21 Oct 2008

21 Oct 2008

You need Ritalin to read this post, warning

This morning I was supposedly going to do some things myself…but then we had a stroke evaluation of a 90 year old who really mostly had a lot of cognitive deficits….and apraxia….and maybe some visual issues. So my OT stepped in and did a lot of it because I was like ummmm. Not to mention he was severely hard of hearing and we all know my issue with speaking loudly. His deficits were quite interesting, for example if you gave him a newspaper headline to read, he would read most of it, and then get stuck on the last few words on the right. He also had expressive aphasia. And he could only follow one-step directions consistently, and only repeat 3 numbers back at a time. My OT and I discussed whether this was short-term memory, she said it was not, and I was like hmm, but now I remember that it's working memory….the Miller's 7+-2….blah blah blah anyway. If I were a good OT student I would look up more on this, but I was out late so um, I'm not.
Then we went in to help a PT do a dependent transfer, and I totally had no clue what I was doing at all and felt like a total dumba** lol. And the pt had on an abduction pillow (a triangular pillow between the legs to keep them separated) and while I've seen them, I had never taken one on/off, so I was like ummmm WHAT DO I DO AUGH?! lol THESE STRAPPIES ARE TOO HARD!

In the afternoon I was going to do an ICU eval by myself and then do a treatment with a little lady with dementia/deconditioning, but the nurse requested that the eval be put on hold because of patient being so drugged/resting, and then the little lady refused and I couldn't convince her otherwise without becoming a bully, so oops. I went back to the office and wrote up discharge summaries and stuff instead.

Tomorrow we have AT LEAST six evals, probably more like 7 or 8…luckily I can do several of the less complicated ones by myself. Probably the COTA will do all treatments tomorrow, of which there are probably only 4. And I'll maybe do 2-3 evals in the morning (?), we'll see…maybe more. Or less. I don't know. I'd kind of like my OT to see me do a straight-forward one tomorrow (ie a knee replacement) so that she sees I'm only utterly incompetent with the more complicated peeps. LOL.

One of the issues that came up today with PT coming to visit OT, is a lady they were seeing who cannot wipe her bottom because she is so large….there are special tools that can be bought to assist with this and IF MY CAT KNOCKS OVER MY FLOWERS I SWEAR HE IS GOING TO BE ONE SORRY KITTY CAT OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH BAD KITTTYYYYYYY  BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA ok wow I totally got distracted there.

When I got off work I went to the post office to send my twin a card, I wrote it completely randomly like “I use this color red not only to represent diversity but to symbolize the twinly blood coursing through our veins” because that is totally the kind of stuff she likes, she will send for example a card for an 8 year old boy, to me, because she is amused by the randomness. And I'm getting on a tangent again! Anyway then I went to Curves to work out and then I met up with my utterly bizarre friends (who have two articles in the current Edible Memphis magazine, go pick up a copy), and they gave me pickled ginger, mood-lifting sea salt with lavendar, wasabi, Painfully Hot Popcorn, blue sprinkles, and a bunch of other weird things because they had cleaned out their pantry, ahahahaa, plus a nice monetary gift yay!! plus they took me to Soul Fish and we had HUSH PUPPIES!!!! and other food of course, but the focus must be on HUSH PUPPIES because I love them dearly, the beautiful balls of mush.

I got home late and had a package from Norway waiting for me…perfect timing…with a sweet book of quotes (in Norwegian of course) plus some yummy Norwegian chocolate…and also a book about an Ultra Marathon Runner that I wanted, from my sister…and then Allison called me to inform me there was an AWESOME video of the Lester the Lion Kitty song on Facebook…it's also on Google Video if you type in “Ballad of Lester” at video.google.com….

Speaking of Lester, he is running around like crazy.

Okay…I think I am getting delirious because I am so tired…I need to make this one of those tiny posts but I'm writing this in gmail and too lazy to switch over, so maybe I'll fix this post tomorrow. I'm hoping tomorrow goes smoothly at work and then tomorrow evening I'm meeting up with OT girls! And maybe going to the gym if I get off early enough.

And maybe sometime this week I'll become a good OT student and actually spend an evening or two going through all my stuff and re-organizing and looking up some things…seems like I never get home until like 10pm and then I'm too tired to do anything but therapeutically blog and then go to bed!

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 1

20 Oct 2008

Start of Week FOUR of Phys Dys Level II OT Student rotation.. wow. One month in.

Ok…I didn't get much sleep at all last night…maybe a few hours max….mind was racing! I'm sure I'll be doing several evaluations by myself today…let's see how that goes! I'm going to do them slowly and thoroughly and confidently!! Going from global to specific, being friendly, listening carefully, etc!!

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

20 Oct 2008

Your eyes will burn in pain at the true ugliness that is my Sumo drawings

It's 2am…I played on Sumo Paint way too long…I have the drawing skill of a kindergardener at best. That's okay, it made my mind stop racing and now I can go to bed..
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20 Oct 2008

Introducing the OT mascot: Mr Snail

Ok…well…I am having trouble sleeping…so instead I was on StumbleUpon, and came across SumoPaint and am enthralled, and I made this because what else is there to do at 1am? Don’t answer that, I actually have about fifty thousand productive things I could do, but shhh. I think the snail should be the mascot of OT because A) you can make it look like OT and B) often times I feel like a patient has a snail parallel! Slow, plodding, but determined…that’s just with ambulation! Man, if we got into the psychosocial aspects of retracting when irritated, etc, we’d be here all night!

PS: A few days ago I went back to my first pediatric clinic to say hello, and a little boy with Asperger’s was so glad to see me, but mostly he wanted to know where Mr. Snail was (a puppet). I told him Mr Snail was vacationing in Hawaii with my grandmother.

*I’d like to point out I have an obsession with (fake) snails and I think they are awesome creatures and I mean no offense. Just sayin’.

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20 Oct 2008

:O

Okay…today I cleaned house, walked in park with a friend, and spent an hour with the same baby at the hospital….a very interactive 4-month old baby and we actually got to have a floor mat and do some tummy time and some other stuff to work on building core muscles. Just as a volunteer of course, but this baby was definitely up for some developmental play! I held her close, sang to her, rubbed her little legs and arms, looked her in the eyes, just all the good developmental stuff you can do. It was great! This baby actually had a trach and the long blue tube and stuff and it's the first baby I've really handled like that, but it wasn't so bad. And sitting there with her in my gown and gloves on the floor mat, I was really content…I was like…this is definitely what I want to do…inpatient babies. A lot less intimidating than adults! 

Overall today was a thousand times better than yesterday…I'm still a little nervous about the upcoming week fieldwork wise, but not too bad…it is the start of Week 4. And it's my birthday week, so I have lots of birthday dinners scheduled! Fun!!

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

19 Oct 2008

A weekend ending in hope





This weekend has been one of extremes. It was one of the “lowest” weekends I’ve ever had without having a really good reason, but today I’m feeling some HOPE….some much needed HOPE.

The Bad News:
1) Friday evening/Saturday morning/afternoon was one of the lowest times I’ve ever had. I mostly spent the day in bed feeling dead with the occasional panic flash whenever anybody tried to contact me. It was also the first day back on Wellbutrin. But by evening I was feeling a little better, which is good since I had to babysit for an important occasion. So I got out of bed at 430pm. LOL.
2) I cut myself – again – while doing dishes – this time I was not (stupidly) cleaning a knife like last week when I did it – but a glass cup had broken and I didn’t know it since it was obscured by bubbles- so I cut myself good with the broken cup on my left thumb- and once again had to do the dishes one-handed while the other hand spouted blood.
3) I feel “deconditioned” after spending so much time in bed so little things tire me out!
4) Grammar is hardly.

Gooder News:
1) Today, Sunday, I feel slightly more “me”, like I’ve swallowed a few teaspoons of hope!
1.5) I cut off a bunch of Lester the Lion Kitty’s hair again because I was tired of the random clumps of Persian hair he was leaving around. I’m being more careful though, his skin is so loose that it’s easy to cut it, which I learned the hard way last time.So he has his lion ripple again. Ruffles Chips should hire him as their mascot.
2) I cut some flowers in the garden for my house…sounds little, but the small things I can do to cheer me up, accumulate into bigness.
3) My sense of humor is slowly coming back. I have a house plant that I put outside with a stick/flag that says “I’m dying, please help me, <3 Plantie" since my landlord is smart with plants. (BTW, I told a lady the other day I have a "black thumb" because we were discussing plants and she was a black lady and she looked at me blankly, and I was like hmm...oops?)
4) My Biobrite alarm clock is back and making a big difference since it fills my room with light by the time the alarm goes off.
5) I have received several great books from my twin, a GPS system from my friends Suzy & Arnie!!!!, now I can stop getting lost every few days, and then also my serotonin necklace from madewithmolecules.com from my parents! And a beautiful handmade necklace from a good friend!! And a postcard from my Norway host mother’s best friend, Hilde! My birthday is Tuesday! I can’t believe I’ll be 26!
6) I’m not feeling utter panic at the thought of this upcoming week in OT fieldwork. In fact, doh, that’s something I really want to share with you guys…later on tonight when it’s dark and I’m not burning valuable jewels of sunshine, I’ll share the weekly supervisor/OT student meeting comments….but for now I need to go. I’m going to go hold babies at the hospital, then walk in a park or forest or something…let the sunshine melt into my pores and infuse me with vitamin D goodness. More later…

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

17 Oct 2008

Posey vest

Today I learned how to take on/off a Posey (restraint) vest used to keep confused patients in bed. I was going to be doing an eval on someone whose chart review mentioned a Posey, so the OT/COTA pulled out one and we did a mini-inservice on it, using our trusty Level I student, Cody, as our guinea pig. So yes, we restrained Cody. 🙂
Tomorrow is his last day since he was only doing a two week rotation! We'll miss him!!

I did two evaluations entirely by myself today – one on a deconditioned woman, one on a recent hip replacement.

I have coined a new diagnostic abbreviation….”TW”….stands for train wreck….and its for those people who have SO many issues going on that train wreck is the best way to describe it…like the person might be in seen by us because of deconditioning but their past medical history may be: GERD, gastroparesis, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, cataracts, hip replacement, diabetes, depression, anxiety, dementia, cardiac stents, CABG, arthritis, back injury, right toe amputation, breast cancer, uterine cancer, RSD, anemia, renal failure, COPD…and more.

Tomorrow I will be following PTs in the morning and Cody will be with the OT. And tomorrow is our weekly supervisor-student meeting to discuss goals of week and goals for next week.
My goal for tomorrow is as always CONFIDENCE 🙂

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

16 Oct 2008

SEROTONIN! INFUSE ME!

Newsflash:My birthday serotonin necklace came today!!! From madewithmolecules.com as a present from my parents. I'm excited, I've wanted it a while, since my friend Kerri got it. My twin & I originally got necklaces from www.madewithmolecules.com for Christmas last year – I got the “Focus” and my sister got “Creativity” – the jewelry-maker was an ex-post-doc of my grandfather's in chemistry – and then Kerri saw it and loved it and got the serotonin one and then I was jealous of it. And my friend Sarah has one as well. Maybe the serotonin molecules resting on my neck will inspire me and infuse me with their molecularly goodness. Just a thought. GOOD NIGHT.

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

16 Oct 2008

A pretty good day….about to finish up Week 3

My OT supervisor found my blog! Hi OT Supervisor!

Today I did one treatment today for almost an hour, all by myself (she kindly peeked in to check) – it was a VERY VERY VERY tall man with a hip replacement – I showed him how to use the hip kit to do his underwear, pants, socks, and shoes, so that he would be following his hip precautions. He was a very kind, polite, man, and a good learner…then I saw several other patients with help from the great COTA and then she did a few as the primary person. ahahaha. I can only tolerate so much challenge within a day before I feel like I've hit my “I'm going to explode”, PLUS I only want to see patients by myself if I feel 100% sure I can handle that person safely and that I am trained enough on the particular intervention as to not be completely worthless when I get into the room. I always have to kind of have a mental self pow-wow before I walk into the room to kind of go over my plan as I don't think well on my feet.

I'm struggling with anxiety – I'm kind of at this new baseline where I feel over-caffeinated almost all of the time (only I'm not on any caffeine) – which is somewhat typical of how I feel in the fall, and this fall is especially difficult because it coincides with my phys dys rotation which in all honesty I have dreaded ever since I started OT school. I used to have nightmares about it. Now that I'm actually on the rotation, I really like my supervisor and the colleagues, and it's not as scary or rocket sciency as it seems, but I can't seem to conquer the anxiety with exercise, herbal supplements, blah blah blah – so I'm going to try to get back on a medication to help. I know some friends who read this will be like too much info Karen, the world doesn't need to know this and that's private informatoin- but to me it's important to share because I like to reflect on my student journey and my level of anxiety is strongly affecting that journey! And it's not private in my opinion, I could care less if the world knows I'm a little psycho. 🙂 Anybody who has been reading this for the last year and a half or so, knows I am high-strung! Luckily in person I do not appear nearly as nervous as I actually feel, so most people don't realize how anxious I am…which is obviously a good thing in a professional setting. But no fun to always feel on edge and it affects my abilities as a fieldwork student because I have a much lower tolerance for challenge. But again I know I am too hard on myself and I'm doing FINE overall in terms of meeting goals and being where I should be at this point.

Today was really not too bad overall – I felt pretty okay about how the day went at fieldwork and thought it was pretty cool my supervisor had read my blog – especially because it meant she discovered my level of anxiety was higher than she realized and she has reassured me I am doing fine  – and then I went to the gym after work (we got done somewhat early) and then was at a special dinner event lol – so got home just a while ago. Going to go to bed soon.

Oh! The assisted living facility I volunteer at at times, is close to my fieldwork…and it's such a trip when we open up the Impending evaluations sheet and it's a name I recognize from there! When I hear the particilar person talked about at Bingo or something, as in “Person X is at the hospital”, I have to be so mindful of HIPAA to not say anything about the fact I *saw* that person!

Tomorrow I am hopefully going to follow one particular patient in all 3 disciplines (PT, OT, speech), do at least one eval by myself, probably do a treatment or two by myself, and follow the COTA in general…the level I fieldwork student is with the OT supervisor this week…and my goals continue to be to speak loudly, slowly, clearly…to be more confident…ideas for new goals?! I think those are pretty big goals so I'm okay with them. Baby steps!

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none