23 Apr 2008

3: AOTA ..Friday..Senior Member Salon, Expo, Presidential Address…

Some of the stuff I got at conference…not counting the many inches of papers/catalogs.

Friday, April 11th, I think.

The day started out early – I met Marc Freedman, who was on the Steering Committee, to discuss some of the “You are the Future” Communications Proposal, at a cute little cafe. We looked at things like Facebook and chat rooms and discussed options. Then we headed to the Hyatt for the Senior Member Salon. I begged him to let me go in his place since I had screwed up on Thursday and I felt so guilty.

It worked out so I sat in on an Intergenerational meeting in the Senior Member Salon, with the session facilitated by Holly Hendryx, who is the AMAZING OT student who was Vice Chairperson of the Steering Committee, and one of my mini-Idols. It was neat talking to older generations that had a lot of advice and experience to share. We (novices and experts) discussed the possibilities of matching up mentors somehow, and also the importance of preserving the memories of older OTs through videos, tapes, letters, etcetera. We may get to do some kind of video booth next year (I say “we” very loosely to mean AOTA, lol), where OTs, especially the older ones, can go in and record little tidbits of their OT lives. I’m a HUGE fan of memory keeping, I guess primarily because my memory is sooo bad, so I’m excited. I know one of my favorite books is by John Carlova called “The Healing Heart” on Ora Ruggles, who was a Reconstructionist aide…precursors to OTs. Read it. Ok off soapbox… We discussed the possibility of some kind of Intergenerational Corps. I thought a Mobius strip or Infinity sign would be a great symbol for this…a never-ending and reciprocal kind of relationship. Two of the power houses behind this Senior Member Salon are Shirley Behr and Mary Taugher. I’ve been in e-mail contact with Mary (after meeting her at the salon) and it was fun. Good job Shirley and Mary!!

Then it was time for the…dum dum dum...PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS….I sat with OT faculty from my school.

Watch Penny Moyers give her presidential address HERE!!!

Penny Moyers as always did a fantastic job speaking to the crowd. She had a creative entrance and has great public speaking skills. Although I guess I should mention she was preceded by a band that was wildly popular and had a lot of OTs dancing in the aisles and conga-lining it everywhere. OTs have no problems shaking their badunkadunks.

In the speech, besides the classic annual conference speech foundation stuff, she discussed a partnership between AOTA and AARP with its Homefit Guide, which seems like pretty big news, I haven’t researched it further. I have to say here that there were at least four people within my vicinity eating bananas as she talked. Somehow her speech inspired fruit, because I watched as multiple OTs rummaged in their bags for bananas and apples. That amused me more than the average person could ever imagine. Also…P. Mo unveiled the new sparkling brand words of AOTA. She did a great job building it up with suspenseful music and everything, although I have to say, “Living Life to its Fullest” doesn’t exactly set off firecrackers in my spine. And I’m not alone. Perhaps the slogan will grow on me. As the words were unveiled, silver balloons with the slogans printed on them, came busting down from the rafters, it was fun to watch.

I jotted down notes throughout the address, but this note puzzles me “hahhaha saundra”. I have no idea why I wrote that. Hmmm. That’s what I get for waiting weeks before writing up my notes.

I enjoyed her speech a lot but I think she travels in a Pope-Mobile (a P. MObile) because I never saw her except on stage. Which means I didn’t get her autograph. Which means my world has ended. (A really funny joke would be if you were a surgeon doing skin grafts and you were like, hey patient, give me your autograft…. ha ha ha ha ha….) Ok. P. Mo, if you are reading this, which is probably when flying penguins fly for real instead of just as an April’s Fool Joke I fell for because I’m stupid, my life will not be FULL – I cannot live life to its fullest – until I have this autograph. Just sayin’.

Expo

Oh glorious Expo, what more can I say. This is the part that excited me most based on the stories from the OT students who went last year. Tales of office supply gluttony abounded. The expo WAS pretty massive with tons of booths and things going on. Networking, advertising, demonstrations….luckily most booths had mini scanners to put on your name badges so you wouldn’t have to keep writing your address down. Which is good, because one of my pet peeves is writing out my address.

There was lots of free stuff – pens, post it notes, pins, candy, duffel bags, mints…one of the cutest things was a dancing robot dude (he entertained the entire OT class when he returned and was taken to class). I even got two free Tangles, which made me sooo happy because I have an obsession with Tangles (anti-fidget toys that I’ve seen in action). A lot of booths didn’t appeal to me at all so I tried not to steal their stuff when that was the case. Exhibitors were very nice and it was clear everyone was desperate to hire OTs!

I learned the meaning of Snoezelen (Dutch for sleep/rest from what I understand), and that those glowing horse tails can be messed with and not just stared at. I saw new ways to get socks/compression stockings off…Sock Eez…new ways to wear compression garments that are a lot easier to deal with….some really funky art…some neat adaptive clothing with snaps for people who have trouble dressing or need easy access….some neat OT videos being done for work with kids with autism…I saw a few booths clearly state on their papers that the hiring salary was around 72K…wow. One booth had really neat OT pins made using puzzle pieces, beads/buttons, and glazes/pin backs. I think actual patients had made them and they were a good idea

Some links based on what I just said:

Britt Collins, TRP Yoga – DVDs, yoga, www.trpyoga.com – does the autism videos

BlickArt – plasticky black masks, tons of extra awesome art supplies, I want them sooo bad.

It’s a Snap! Adaptive Clothing

Ok…my favorite booth ended up being NeuroCom’s…but I need to begin a new post. Post 4 coming up.

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

23 Apr 2008

Post 2: AOTA Conference Keynote speaker and Posters

Start here first:

Going to AOTA Conference Post 1 out of A Bazillion to Come (updated to have a few pictures)

Post 2: I’d like to warn you all that I have no true concept of time, all days run together and I couldn’t tell you what I did two days ago let alone weeks ago (hence the whole journaling thing, except that it only works if you keep on top of it, oops), so there may be some chronological inaccuracies…oh well. You get the point.

Thursday April 10th was a big day at AOTA. The first thing I did that day was screw up. I had signed up to volunteer within the Senior Member Salon as a note-taker, and I forgot/slept right through my appointed session. I felt really bad!

That day, I primarily wandered around the convention center, watching all the OT-related people with interest. I kind of wanted to just throw myself at all of them and sing Koom bah yah mah lord, it felt all nice and fuzzy.

I also wandered through a poster session…again mostly people watching and skimming poster titles. I think the project that seemed most interesting to me was about people with multiple sclerosis who tend to hoard, and how OTs can help them get over that issue.

Keynote Speaker:

Warren McDonald is a man who had a horrible accident involving a giant boulder and his legs. And now he is a bilateral above-knee amputee. He gets around in a lightweight wheelchair (a Quickie?) and is quite nimble. He has climbed massive mountains with his prosthetics and does motivational speaking. He has a book, “A Test of Will” that details his journey.

He was a WONDERFUL speaker and discussed how we create the reality of other people and “HOW” you see is what you get. Great points, very inspiring.

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

23 Apr 2008

Some neat articles…


At 60, He Learned to Sing So He Could Learn to Talk

This is an article about speech therapy, but the field has a lot of overlap with occupational therapy. OTs use song and music a lot to engage patients. Pretty interesting. Thanks Arnie for the send.


At Bedside, Stay Stoic or Display Emotions?

Another good story. Regarding doctors, but anything in the health-care field has repercussions for everyone…consumers and professionals alike.

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

22 Apr 2008

Sleeeeppyyy

I volunteered at a local pediatric hospital this morning doing WEE-FIM. Then had a Health care class. And then an awesome CPR/AED certification course needed for our Level II projects.

He told us about how the pads for the AED just need to be in a way that its a straight line to heart and I had this great idea that if you only had one set of pads and two people that needed it, you could like position them side by side, then put one pad on each person so that it zaps them both, but he said that wouldn't work, I was bummed. I thought it was brilliant. Oh well.

Tomorrow involves research talks regarding our Tai Chi paper,  health care policy class, and God knows what else. I should probably check on that. Oh yeah, and working, and getting to go with a friend to start the process of picking out a kitty. And laundry, oh the laundry.

Hopefully a good day, minus the whole laundry part.

As always, I hope more occupational therapy goodness runs through my blood tomorrow…I'm not feeling it tonight! I just have time to go to bed blood running through me right now.

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

21 Apr 2008

Going to AOTA Conference Post 1 out of A Bazillion to Come

The incoming Steering Committee Table. Oooh.
Brooke asleep while Meg and I go to ASD meetings. Oh the pain.

Assembly of Student Delegate Representative Meetings, Pre-Conference

Meg is our class ASD rep, and I am an ASD “project coordinator” (fancy way of saying I didn’t make the Steering Committee but I can still help with things), so I accompanied her to some of the ASD sessions, just out of curiosity. It reminded me a lot of Conclave, actually. There was a session on fieldwork at Conclave that I had complained was common sense, and Meg ended up saying the same thing about the session on fieldwork for ASD reps. Overall it was a great group of students with enthusiasm and passion, and sessions ran smoothly.

We had a pretty neat session on AOTPAC (American Occupational Therapy Political Action Committee), run by Amy Lamb and Paul Fontana, who discussed the sobering reality of being in a health care field that has such a wide scope of practice. They discussed the importance of not letting other professions, a la athletic trainers, physical therapists, recreational therapists, and other similar fields, nibble away at our domain. Part of the purpose of AOTPAC is to prevent this nibblage, fighting for the rights of occupational therapists. They encouraged donations and with some nudging as well as some help from some generous students, the reps ended up with 100% participation – pretty impressive. They are trying to raise 300,000 dollars for their 30th anniversary, and the ASD reps pledged/donated about $7,000. Pretty impressive for a bunch of students.

Paul Fontana made some interesting comments and I thought he did a good job of engaging the students, although there were a few things he said that I disagreed with. He discussed how he used to pay for all his therapists to have AOTA membership, and then stopped, because it was the therapists own professional obligation to have membership. He said it wasn’t about the money. But then if it wasn’t about the money, I sure hope he donated the money he saved from not paying for their memberships, to AOTA anyway!

Another session involved some “Centennial Vision tracking”, led by two USC OT students under the guidance of AOTA Vice President Florence Clark. They showed some projects that were along the line of the Centennial Vision. I wanted to be like the donkey in Shrek and hop around shrieking MY BLOG! MY BLOG!! IT SCREAMS CENTENNIAL VISION! COME ON! but you will be happy to know, I didn’t pull a donkey.

The best session by far was the address by Penny Moyers (good ol’ P.Mo), AOTA President. She is amazingly warm and she is a wonderful public speaker. I really enjoyed listening to her speak. She had a very creative speech centered around the golden ratio/Fibonacci sequences. She even showed how the cauliflower follows the rules of the golden ratio. But do you want to hear something really embarrassing? I have an exceptionally bad memory, and so now, I totally can’t remember how she tied in the golden ratio to the Centennial Vision. Wow. I suck. Ok let’s move on now.

=========
AOTA Conference!

The conference took place at the convention center in Long Beach, near the Queen Mary. It was about six blocks from the hotel we were staying at, the Hilton. The weather was perfect the entire time, although a little chilly for those who didn’t realize that it gets colder at night (you always need to have a sweater nearby for coastal California!). Meg, Brooke, and I shared a room with two beds, and as a bunch of girls, we messed it up pretty quickly!

The convention center is light and airy and beautiful, and it was neat to walk around knowing that everyone surrounding you knew exactly what occupational therapy was! I was surprised at the diversity of people there – I would have guessed it would be a bunch of 40 year old white females. Yet there were males, blacks, whites, asians, hispanics, heights, shapes, students, clinicians, professors, walkers, wheelchairs, canes, youngs, olds…lots of variety. And it seemed most were pragmatic in their choice of outfit and shoes. You don’t go into OT if you want to wear high heels and mini skirts. There were a lot of people sitting on the floor, not just younger students, which always makes me happy to see, for some weird reason. Everyone had on blue bands around their necks holding their nametags, and many of these tags had a rainbow of colors underneath them, announcing their position or memberships. The ones with the longest tags were like royalty I guess!!

Ok….um….I want to talk about Expo, Senior Member Salon, Presidential Address, Keynote Speaker, Marc Freedman and the You are the Future communication proposals (hi marc I need to email you!), and all the neat people that were there….and it’s all in a list to remind me…..but it’s almost 2am and I need to stop. More tomorrow night. Gee I’m only two weeks late with all my posts on Conference…

Tomorrow morning I volunteer at a different pediatric hospital doing WEE-FIM stuff, then we have class in early afternoon, and then we have a long CPR certification course . Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Nooooooooooooooo.

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

21 Apr 2008

Holding babies on a Sunday morning….

I volunteered this morning, holding babies at the step-down ICU at a local pediatric hospital. It was the weekend so it was “quiet”, meaning the tide of doctors, nurses, pharmacists, consultants, and therapists is stemmed drastically. The babies, and therefore all their leads and tubings, are left undisturbed and so the beeps, alarms and buzzes are less frequent  The only noise is the idle gossip of the nurses gathered near the front, some of them holding babies as they chattered. I walked in to the thin mewling of a 6-week old, hungry and sleepy and needing comfort. The nurse went into his private room, putting him in my arms and explaining he had just been bathed and he needed help falling asleep. I spent the next hour and a half rocking him gently against my chest, my chin tucked into his silky black hair. I kept my hands and arms pressed around him, propped on a pillow, watching his heart beat and breathing rate on the monitor, watching the clock tick away the minutes. Sometimes he just lay there, eyes open but not moving, sucking quietly on his pacifier, and other times he actually slept. I could tell by his breathing rate when he was actually asleep.

I looked around his room as I rocked, noting the pair of red adult shoes, the overnight duffel bag, the childish drawing tacked up. This child was far luckier than most of the babies there. I listened to the disjointed gossip of the nurses outside the room, shifting my weight carefully, breathing slowly for this baby held against my heart. I willed this baby health and happiness. After an hour and a half, the baby sleeping deeply, I carefully put him back in the crib, stomach down as he had been against my chest. I fussed over him to make sure his crib rails were pulled back up and  his lines weren't tangled. Then I tip-toed out, peeling off my gown and emerging back into the bright lights of the unit. I carefully sanitized my hands and then began slowly making circles around the unit. I peeked into cribs and rooms as I went, looking for babies needing any comfort measures. I could peer at a monitor in a private room and tell by the jig-jags and spikes that a baby was in distress. Each time today, the answer was simple – a lost pacifier. Digging carefully around the blankets around a baby's face, I could find the pacifier to pop back in. I'd adjust the blankets in such a way that it was less likely the baby would lose the pacifier, and then move on. I felt like a pacifier fairy as I repeatedly replaced pacifiers for the last part of my shift. When I left, I felt more at peace that I had been in a while. Sitting there, alone with my thoughts and sleeping baby, is a wonderful way to spend a morning.

I've been asked by several people how to get a volunteer position holding babies. The easiest thing to do is contact your local pediatric hospital and ask how to become a volunteer, period. Typically you can pick the area you'd like to volunteer in, and you can then choose a ward such as a special care unit, that is filled with babies. Don't specifically say you just want to “hold babies” at first because from what I hear, hospitals aren't thrilled with that…even if ultimately, that's exactly what you end up doing. I do want to point out that these areas ARE somewhat intimidating – lots of beeping monitors and tubes and lines. But you get used to it quick, and these babies can use every ounce of love you have.

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

19 Apr 2008

Ummmmm its 2am so this is going to be random

The last few days have been fun but busy. Including some time with friends, but also a lot of work on projects. We have had two lectures on low vision with an amazing and well-known low vision specialist in the region, Orli. She is from South Africa and has the most awesome accent. It can make learning about scotomas and hemianopsia almost fun. Well not quite. Low vision isn't my thing, but she's a great lecturer.

We also had a wonderful woman come in from the physical therapy department, who is from Puerto Rico, and she gave us a lecture on cultural issues in rehab from a Latino perspective. It refreshed my desire to do some Spanish immersion before becoming a real OT.

I've been struggling with extreme fatigue since the AOTA Conference. I've got all sorts of random medical issues and one of the things I struggle with is almost constant fatigue. Stressful or big events like traveling across the country make it worse, obviously. Although I guess I still usually do more in a day than some people do in three, even with fatigue, lol. Hmm. This is a big volunteer week. Yesterday I helped out with Assisted Living Bingo, tomorrow morning I'm holding babies at the pediatric hospital step-down ICU, Monday morning I'm headed to the other pediatric hospital to do WEE-FIM, and then sometime this week I want to get to the Alzheimer Day Center for a few hours, to go see all my new beloveds from fieldwork. Wednesday afternoon I meet a girl from my undergrad college who is interested in OT and wants to learn more. Thursday evening we have a big banquet and a bunch of us are being inducted into IHMOTEP or something weird like that, an honor society. The name is really weird to me.

I got off work at midnight and have been working on and off on the Tai Chi research paper…guess I need to get back to it.

I'm sorry I still haven't done my blog posts on AOTA Conference. I feel guilty. I've got it all prepped up to be written about, I just have to actually DO it. Since I got my house somewhat cleaned up today, I might make that tomorrow's goal. Cuz goals are important. OH AND PICTURES TOMORROW TOO…..

We're having a Miss OTPF Pageant next Thursday afternoon to put on YouTube for OT Month. Script is ready. I dare all y'all OT-related people to go make your own OT related videos to put up!

Ok ok ok ok ok back to research ::wails::

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

18 Apr 2008

OT!

AOTA Conference REPRESENTS….stolen from Jillian's Facebook.

Blogging to come. I'm going a little crazy right now with too much stuff going on!

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

18 Apr 2008

I'm an OT media slacker :(

I guess I’m slacking these days on the whole “OT memory keeper” thing…IM names are made up so we aren’t attacked…lol. And now I’m going to go work on my research paper. And then finally finish blogging, I dunno.

OTSEmily (11:01:20 PM): arent you suppose to be working karen??
OTSKaren(11:01:22 PM): um
OTSKaren(11:01:26 PM): i should be working on my research paper
OTSKaren(11:01:28 PM): what are you doing?
OTSEmily (11:01:44 PM): im on facebook waiting for karen to post pics
OTSEmily(11:01:56 PM): hahahaha i guess i will be waiting till i die

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

17 Apr 2008

FINALLLLLLLLLLLLLLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

It's 2am and my mailbox is down to ZERO for the first time in ages and ages (well except for the 9,000+ unread emails in my work box starting from the day I started OT school 15 months ago…unfortunately not kidding). And I have food in the house that isn't peanut butter or candy. Thanks to a grocery store. Which was thanks to a farm. Which was thanks to nature…..and ok I'll stop.

And we (with copious help by Emily, Allison, and many other awesome OT classmates) have  the script of the Miss OTPF pageant officially written up. We plan to film next Thursday afternoon…because it ***IS**** APRIL AND THAT MEANS IT IS OT MONTH AND THAT MEANS WE HAVE TO CONTRIBUTE SOMETHING AMAZING TO YOUTUBE REGARDING OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

::says quietly and subliminally that I hope AOTA reads me and decides they wanna sponsor one year of student membership for an OT-related person who submits the awesomest YouTube video for OT month as judged by, I dunno, unbiased sources.::::

And I still have to contact quite a few people via phone or e-mail but at least I don't have any major e-mail events left right now. (Note to self: I just realized I forgot to deal with Miss OTPF pageant email to the class or Draft 4 of Tai Chi paper for research. I guess that's why God made tomorrows). I do wish He had just made afternoons though and skipped mornings.

Blog-wise….I have a HUGE notepad full of conference items to discuss, after I went through several inches worth of papers and condensed it all into one document. But it took me hours (it's really important to me to note absurd things like the fact I saw at least four people eating bananas during P. Mo's presidential address), so now I have to sleep. Tomorrow, I promise, promise, promise, unless I get hit by a truck or something, that I will FINALLY blog about conference. Cuz I gotta share all the GOSSIP, cuz let's face it…OT is all about the days of our lives….SOAP OPERA!!!!!!!

Oh, and I have pictures! Lots of pictures! From messy hotel rooms to clubbin' to family time to um…..certain classmates riding on mechanical bulls in a bar!! Yeah! So get excited!

Tomorrow is BINGO night with my favorite gero peeps…better rest up…so yeah, going to bed now for REALS.

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none