New Speech Species : ‘Tracheasaurus’ Toy Helps Young CHOC Tracheotomy Patients

A hospital room is not the ideal place to celebrate a fourth birthday.

But despite the stark setting, Josue Solorzano’s spirits were high when he received his first gift of the day: a brand-new Toby Tracheasaurus puppet and toy chest.

“Gracias,” said a beaming Josue in a voice muffled by the tracheal tube in his throat.

Pediatricians and speech therapists at Children’s Hospital of Orange County in Orange are hoping that Toby Tracheasaurus will help Josue and others like him learn to speak better and recover more quickly from debilitating effects of a tracheotomy--a surgical procedure in which a breathing apparatus is implanted in the throat.

Toby Tracheasaurus--a smiling green and purple dinosaur puppet with a tracheal tube connected to its neck--was created by Mary F. Mason, a registered speech pathologist and president of Voicing Inc. in Newport Beach.

The small 4-year-old educational consulting firm, which employs six speech pathologists and therapists, recently branched out from earning income solely from speaking engagements. It now offers Toby, who made his debut at the annual American Speech-Hearing Assn. conference last weekend at the Anaheim Convention Center. Mason, who travels the nation sharing her speech learning techniques, also has written a book, “Speech Pathology for Tracheostomized and Ventilator Patients,” which went on sale at the convention.

Voicing Inc., which Mason runs from her Ohio home, received orders for about 60 copies of the book at $135 apiece.

“We got a lot of feedback,” Mason said.

But Toby Tracheasaurus stole the show. Mason said she sold dozens of the fuzzy dinosaurs at $25 apiece at the Anaheim trade show.

The toy comes with a coloring book, written by Mason, in which a young girl is taught by a group of cartoon dinosaurs that receiving a tracheotomy is nothing to fear. The kit also includes a plastic toy box the size of a lunch pail containing therapeutic breathing aids: a dinosaur whistle, a dinosaur bubble blower and a pinwheel. The kit also has non-therapeutic items such as dinosaur tattoos.

By playing with the whistle, pinwheel and other breathing aids, children with artificial tracheal tubes relearn how to direct their breath. Children with tracheotomies or those who have been using a ventilator for some time often forget how to breathe properly and lose control of their speaking abilities, Mason said.

Reinforcing good breathing habits while the tubes are still implanted will speed up youngsters’ recovery once the tubes are removed, she said. “It’s an important educational tool for them, and it’s fun.”

Mason started the Toby project about a year ago, calling on her years of experience working as a speech therapist to come up with the design for the puppet, she said.

Toby is manufactured by Gina Softoys Inc. of La Palma. The tracheal tube the puppet wears is donated by medical device makers Mallinckrodt Medical Inc. and Passy-Muir Inc., both of Irvine. Children’s Hospital of Orange County is the first such facility in the nation to try out the new kit, Mason said.

For Josue, the Toby kit comes at a key point in life.

His physician, Dr. Felizardo S. Camilon, said that speaking is a struggle for the child. Josue’s larynx--the muscular structure that contains the vocal cords--will not stay open, putting him at risk of suffocation. The artificial tracheal tube allows air to pass from his throat to his lungs, bypassing the larynx.

Josue was fitted with the tube when he was a year old. His parents, Pedro and Marta Solorzano of Santa Ana, are setting a date for surgery that will allow his windpipe to open and close properly, Camilon said.

Until then, Josue struggles to pronounce words and occasionally gasps for air, even with the tube attached.

“We are trying to teach him how to make his vocal cords stay open,” Camilon said. “I think this will help,” he said of the Toby kit.

As Camilon explained Josue’s condition in serious tones, the boy was happily playing with his parents, who murmured encouragement to him in Spanish.

He failed repeatedly to blow hard enough to make the pinwheel spin, but suddenly, concentrating intently, he let out a blast of air that set the toy twirling.

“Que bonito,” Josue whispered: how beautiful.