OT….that's it, I've run out of titles.

Ok…I didn't get to write up my bladder, bowel, sex, talk…or my other post…but the good news is I went from about a 100 emails to exactly THREE, tonight, in my Gmail box. I had like 20 reader mails to respond to and that takes a while, but I still love it so keep sending them on. 🙂 I try and weed down my email box DAILY but I get so much it's really hard to keep up. I guess I'd rather get too many e-mails than too few though. 🙂 I need my constant reassurance.

Does anyone have some great geriatric sites they recommend for news/articles etc? Besides AARP?

I think now that I'm caught up on e-mail and such that tomorrow my goals are  to catch up blog lecture posts, do a ton of homework and work on a ton of assignments, and try not to cry due to being overwhelmed. Just kidding. Kind of. It's all snuck/sneaked/dunno grammar up on us…a lot is due in February! I want to share that stuff too tomorrow! So many wants, so little time!

Tomorrow I have an online management meeting with my OTS group to work on finishing up the first phase of our hypothetical project on having a rehab hospital recruit a new population…then meeting my OTS partner Julie to enter in research data….then have class, and then I guess I'm free to just work on assignments for the rest of the day, thank goodness.

I could also stand to do my dishes and some laundry BUT OH THE PAIN PLEASE DON'T MAKE ME! LOW PRIORITY ADLs!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ::shrieks:::

Ok I just got off work 30 minutes ago and I need to probably go ahead and go to bed. I hope tomorrow is a VERY productive day to make up for my recent slackitude. And yes, I make up new words. With temerity. I think. I forget what that word means but I knew it a few years ago when I took the GRE.

Double amputee walks again due to Bluetooth

Double amputee walks again due to Bluetooth

And we thought we had it bad…

This is from my OTS friend Patti's blog…look at her assignment schedule. Good Lord.

http://thejourneyhasonlybegun.blogspot.com/2008/01/ahhhh.html

Here is her February, look on her site for March and April. YIKES!

February:
Monday 4th- Ped Evaluation: Item Eval Due
Tuesday 5th- Research Methods: Quantitative Proposal
Wednesday 6th- FIELDWORK 1 *LOG*
Monday 11th- Ped. Evaluation: QUIZ 1
Wednesday 13th- FIELDWORK 2 *LOG*
Thursday 14th- OT Skills II: Genogram Assignment
Friday 15th- Ped. OT Intervention: QUIZ 1
Tuesday 19th- Mental Health: Log #1 Due
Tuesday 19th- Research Methods: Quantitative Critique Due
Wednesday 20th- FIELDWORK 3 *LOG*
Tuesday 26th- Mental Health: EBP review of Eklund article due.
Tuesday 26th- Research Methods: MIDTERM
Tuesday 26th- Research Methods: Qualitative Proposal
Wednesday 27th- FIELDWORK 4 *LOG*
Friday 29th- Ped OT Intervention: Autism Reading Assignment

Bowel, bladder, and sexuality in the elderly. Wow.

I'm too lazy to type it all up right now, but WOW, we had quite the lecture today on bowel, bladder, and sexuality in the elder. Including videos. With full-frontal X-rated demonstrations. Wow. I hopefully can write it all up later on tonight. I think my eyebrows are three inches higher than they used to be.

My rainbow scrub challenge to MOT Class of 2010

Top picture: Our rainbow scrub pic of MOT Class of 2009. I'm the only one missing, since I took the picture. And looked like crap that day…

Bottom picture: A mini rainbow-picture stolen from Facebook of a few members of the MOT Class of 2009. I challenge them to make a rainbow picture like ours. 🙂

My most random OT post ever. Don't even bother reading it, it will make your head hurt and waste valuable minutes of your life.

I’m tired so I’m going to cheat and write like two sentences (update: oops). Today we had an ombudsman come in and talk about some of the issues she deals with in geriatrics and long-term care, and I wrote down some info to share later. Then I had my TB skin test read at the peds hospital (negative of course), and then I went to the sitting Tai Chi class….it kinda makes me mad that a bunch of 90 year-olds can do the Tai Chi better than I can! But happy too! I really think Tai Chi is a wonderful thing that all grown-ups should have to do. I’m not into martial arts or Chinese stuff or chakras or anything, but I do think there’s a lot to be said about gentle, low-impact, repetitive movements….also it really does feel like you are handling balls of energy the way your palms end up tingling! Wow got off on a tangent. Anyway. Spent the evening with some friends, and now about to go to bed.

Tomorrow a bunch of us are going to yoga, then my research group will do data entry for the Tai Chi stuff, and then we have a class. I don’t know which class though. LOL – our schedule changes every single day, every single week. Guess I’ll get prepared for it in the morning. THEN I’m going to go do early primary voting for the FIRST TIME IN MY ENTIRE LIFE (yes I’m 25) with my friend Christa. And then I work tomorrow night 9 to midnight.

This is my most boring post ever. I have a bunch of random things floating through my head.

I have a bunch of reader e-mails to respond to.
I’m back to being way on top in Google searches again.
My OT Practice article comes out in the February 4th edition, it’s the “Reflections of the Heart” column on the back page – I’m excited.
Penelope Moyers (AOTA president) & I are best friends and we conspire daily regarding “The Centennial Vision” – okay that was a total lie, but it made me laugh to write it.
Because I’m an OT freak.

I’m going to AOTA conference in Long Beach in April…..YAY! I’m so excited to network and hear cool speakers and get free Expo stuff! It is my first big conference! I have gone to TOTA conference and Student Conclave though. 🙂

My friend and I have finally started working on the blog project I promised way back, like months ago. I’m excited about it. It will be a challenge.

The MOT class of 2010 is so adorable. But I’m so glad I’m not in their shoes – this next year for them will be A LOT OF WORK! But fun too, you prospective OT students, so go apply. 🙂

I can’t believe I wrote this much stuff. Next week I’m going to start writing pithy concise succinct non-redundant witty amusing non-bad-analogy-making posts that focus solely on occupational therapy, so that I can lure in new OT readers from OT Practice, like a spider making a sneaky web for a fly.

Good night. I’m delirious.

MOT Class of 2010 pics!

Hilighters + skeleton hand = first semester, anatomy class, 2010

Kendal (blonde hair) + Disha = new class president and vice-president for class of 2010!

Pictures courtesy of Dori & stolen with permission from Facebook…

Tomorrow I have a class 10am to noon, then have to get a yearly TB skin test read at the peds hospital, and then I have to go to sitting Tai Chi for arthritis at an assisted living facility! And a few other fun things! Have a good night

OT Ghost Busters…still vote for u :)

Brooke & Karen were two very different people. Brooke was cool and Karen was not. Slowly, Karen has become cooler. Somehow it now means Brooke & Karen look like identical twins, but it is only by coincidence. 🙂 They are very close like sisters though, and so they would be great at working together in the AOTA ASD Steering Committee! Yay!

In Nashville for the night visiting some friends…my friend Christa and I left early Saturday morning…there was still ice on the road and we saw four massive accidents…one of which had us sit in traffic for 40 minutes before we ever got out of Memphis. Luckily Christa is a great driver and so it went fine after the initial scariness.

By the way, Christa complained of ghosts in her house that make her bedroom door creak (just kidding), and I came up with ideas on how to deal with the ghost. See how OTish I am? And how far-reaching OT can reach? We can even be ghost busters!!!!!!!!!!!!WHO YA GONNA CALL!! O T!

Got to hold babies today…yay for occupational therapy

I held babies and followed an OT this morning. I got to see an attempt at a speech/OT co-treat for feeding, an evaluation with a newborn who had been a 25-weeker (looking at reflexes, muscle, arousal state, transition states, grimacing, startle reactions, coloring, etc), and hold a baby in my lap while the speech therapist fed him. (Most of these babies have G-tubes and haven't gotten used to things in their mouth and have trouble with feeding). I also held one baby for about an hour on my tummy/chest (I was just tilted way back in a normal chair). The OT confirmed it's ok to pull out their mat and use it to give the babies tummy time – with permission of course.

Anyway – it was fun – it reminded me I have a lot to learn but it also was exciting. I'm going to try and go there more often during the week when there is opportunity to help more and see more. I love these babies.

I posted about 10 items yesterday so that will have to tide you over for the weekend – probably headed out of town if the weather doesn't get too nasty. My OTS friend Virginia is coming over tonight too if again, weather isn't too bad! For now I plan to just catch up on some random things, both school-related and home maintenance-related 🙂

Occupations of Elders…last post of the night, I almost promise

I’m almost done sharing new insights from lectures/readings and more. Now I’m caught up.

Today we discussed the Occupations of Elders. We talked about accessibility and how cruises are a popular destination for the elderly because the cruises are so accessible in terms of ramps, wide halls, etc. Also, that wellness & prevention are very important, and that elders shouldn’t automatically accept “You feel this way because you are old” as a legitimate answer from a doctor. Sometimes it’s true, but sometimes it’s a lot more than that.

We discussed how elderly tend to be vulnerable to solicitations and advertisements, like for supplements that promise to give you energy – and how that can be dangerous when they are already on a bunch of other drugs! Also, the elderly metabolize drugs differently.

We talked about how ideally the elderly would be seen by gerontologists, geriatric consultants, and such – since the elderly have specific and unique issues.

One thing I thought was cool is she pointed out that a lot of times, nurses or CNAs or whatever, will bring a tray of food into the room for the elderly person, then leave, without setting it up at all in any way. Many elderly people can’t handle all the opening of food containers, arranging the food, cutting up the food, feeding themselves…and so then the assistant comes back in to collect the tray and it is uneaten and they report that the elder has no appetite…when in reality it may be the person just didn’t get the help he/she needed. I thought that was an interesting and important point. I know that when I followed an OT in a rehab hospital, she always offered to help set up the food for the patient, as needed.

We also talked about how important it is to reminisce – try to find things from decades past to talk about, or show….old movies, old songs, old products, whatever. Memories are so important.

Hmmm…we talked about lots of other things – how the elderly enjoy a lot of the same leisure everyone else does, their roles, what they can be vulnerable to, their attitudes, medication, and more. It’s very fascinating.

It will be interesting to see how society adapts to there being so many more older people alive than ever before – maybe we’ll see things in bigger text, with more contrast, better handrails and ramp access, wheelchair acceptance….the list goes on and on.

Ok…I think I’m caught up. Hope some of this was interesting to some of you. The thing I love most about OT is the diversity. We can work with anyone – a newborn, a five year old, a teen, an adult, an elder….we have something to offer them all. Work hardening, burn-care, education, hand therapy, handwriting, development, injuries, consultation, advocacy, efficiency, geriatric help…we can potentially do it all.