Real SLP Stories: Grad Student Discrimination, CCC Confusion & F-Code Insurance Chaos

In this listener mailbag episode, SLP grad students, clinicians, and private practice owners call the Minivan Meltdown line to share what’s really happening behind the scenes in our field.

First, a grad student with a repaired bilateral cleft lip and palate describes a supervisor who told her she “can’t be a good SLP” because of her speech difference. Dr. Jeanette Benigas and Preston Lewis, SLP, break down discrimination in training, how CCC standards exclude disabled and Deaf clinicians, and why difference is not disorder.

Next, a medical SLP who accidentally dropped her CCC in 2008 shares what happened when she kept her state license and kept working. We talk shame culture, confusion around the CCC, mutual recognition agreements, and why so many CCC “rules” fall apart under scrutiny.

Finally, a private practice owner in Kentucky explains how pediatric F-codes (like F80) were treated as “mental health” diagnoses, triggering visit caps, mass denials, and 12–18 month reimbursement delays. We unpack F-code chaos, the Mental Health Parity Act, and why small practices shouldn’t be the ones stuck fighting insurers.

If you’ve ever been gaslit by a supervisor, confused by the CCC, or crushed by insurance games, this episode is your reminder: you’re not the problem. The system is.

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Creators and Guests

Host

Jeanette Benigas, PhD/SLP

Host of Fix SLP

Host

Preston Lewis, MS/SLP

Co-host of Fix SLP

What is Fix SLP: Advocacy & Accountability in Speech-Language Pathology?

Fix SLP is an SLP Podcast by Dr. Jeanette Benigas about advocacy, autonomy, and reform in Speech-Language Pathology. This show exposes credentialing gatekeeping, dismantles CCC requirements, and helps SLPs advocate for change. Each episode equips SLPs with tools to reclaim their profession. Subscribe now and join the movement transforming speech-language pathology. Follow @fix.slp on Instagram and TikTok. Visit fixslp.com.

Jeanette Benigas 0:05
Welcome to Fix SLP, the podcast shaking up the field of speech language pathology. We're calling out the barriers that hold clinicians back fixing broken systems that limit our care and giving the power of our profession back to the people who live it every day. This is where fearless clinicians come together. It's time to change the field with our voices, leadership and advocacy leading the way. So let's fix SLP!

Preston Lewis 0:34
And hello again, fellow Fixers. Preston Lewis joining you today with Dr Jeanette Benigas. Jeanette, I decided to go outdoors for this pod today, the autumnal spirit is washing over me as the fall colors are here. The heat is finally broken, and this is kind of getting into that busy season where the invoices are arriving. The fear keeps coming. But wow, we keep hearing from some great people, and today, I think we're going to have a conversation with a lot of our fellow Fixers that phoned in. And I'm excited about this.

Jeanette Benigas 1:07
You left off that Ohio State keeps winning.

Preston Lewis 1:10
Yes, well, they do play in the Pop Warner Football League with all the little leaguers. But yes,

Jeanette Benigas 1:17
We will have a discussion later. And you but you said the fall colors are here. We are in very different parts of the country. Okay, you've got like one speck of yellow behind your head. And if we were to go out to my backyard, where I have a bunch of property, you would see nearly zero leaves. So fall colors have left me, and they have not yet arrived to you.

Preston Lewis 1:41
I am in this backyard that has very large oak tree, which doesn't really put on a demonstration of colors, but there are a lot of pretty oranges and reds here in the natural state, in the middle of SEC country, I might point out. So you know, all you big tenors, but no, Ohio State is playing great like, it's more like big 15 or thing now there's more than 10. Yeah, I don't know how many. I can't keep track. We are recording this on November the seventh, and I would be remiss if I didn't say Happy belated birthday. I feel like a real schmuck. It has been a week. I have tangled with my share of schizophrenics this week, but I'm with my favorite head case today, and you Jeanette and Happy belated birthday.

Jeanette Benigas 2:20
Thanks. I don't announce it. I'm I'm old now. My best friend was like, I guess life just keeps going when you're this old. So before we jump in, I just want to remind everybody as of this recording two weeks out from our Fix SLP, after dark event in Washington, DC, we've been selling tickets. Come join us. fixslp.com you can get some tickets. What are we talking about today, Preston?

Preston Lewis 2:51
We've really just been crazy busy. We got a great response last week from the pod, from our two very wonderful guests, but we have kind of looked back in our minivan meltdown line and made some of those files recently and realized we have some really great content there, in terms of folks that, gosh, are just trying to battle their way through the SLP world. And I think we need to hear from them. There are some wonderful calls there. We appreciate those, and we're likely we've talked about this several times. Jeanette, we're going to rework and maybe re brand that line. I recognize that not everybody's driving a minivan. I don't want everyone to feel like that's prerequisite for that. There are a lot of folks out there crying in their cars and driving minivans, though, but we would like to continue to hear from you. I think the format Jeanette, as I went through today is it's really wonderful, but having that listener mailbag section maybe either be a pod that we just drop from time to time, where we sort of clearing house these things, or continuing to make it a function of our regular pod is important because that's really what this movement is about. It's about your participation. It's about your voice. And perhaps we, even, as part of that rebranding, let folks know that if you want your name in there, maybe that's something we start adding. We have tried to keep that anonymous because we recognize very big fear that is out there. We even have one call on that topic today. But for SLPs that want to be outspoken, perhaps we'll let you know that if you know you want your name in there and where you're from, we're happy to drop that as well, but for now, we'll continue to honor anonymity for today.

Jeanette Benigas 4:36
Yeah, I think that's really important. I had a very lovely conversation via DMs with a listener yesterday and sharing with me about a business. And I asked if she was willing to share the name of the business, and she said, as long as you don't tell anyone. And I assured her, I said, this format, this platform, this movement, will never work if. I violate people's trust, and we never share things with names or without names, even if they're redacted. We always ask. So I want people to just know that I feel like at this point, I have become the keeper of SLP, secrets. You know, people share stuff with me that I don't even share with the team because they've asked me to not share with anyone. I've signed non disclosures and I've not shared that information. So your words and your thoughts and opinions are safe with us, and if we think they're important enough to share, because maybe we've heard it a bunch of times, or we know it's going to help other people, we will ask you before we share your stuff.

Preston Lewis 5:39
So Jeanette, I'm going to ask, because I took today's pod outdoors. I'm not in the Fix SLP broadcast wing of Arkansas right now. I took it to the outdoor area, and I'm going to kind of feel our way into some of these sound files. I would like to listen to one of our most recent additions. This is from a SLP that is in her last clinical rotation, so maybe not full SLP wings yet, but on her way, and she talked about, really, what I think is just a heartfelt and sad situation of a clinical supervisor, which is really just, I think it's a full case of discrimination. So could we? Can we listen to that at this time?

Minivan Meltdown 6:29
I just want to talk today about supervisors for speech therapy graduate students. I'm a SLP graduate student in my final year, in my final clinical placement, and I've had a supervisor that's really hurt me personally, so I have a repaired bilateral cleft lip and palate, and it's part of why I'm going into the speech field. But she's told me multiple times that I can't be a good SLP, because I have a difference and I can't model articulation properly. She's tried to get me to say certain sounds, to listen to me, and I've had to prove time after time saying there's a difference here, but there's not a disorder. None of the sounds that I say are wrong or there's not a disorder. There's nothing that's there that I can't model, and I have that clinical knowledge of where the placements need to be for your articulators. So it's just been very disheartening to have that as my final experience. I knew it's something that I'd have to endure personally, but it's hard to actually see that and hear that in my final rotation that I would have to tell this clinician, hey, you need to stop putting me down like that.

Jeanette Benigas 7:51
Oh, man, I instant tears right now.

Preston Lewis 7:56
Yeah, that was hard. I actually listened to this after I had dropped off my daughter from school, and I had set up a series of these files to play in the car, and that one was really difficult, because we have shared many stories on this pod of people who have gone through despicable graduate rotations in different locations where the sting of discrimination or just hatred and pettiness is there, and this is one that really hits close to home, because if you can't find empathy, if you can't find understanding about speech, for people who have overcome cleft palate and have had speech language pathology, have gone through that process, offer us such a unique glimpse into the struggle for many of our patients. And you're a clinical supervisor who is going to nitpick this person Listen, we listen to this. This is someone who has great speech is, you know, can you say that? Well, you know, there might be not perfect to the King's English standard. Well, you know what? Get bent, you know, just step off. I cannot, for the life of me, imagine how this person continues to be involved in the maturation of SLPs And shame on this college. And I could, you know, I cynically, can imagine that this person will line right up and do it again next semester, because that's just the that's just the way we do things. But this is someone who is despicable. And I, my advice right now is, if there's any way to, you know, document this and to report this, not only to the university, perhaps even to your state licensing board, I to me, you know, maybe there's not something here that's black and white, a violation, but this person needs to be called to account.

Jeanette Benigas 9:47
We could make this an entire episode. There are so many layers here that I've been wanting to unpack with you, with some conversations that I've had with other listeners and Fixers. And this runs a lot deeper. There are so many layers of this onion to peel, and yes, maybe there is an ethics violation or something that should be reported to the state, but we talked on the last podcast about systemic issues and advocating for yourself and and I, I did mention, you know, some of these issues we are responsible for, but this one I am going to place squarely atop ashes shoulders, because I in the last couple weeks, we have had another account begin following us, and this woman is part of the Deaf Culture. She's deaf, and my eyes were made wide open to something that we've never talked about on this platform, and we are going to have to put in the content at some point. But just a quick overview, ASHA has these standards, these as a professor, we have these standards for accreditation and for purchase of the CCC that have to be followed, and where the judge, the professors, the supervisors, are the judge of if you're meeting these standards. But then there is also no room for difference. And like she said, that she's not disordered, you know, she just has a difference. And what came to light from this other accounts post is, what about folks who are deaf and use sign language to communicate? Guess what? Those folks can't meet the standards, and ASHA won't change them. So if you are deaf, you cannot become a speech language pathologist, because how are you going to show that you've met the standards for articulation? And I think this all rolls into this. There has to be another way for people with differences. Who better to treat than this student who just reached out to us, who will is going to have the compassion and the understanding for these little babies and these kids who are growing up, who are going through surgeries, and their parents who are going through getting surgeries for their kids and like, Is my kid gonna be okay? And she is living proof, hey, I'm fine. I am succeeding. I am living a happy and fulfilling life. I'm entering this field to help other people. Same thing with folks who are deaf. Hey, I'm part of this amazing deaf culture. I am using not American English out of my mouth, but I'm using American Sign Language, which is a language in the United States of America. Who better to be providing those types of therapies, and even if there is a difference that is impacting their ability to treat like someone who's deaf or maybe her sounds aren't coming at hers are fine. They sounded great, but maybe she doesn't have one. That's exactly right. Don't treat that if it's impacting your ability to provide quality treatment, treat dysphagia, treat aphasia, treat something else, treat language, treat pragmatics. There are so many other things that people can treat you had no idea you are opening up these floodgates that I've been really upset about all of this, and I think this, again, falls right onto Ash's shoulders, because they have these standards. They say what needs to be met, and they have this really vague description, and then it's left up to the supervisor. And if this supervisor doesn't think she sounds great, then guess what? She's going to give her a zero or a one and potentially f up her entire academic career, because the university is then going to look at those scores, and depending on the university, they might support her, they might support the supervisor, and no one is held to account.

Preston Lewis 13:55
My sense is based on past experience and this particular call, which is just wow, where our hearts break. Here they will. I didn't get the sense that failure is on the line, but it's just yeah, but it's a demeaning, belittling process. It's one that seeks to devalue and all, all I can say for to add to this, along with what I've already said, which is, I would approach it quietly. From an ethics standpoint, I think that you're in an impossible situation to advocate directly for yourself at this moment. So I would encourage to get out of this group think mentality. My own experience goes back. You know, we're now talking 16 years ago, 17 I could lose count a graduate supervisor who just ran me through the meat grinder because I am not the best Arctic guy, 100% with R and trying to distinguish everything. There are degrees of which I can just sort of sometimes let students kind of get into a you. Uh, into a bigger box there. And I was told, well, you'll just never really make a great school. SLP, but that'll be fine if you go work. Sniff, okay, way to pigeonhole me at that age as a young, SLP, and tell me that I can't do something when, in fact, I now work with adolescents. Now, do I go in there directly with the flash cards every day. And, you know, kill ours for 14 year olds who don't give a damn if they make an R, no, I don't!

Jeanette Benigas 15:26
NO, you steal the cards. You steal the cards.

Jeanette Benigas 15:30
Yeah, I steal, I steal the cards. That was what then, for the listeners that are here. You know, in my graduate experience, my supervisor accused me of stealing some articulation cards, and they and they turned up, yeah, they turned up like the next day. And so this is the, you know, to come full circle. This is that group think mentality that's out there with SLPs, that just think that they are just churning these things out like a ditto machine back in the day. And that is that top down mentality that we even talked about last week, where you think the school SLP has to be this person that is cloistered away in this little troll ish closet with all these little articulation cards, day in and day out, drill, drill, drill, report, report, bill, bill, bill. IEP, you know, meeting after one, and you never get out of the tower. You're locked in there, and I imagine the supervisor is just a miserable person, and she's making her students miserable. She sounds like she's got a bright, compassionate, very eager to jump into this field person that's underneath her, and she is treating her like she's deformed. Have you no shame? Oh, so yes. Thank you for that call. Thank you for your story. Thank you for letting us share this. But if you know, for those out there that are in these situations, we've got to push back guys, yeah, and before we go any further, I want to apologize I don't. Indeed have a chicken sitting on my shoulder. I felt I wondered about that. Yeah, I know. And they're just, you know, they were back there in the coop earlier at the start of the broadcast, and I felt bad because they were caged up. And, you know, in my mind, I hear that Maya Angelou is from Arkansas, by the way, I hear that title. I Know Why the Caged Bird scene. So I thought I would let the chickens run free. And what do they do? They get right over my shoulder. So I look like I this is an Arkansas pirate. We put a chicken on our shoulder. So here we go. Yeah. So they we now have, we now have new credits and new stars to the FixSLP team and the chicken coop gang. So sorry about that if they're directing, but, you know, here we are.

Jeanette Benigas 17:37
We live different lives.

Preston Lewis 17:38
You made a great point earlier you were talking about, you know, the dreaded CCC came up. We heard from another fixer who called in, and this is someone who let their CCC lapse years ago, thinking that it was just membership, and then suddenly woke up to realize the sun continues to go up every year. She's continuing to work as an SLP For now, well over a decade. We're past the 15 year mark, and so let's hear from her at this time.

Minivan Meltdown 18:09
So I've been in SLP, for over 20 years. I wanted to respond to something that was mentioned on the fear podcast the other day, and that is regarding, are there really SLPs out there without the Cs? So I dropped my Cs back around 2008 I dropped it accidentally, like we've talked about so many times on this podcast, everything regarding licensure and membership and Cs, it's also confusing. And back then I feel like it was honestly even more confusing. I thought I was dropping my membership. I thought that the Cs was a one time thing, because that's what it is. So I thought I had it once. It was mine forever. And so I was confused, and thought I had dropped the membership when I found out what had happened, of course, I still had my state licensure, so I knew I was safe. I didn't need my Cs for my job. I was embarrassed, for sure, but then, over the next couple years, I had two co workers who were actually in the exact same boat where medical SLPs, none of us had our Cs. I was embarrassed. They didn't care. They were happy to not have to pay ASHA. And I think there's probably more out there than we realize. I would suggest, you know, if other people are in the same boat, I get it. Some people need it for their employer. I'd never have there's it's been listed on the job listings for me. Sometimes I've asked about it, and every time I ask, they say, oh, that's old or Oh, you don't really need it. So it's never been a problem for me, and that's been all the way since 2008.

Jeanette Benigas 19:56
I'd love to know her state.

Unknown Speaker 19:58
I'm reminded of an old. A science fiction theme and a story, I think the title was for the world is hollow, and I have touched the sky. There was a culture of people that thought, if they climbed up to a certain point of a mountain, that they really lived like in this snow globe, and they couldn't go any further into the sky, that was it. And I'm thinking about our SLPs out there that are just under this sort of idea that this thing has to be or you just suddenly cease to exist. And she stumbled into this. Sounds like a couple of colleagues either stumbled into it or decided, well, hey, that looks like fun. Good way to augment my Christmas gift budget for the year. Nevertheless, two of them sounded like they said. I've discovered an SLP hack. She felt that she had discovered this, but felt a sense of embarrassment about it. And that goes into our sort of pecking culture that we have. Should say that with chickens over my shoulder, but it's there. And what I would say right now is that for anybody who keeps getting these emails that are getting hectored right now by ASHA telling them, well, you know you're going to have to go take your test. You don't have to take your test as long as your state license is current and going now, if you relocate to some states, what should you perhaps, if you want the CCC back, do you have to take it after a certain period of time? Yes. Can you pass the test? Yes. But for all of these other rules that are in there, even sometimes on state to state portability if you're moving folks, a lot of these rules were written by people that were writing them for Asha, but they've not really been road tested. So I would challenge anyone go have a conversation with a license board have the resources that we have out there to provide if you're moving from, let's say, I don't know, New York, to Oregon, and you're worried about that, and you want someone to advocate on your behalf, to the Oregon licensing board, or to, you know, Nebraska, or wherever you are, call us. We'll advocate for you. We'll give you resources to go in there and say, I have had my state license, and just because I didn't do pay to play doesn't mean I'm not still an SLP, we want to be your partner in that. But know that those rules out there, they may seem so tough, but a lot of them just need to be challenged. The door needs to be knocked on. And I think you'll find that that door opens more often than not, and it's just like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. Oh, it it's not what it looks like, folks, I can promise you.

Jeanette Benigas 22:24
Yeah, we just heard from someone who, I don't know if she let her sees go on purpose some time ago or if hers was a mistake, but with everything going on, she's considering leaving the country. And she asked about the MRA, the mutual recognition agreement, which I have done a ton of research on the MRA, because we keep getting so many questions about it, and you know, having your Cs or not doesn't even guarantee we've mentioned before that you're gonna get the license. The MRA is between membership associations. It gives you portability for membership from ASHA to someone else's membership association, and just like in the United States of America, having your membership and seeds from ASHA does not guarantee that you are going to get a state license, like in Illinois or Florida, they don't give two craps about your CCC. You have to have a current praxis. You have to provide the paperwork. You have to provide things. So just as we've mentioned, in other countries as well, there's not necessarily portability. That's a conversation for another day. It doesn't matter. It there's a lot of times it doesn't matter.

Preston Lewis 23:34
Right. And in the case of our SLP, who was a fallen angel that we put back up in the sky, and Zane Rankin, a big thing in your arsenal is your letter saying that you had once attained the CCC. That's all that is. It's saying that, look, I did the things in order to become a speech language pathologist, just because I didn't continue to tip them every year and nod my cap and, you know, bow down to the ASHA gods and contribute to the party and the foie gras plate, that doesn't make you any less and I will say for SLPs right now that are also contemplating a move perhaps to Canada. There is a need for health care there, in a very profound way, because they have had a big population boom, due diligence is the main thing there, whether you're dealing with provincial licensing boards in Ontario or British Columbia or Alberta, showing that, yes, you went to school, you did your clinical rotations, you did the things that are necessary, but just because you're carrying that C card, you think that that's somehow going to be your golden ticket. It's not you have to show that you've done those things and that you are indeed a medical professional that is wanting to invest that time. It's a hurdle that's there, and having that conversation, making that phone call, it's amazing how many of us, even to this day, I think, because of the texting culture, we're just afraid to sometimes call and reach out to people have it's not what you think it is you. You imagine these barriers. You think you've got this ticket because you bought this thing that you. Think is worth something. It is not worth what you think it is. Folks, you earned that sucker a long time ago. Right now you're just paying to stay on that hamster wheel.

Jeanette Benigas 25:08
Yep

Preston Lewis 25:08
promise

Jeanette Benigas 25:09
Yep.

Minivan Meltdown 25:14
I am a what I would consider a seasoned SLP, for 25 years, I've worked in a variety of settings, from hospitals to public schools, and in the last 13 years, I have been an owner of a private practice. We have done home health, we've done first steps. I've taught at the university. I've supervised students, little bit of everything, but private practice is where I've landed for the last 13 years, and I am beyond frustrated with health insurance, Medicaid, Medicare. I am in central Kentucky. I would love to hear a podcast or your thoughts on pediatrics, speech therapy, coding, the F codes have really caused a lot of grief in private practice over the last couple of years. For instance, the F 80 code last year in 2024 several insurance companies, Anthem, being a primary one for us in Kentucky decided that those were mental health codes, and they fell under the mental health priority act. However, they still capped insurance visits, which the mental health priority Act says you can't cap the number of visits. But they did with speech pathology, OT and PT. I have called ASHA on this, of course, and they, of course, were supposedly trying to work on it. One of our big payers is the University of Kentucky here, and I went directly to the human resource there, and they do their own self insured plan, and they fixed it. However, it took us 18 months to get paid. A lot of other insurance. They did fix it and reimbursed it. Others did not, so it was more cost to the families, and then the families did not want to pay us because they said that's not what it was supposed to be. And then we did not get paid by the insurance company either. So it was a big fiasco, and it literally took us 12 to 18 months to get reimbursed for services we provided. So anyway, I'd love to hear some of your all's thoughts about those coding and if we could work with CMS to get those switched so that people will stop looking at them as mental health codes.

Jeanette Benigas 27:36
We get a lot of questions about that.

Preston Lewis 27:39
We do get a ton of questions about this. I feel like we could probably do three episodes if we had the right guests on there, because private practice owners, operators, they are the ones that understand this. They know exactly where they are getting squeezed, particularly right now with government reimbursements just right there in the crosshair. And it is a topic that is very difficult for a lot of SLPs who are not in that ownership world and not in that direct reimbursement world to talk about. I myself can't speak about it intelligently. We recently kind of went down a Fix SLP brainstorm about, what do we say about if there's a move away from nine to 507, into more codes. And sometimes that's good, sometimes that's bad. I found a myriad of opinions, but one thing I couldn't find was, is what the hell is really going on? And Jeanette knows this just as well as I do. We dealt with it on the issue of the CFY year and the supervision CMS is like talking to a spy agency. I mean, they're the communication there is terrible. Insurance companies don't communicate worth a damn, and so props to this. SLP. I mean, I love hearing somebody from Kentucky. I mean, the sun does shine bright on the Old Kentucky Home. And you really brought it home. You went, you advocated at your state level to change this. But this is where, really, as a national organization, where is ASHA on this for what we're paying them, Tina McNamara should be sleeping on Anthem's front porch. Sorry. I mean, come on, or she should have been when she was asked for President. Now, still gets in the spotlight, but that really, I mean, this is where we are collectively putting our resources into something that should be butting up next to an institution, but instead, you have people picking up the lance that are small business owners who, I promise you, do not have time to do this, and they are literally fighting it out in the trenches with insurance companies that are going to put them on hold. They're going to play keep away. They're going to put you in a phone tree and say, Well, you need to talk to this person. We'll know that this national association, it is a maze. And so, yes, definitely. I'm glad we had this visit. And for the private practice owners that are out there, this individual that called in, we'd love to have you on the pod. We'd love to have two or three folks that are doing this to find out. How did you do this, specifically in your state, and how can this be reproduced? Because right now, there doesn't seem to be a good recipe here. We've got a lot of different casseroles, but we don't really know how to bake this pie every single time.

Jeanette Benigas 30:12
I think that's the beautiful thing about Fix SLP, and why we're here, this person knows how to do this. She asked, Can we go to CMS? Yeah, you want to lead that team? Yeah? Preston and Jeanette can't do it. Rest of our team can't do it. We can't lead every team. This is what I can't say. Keep saying we are maxed you guys. I can barely get the podcast edited every week. We need people like her to say, yeah, let's get it. Let's get a group of five or six people together. Let's go after this, and we're here with resources and a platform.

Preston Lewis 30:44
Right. We don't, we don't have a $60 million budget. We have a chicken and cameras and our, you know, hard working spirit, no, but, I mean, we've come far, and just sharing these stories, talking about what our SLPs have accomplished is everything. But yes, I think it's a good idea for a future episode, but it's one we definitely need to bring guests to, because Preston's working knowledge on this, jeanette's working knowledge on this is not suited to that task. We're people who we go out and we treat and someone else typically pays us, but we want to hear from you, because you are very much at the front lines, and this is where we're getting squeezed, Jeanette, these insurance companies, which continue to just draw down that reimbursement or totally skip out on things where they say, Well, this is a psych code. We're not going to pay this over a certain point. Wow, yeah, I can tell you, in my world, speech therapy and psych kind of go hand in hand at times, especially when you're dealing with pragmatics.

Jeanette Benigas 31:39
Reminder, Preston works at a psych hospital. Just side note.

Preston Lewis 31:43
Yeah, you know, I found out something this week Jeanette, that we did a activity where some of the kids that we worked with in conjunction with a psych group, but also on social pragmatics, had to talk about where they feel anger on their body. And so we had this human body, and they drew on different parts. Interestingly enough, a lot of my patients feel anger in their hands and in their arms. Interesting. Had one kid though that had drew this picture near his stomach, and I said, Oh. I said, Do you feel anger in your stomach? He said, No, that's in my kidneys. Okay, so you never know, but we want those SLPs out there that are getting their kids to express themselves, especially for the kid that's feeling angry in his kidneys. So, yeah, wow,

Jeanette Benigas 32:27
I'm in love with him.

Preston Lewis 32:28
Yeah. Welcome to my world. Amazing. One more thing, Jeanette, I would be remiss too. I have this one kid at the hospital. Jeanette, he's so sweet. He's very inquisitive. I wore one of my Fix SLP shirts to the hospital recently, he stopped me and he said, What does no CCC SLP mean? And I sat down, and he was really, genuinely curious, so I explained this concept to him, and now he goes up to the other therapist in the hospital and says, You really need to quit getting your CCC. You don't need that. You're getting screwed, and that's just a money grabbing scheme. I wish anything I can bring him on the pod. He brings it up once a week.

Jeanette Benigas 33:09
Can you get a HIPAA released?

Preston Lewis 33:12
I don't think I can. But, I mean, he gets it, and it's funny, because it's like, this is a teenager who, conceptually, I explained this to in one afternoon, and now he's like a little Fixer patient walking around the hospital. Love him. Love him.

Jeanette Benigas 33:26
Does he want to be friends with Sadie, my daughter?

Preston Lewis 33:28
He is friends with everybody. He's really a sweet, sweet person.

Jeanette Benigas 33:32
Listen. Slip him my private email address. Okay, you just slide it under his door if he wants to email me. You that can be one of the weeks you're not around, and he can, I can arrange privately for him to come on without you here.

Preston Lewis 33:49
I'm going to, I'm going to hold that boundary, but I will say perhaps we need to get him some a t shirt, because I think he's earned it. He's he has told the Fix SLP story many a time at the hospital.

Jeanette Benigas 34:01
We can make that happen. We can make that happen.

Preston Lewis 34:03
I know, what a sweet thing, but it shows that, you know, folks, there are a lot of ways to communicate with our patients. And I think if we are squeezed into that box where we're just these speech correctionists And we're locked in these closets and we're just people that are billing to Bill, and we're expected to stay right there in this little bubble. We are. We're denying our profession our broader ability to teach people to communicate and to do it well, and to go out into the world and tell their story. Because whether you've had a cleft palate, whether you've got really terrible social pragmatic disorders, if you're somebody who's on the spectrum. That's what we're here to do. We're here to facilitate a story, but we as SLPs have to tell our own story, too.

Jeanette Benigas 34:48
Good place to stop

Preston Lewis 34:50
It is, and I will say for the other folks who have called and submitted, we have heard some of your stories. We'll continue to mix these in a bit more and some of our. Our ongoing episodes, but we may just have to have a clearinghouse episode that's mailbag. And I think it's good because that's it's hard for Jeanette and I to come up with topics sometimes, because while we feel the Fix SLP story needs repeating for new listeners, we also sometimes think, wow, we feel like we're saying the same thing over and over again, and so that's where we want to hear from you. Yeah, yeah. Go on the website, find that link, make a recording, let us hear from you. And if you want us to tell who you are too, let us know in advance, and we may be happy to give you a shout out. But right now, we continue to want to protect people's anonymity.

Jeanette Benigas 35:36
Yep, fixslp.com, on the homepage, you can click the button. You don't need a phone. You just click it, you record and it comes our way. Very easy fixslp.com, also has our link to buy tickets to our Fix SLP after dark event, we want to see you in the darkness. Come visit with us.

Preston Lewis 35:56
Jeanette, it's been great to see you today. I feel like I had a lot to say today. I think between the coffee and the chickens and everything else, this was, this was great. I need to record outdoors more often.

Jeanette Benigas 36:06
I should do that. It feels like a lot of work to get all this equipment upstairs.

Preston Lewis 36:10
Yeah, you're in a you're in a basement too. That's the best. Is the Fixed SLP bomb shelter basement. It is free and ASHA proof, and it's great for the secret files of Fix. SLP, but we got to get you out on that porch.

Jeanette Benigas 36:25
On my list of things. If I could get my life together, the playroom will be coming down here, and the playroom upstairs, which was once an office when we bought the house, will become a studio and office with Windows for me to work in. So I've been at the dining room table since covid, and it's it's time, but I have to find time to move stuff. So okay, all right, everybody, I think we will be back next week. Come visit us after dark. Fixslp.com, we'll see you next week. Thanks for fixing it.

Jeanette Benigas 36:59
Thanks for listening to the Fix SLP podcast, the podcast shaking up the field of speech language pathology. Don't forget to check out our social media or fixslp.com for our latest promo codes for continuing education, therapy, materials, merch and more. Supporting our sponsors also supports our Fix SLP team. Don't just listen. Be a part of the change. Share this episode and our social media content, and let's keep fixing the field one bite at a time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai