, and she said, have you done anything to address your childhood trauma? I he said. What? Childhood trauma? She said. You were six years old, operated on and in the hospital with your head in a clamp for ten days at a time. So it's it's interesting that pix has been identified, and I will be reading your book and learning much more about it.

Vanessa Abraham: That is what you just said to about childhood traumas and addressing those that is so important and so real. Because even if you're a child and you've gone through a medical, medical trauma or traumatic event that still sits with you as an adult, right? It truly does. Medical trauma. I've talked with significant people about this same topic, that medical trauma can be an adverse childhood experience, and that's something that really needs to be talked about. Kids when they're born babies and they're in the NICU, they're not able to be held by their mothers, their fathers. They're not getting that skin to skin that can be traumatic for kids. A two year old that's getting that, that is admitted to the ICU for a medical condition, a car accident, watching loved ones go through an ICU stay that is very traumatic and needs to be talked about because these traumas stay with that person until they're 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 years old.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Right. And the ICD code, is that some sort of formal diagnosis? What is the ICD code?

Vanessa Abraham: Yeah. So the ICD code is what the insurance and medical professionals use for billing and medical research. So that's going to really help in the future because it's really going to it's going to put pics on the map and people are going to start understanding it and and addressing it appropriately. Here's a here's a classic example. When I got out of the ICU I went to try to find mental health services because of the significant depression, the suicidal ideation, and the first therapist that I went to. Mind you, I had lost significant weight because I was in the ICU. I had a lot of atrophy, and at this point in time I was tube fed still and, you know, very, very frail. And I walked into her office and sat on her couch and, you know, was very emotional. And she asked me how much I weighed. And I told her and she said, well, what did you weighed before? And I told her, and she starts doing these medical or these calculations on her calculator. And I thought, I wonder what she's doing. And then next thing you know, she starts speaking. And she wanted to put me in a support group for eating disorders, and I wanted to just cry because I have an eating disorder. I had a swallowing disorder where I couldn't safely eat food, and this is where people are just so uneducated, as you know, The world is uneducated on what the difference between a swallowing disorder and an eating disorder, right? I walked out of her. I walked out of her office crying.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. So misunderstood.

Vanessa Abraham: Yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And not. Not seen. Not heard.

Vanessa Abraham: Yes.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Right. You mentioned working with a group of people to establish the ICD code. If people are listening, and this is a striking a chord with them or resonating with them, and they think that that might be me, or are there groups that people can connect with or resources that you would recommend? Of course. Please tell people how to find your book. Absolutely. Other resources in this? I have not seen the term, I think ICU survivor either, until I looked at your LinkedIn profile.

Vanessa Abraham: So yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Absolutely. Where can people connect with community?

Vanessa Abraham: Yeah. Great question. Because my community, honestly, is what kept me alive. Knowing that there were support groups out there for picks and people that understood me is what really got me through those very, very dark moments. They encouraged me to write the book and help me launch the book. And but in terms of support groups, I can always be reached through my website, WW. Dot com. I'm also on social media. Speechless SLP so please anybody reach out to me? That's one resource. But also the support groups that I have been through, there's one in Pittsburgh at Mercy, and there's another one in Vanderbilt. And they have weekly support group meetings that you're definitely encouraged to call and contact, and you can join their support groups. There is another girl that does a medical trauma support group. She does a weekly meeting as well. She's in And in Austin, Texas. Her name is Sarah. She can be reached at Medical trauma Support. Com. So there are a lot of resources out there.

Dr. Kirk Adams: That's great.

Vanessa Abraham: The big problem is, is that this is just not talked about enough. People don't realize that. Yeah, you've lived, but there's there's the after effect of of rehabilitation and how traumatizing that is, how many flashbacks we have PTSD very significant PTSD of sights, sounds, smells just triggers that we see. For me, if I see an ambulance, that's a trigger for me because I wrote in three different ambulances. One of them was very traumatic, where I was hallucinating. Just on on heavy, heavy narcotics just for the pain that I was in. So it's just important to realize that you're not alone and that there is support out there. Also, something that's really important to realize as well is that family members can experience picks too. And that's called picks family. And it's normal for a family member to have some of this PTSD because they watch their loved ones fight for their lives. They may have seen a very scary medical procedure. I talk about one in my book with my husband and what he saw and what he experienced, and that's real. And it's okay to talk about it and join support groups, because those support groups and building that community, for me, it was everything that's.

Dr. Kirk Adams: It is very heartening to know that there are resources available for people. I did want to ask you about. You've developed some new therapies based on your experience. And I think a new healing. Can you talk to us about that?

Vanessa Abraham: Yeah. I've learned an entirely different way of treating voice and swallowing disorders just because of what I have been through. So, of course, me, the speech pathologist. I relied on the literature of what I learned in grad school to address voice and swallowing disorders. But I came across that direct current direct current e-stim device is called the newbie. And when during my rehabilitation and they were using it for me just to get that brain body connection going again, getting the the neuroplasticity, getting the brain to connect with the nervous system. And it was unbelievable for me in reducing a lot of the pain that I was experiencing and getting movement back into my body, just being able to lift my limbs again, being able to lift things again, getting my strength back. So the speech pathologist in me was thinking, okay, well, if it can do this, that and the other for other parts of my nervous system, why can't this address voice and swallowing?

Dr. Kirk Adams: Why can't in simple terms that I can understand.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Tell me how the device works.

Vanessa Abraham: Yes.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So it's like direct current.

Vanessa Abraham: Yeah. So have you used, like, a basic e-stim device where you put the little sticky pads? Have you ever seen one of those little sticky pads? So it's like that. It's much more powerful. Okay. It's a direct current device which your body works on. Is is basically a direct current device. So this device works very similarly to the way your nervous system already works.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay.

Vanessa Abraham: It was an absolute.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So your upper body is paralyzed. Are they attaching this to your arm then to.

Vanessa Abraham: I would I would.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Stimulate.

Vanessa Abraham: Yeah I would just attach it to various muscles on my body that were not activating like so my right arm was paralyzed. It wasn't able to move that. And I was able to gain movement much faster than I was previously.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And so the new the new device applies the direct current to the inactive or not responding muscle. Yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Makes it work.

Vanessa Abraham: Yeah. It wakes it up for a lack of.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay, okay, okay.

Vanessa Abraham: And so the speech therapist in me and thought, okay, well, if what I have Guillain-Barre is a neurological disorder, why can't this work on the nervous system of kids with, say, autism? So I just started thinking out of the box, and then I thought, okay, well, my swallowing muscles are impaired. Why can't this work for swallowing? It's if it's working on the muscles in my bicep, why can't it work for the voice? The muscles used for swallowing And all the muscles that are used for, you know voicing and communication. Everything in my neck was paralyzed.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay.

Vanessa Abraham: So I just started thinking out of the box, and sure enough, I wasn't afraid of the device. I thought, well, if I did this to my arms and every other body part in my place, in my body, and it took away the pain, why shouldn't it work for other areas? So I started doing that, and sure enough, it was taking away a lot of the pain that I had associated with eating you know, and muscles underneath my chin like the hyoid muscles. I used to have a lot of significant pain there when I would eat, and I was able to eliminate that pain. So it really opened my eyes that, hey, there's other ways to treat some of these speech related disabilities. And if it worked on me, I know it works on other people. So it's been really eye opening for me.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So you're using that technology in your practice?

Vanessa Abraham: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

Dr. Kirk Adams: I.

Vanessa Abraham: I firmly believe in it. It gave me my life back. And it's doing the same for many people that I've worked with too. I've had kids with autism that had pretty significant autism where they're now able to sit and attend and they're calmer. Their nervous system is quieter. So it really works on like, things like the vagus nerve. And it's been it's been really good. A lot of people may think it's a little bit strange because it's not necessarily in the research, it's in the research for other areas, but not necessarily voice and swallowing. But I've experienced it. I've lived it. I've I've learned it.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And and our other speech pathologists are starting to adopt it as well. Are you spreading the word.

Dr. Kirk Adams: No, no, it's. Yeah, it's the pioneer.

Vanessa Abraham: Yeah.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah. Okay.

Vanessa Abraham: And it's it's phenomenal. I can't even begin to describe the changes that it's given me in the life that it's given to me again. I do a lot of the vagus nerve stimulation with the newbie as well, and it's helped me sleep better. It's helped me just get a little bit more grounded in my life. So. But I've, I just can say that because I've lived it and I've used it on myself, and I've. I'm no longer tube fed. I don't have that swallowing pain.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Well, tell us. Tell us a little bit about the book and where people can find the book. And then again to let people you mentioned it once before, but I want people to make sure and catch it of how they can get in touch with you.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah.

Vanessa Abraham: The book launched in January. That I can honestly say took probably 4 or 5 years to write just because of the emotional load of it. It was very emotional to get it out on paper. It was one of those things that I would write a page or a paragraph or maybe a chapter here and there, and then I would close my laptop and close it, because it was just so traumatic reliving a lot of those experiences again for me. And it would bring up a lot of memories and a lot of that trauma again. And it was just too hard for me to go complete. And then I hired and you may know this name, Maddie Murray from the Exceptional Leaders.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah, yeah.

Vanessa Abraham: So she's a speech pathologist, and she helped me filter through all of my medical notes, because a lot of the medical notes, not only were they traumatizing for me to read again, but a lot of it I didn't quite understand because I'm not a medical based speech pathologist. I work in the schools. So she sat with me, held my hand through it, held my hand right through all the tears and the the fears and the worries and the anxiety I had over the book. And we launched this book in January, this of this year, 2025. And I can honestly say that once it launched, I felt so good that my story was out there and that hopefully my story will help other people that are going through the depression, the anxiety that everything, medical trauma that I have lived through. So the book can be found on Amazon. You can just go to Amazon and you can type in speechless. How a speech therapist lost her ability to speak and are silent, struggle to reclaim her voice in life. You could probably also type in speechless. Vanessa. Abraham.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Yeah.

Vanessa Abraham: And then again, yes, I am on LinkedIn. Vanessa Abraham I'm on Instagram. Speechless. Underscore SLP Facebook speechless SLP. And those are different social platforms that I'm currently on.

Dr. Kirk Adams: So this is all pretty new to me. So I might not have asked all the questions I should have asked. This is, are there other aspects or dynamics that you want to make sure that people become aware of?

Vanessa Abraham: No picks is my big piece that I like to talk about. I like to educate people about it. I like to talk to nurses, respiratory therapists, OT, PT, pharmacists, social workers and just educate people that this is real. This is a conversation that we need to be talking about. Social workers, upon discharge, can have these conversations with their loved ones and saying, look.

Dr. Kirk Adams: There's this thing.

Vanessa Abraham: Yes, there is this thing. And when your loved one comes home, they may have confusion, they may.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Be.

Vanessa Abraham: Disoriented, they may be profoundly depressed. Get them therapy. It's okay. Go to therapy as a family, as a couple. Because people don't realize that you come home and you are you are really changed person.

Dr. Kirk Adams: And it's Post-intensive care syndrome, correct?

Vanessa Abraham: Yeah. Post-intensive care syndrome or Pic. You can go to ICU delirium. That's another good website.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Okay.

Vanessa Abraham: A wealth of information on that website as well.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Icu delirium.com.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Dot com. Great. Well this has been super enlightening for me. Vanessa I really appreciate your time and your care and your intentionality about what you're doing with the experience you had to help other people, which is a beautiful thing. If people want to get in touch with me, I have a website which is just Dr. Kirk adams.com. So doctor Kirk adams.com, you can find me there. Sign up for the newsletter on LinkedIn. I am Kirk Adams, PhD and I trust you all learned a lot today on podcast by Doctor Kirk Adams. And we will see you next time.

Vanessa Abraham: Thank you.

Dr. Kirk Adams: Thanks, Vanessa.

Podcast Commentator: Thank you for listening to podcasts by Doctor Kirk Adams. We hope you enjoyed today's conversation. Don't forget to subscribe, share or leave a review at WW. Together, we can amplify these voices and create positive change. Until next time, keep listening, keep learning and keep making an impact.