End of first week of Level II fieldwork….phew

I am glad to say I have completed my first week of Level II fieldwork in a pediatric setting – a private clinic in Mississippi. This morning my OT called in a little late because her small daughter hid her keys, lol. So I got to start the first kid off with the speech aid. This is a little boy who has had a rough family history and is very clingy, and smart, but he likes to play dumb for some reason. He had his pet “horsie” animal with him today and I used that to my advantage.

The speech aid first pulled out a busy bugs game where you match plastic bugs to a row of bugs on a card by color and type – ie yellow dragonfly, red grasshopper, etc. I told him once he finished a card horsie would be able to have his lunch and so he was willing to keep up his work. He would light up whenever his horsie got included. The speech aid probably thought I was crazy because I used the horsie so much but I like to play at a kid's level. We also worked on some coloring so that he could teach his horsie how to draw circles, and a few other things. Partially through another kid came in – they try and match kids up for social interaction purposes, especially because a lot of these kids have no friends. This other kid was nonverbal with a massive gappy smile. The first kid is really white and the second kid is really black and they looked beautiful together with the contrast…I got several pictures of them grinning together (for their future website collection…yep I'm still taking pictures!).

The OT showed up and um, we saw other kids. LOL. I forget so quickly what I do. I know we saw an older black boy with Down's syndrome who loves to flirt and tickle although that is discouraged. We did some SpinArt with him – you know, the thing where you use paint on a paper and spin it to make it spread. The autistic kids (I mean kids with autism!!) especially love to watch it spin.

We also saw a little girl with autism and several other boys with varying degrees of autism and/or developmental delay. There was a lot of painting done today, along with some swinging, ball pit, coloring…

This morning we saw a family, let's call them the Smiths, that live an hour away from the clinic but it's still the closest one to them. The grandma's take care of 5 kids, 3 of which need OT. Since siblings who don't need OT aren't really willing to sit around for hours, they typically end up included in sessions as a playmate. The kids who got OT and speech received it, and the OT did a group painting session with them. This kind of stressed me out as groups are too chaotic for me. Anyway, then, about two hours later, it should have been time to go, but their free transportation van didn't show up. And didn't show up. And didn't show up. We left for lunch and they were sitting there. I met a friend and we had BBQ, it was yummy and fun. Then I came back and they were still sitting there – two grandma's and five kids. It had now been HOURS. My OT found me and had cash in her hand from where some therapists had chipped in, and we went to Krystal's to get them a family pack since it would be cheap. The kids hadn't eaten in like 5 hours at this point and it was way past lunchtime. My OT and I ended up being late to come back because of traffic/lines, but at least the family got to eat. I needed to get them seven cups of ice water from inside in the kitchen so I grabbed a small mirror that was lying on the table waiting to be hung, to use as a makeshift tray, I was like OT POWER, ADAPTATION! LOL.

The van finally came but it was many hours late. In the meantime those kids were running around a lot of the time. It sucked for us but it sucked more for them of course. 🙁

By around 5pm tonight I had zonked out. I was watching a session with a little boy working on cutting and tracing and I was like I can't take this anymore. I almost wanted to go ask the OT if I could go sit in a quiet corner somewhere for a few minutes because I was starting to feel panicky, but it passed. I kind of feel like kids scheduled close to 7pm end up getting shortchanged because all the therapists are tired after 10 hours of kids and so we're all a little zombie-ish. Plus a lot of times parents bring their kids like an hour and a half early and so you end up with more kids at once than expected, blah blah blah, it gets chaotic. I do not thrive on chaos LOL.

We had a kid at the end of the day who was incredibly impulsive and couldn't listen. This little boy was so damn cute but soo bad. He had no safety awareness and was a danger to himself and others in his enthusiasm to do things. He got put in time-out multiple times and he would be so sad and cry and I felt sorry for him – he could not control himself. He did not WANT to be bad…poor kid.

We got to leave 15 minutes early at 645 which was cool. I headed home to nap a while, then ended up eventually meeting my friend Christa to go to Wal-Mart in Southaven since I forgot to go on the way home. i wanted a swimsuit and some of those boy shirts that come in a pack at Walmart to wear under my scrubs. She needed a few things too. We also picked up bake-able cookies and then went to her house to watch Scrubs and eat cookies for a while. I was originally planning to visit Kerri and Brent but they already had a few friends over and I wasn't feeling social enough to handle that many people….plus I was exhausted. So it worked out well I guess and I'll see them Saturday instead. 🙂 They are awesomeeee.

I've talked to Allison, Kerri, Brooke, and Virginia some and so far from what I have heard they are all doing fine. Allison is following a COTA a lot and I am bouncing between an OT and COTA when she is there. COTAs are sooo under-appreciated, they do so much work for less glory. I love COTAs.

Next week I get my own patients, quite a few of them. I get the little boy who is clingy/whines/plays dumb but is actually pretty smart….he comes twice a week for an hour. I also get a little autistic boy who is massive. He is cute and they said he was really hard but I have optimism. He comes twice a week for an hour.  I also got two 4-year old girls with developmental delays…they have a brother too as they are triplets (sometimes I think rehab corporations fund infertility clinics since so many multiples end up in therapy, lolol) but I'm just getting the girls who are a little easier to handle. They are seen together since they work on the same things. So I have four patients next week, I guess maybe that's a lot, we'll see, I don't really know.

It will be interesting to learn more about documentation/insurance and all those things and to kind of have the whole process/system make sense to me…

Oh, a funny thing. Most of these kids have difficult names (at least to me), you know, just an example name not from clinic, like Martavius or Shekelia or Zequalius or who knows what else. It's really funny to me when a therapist is dictating to the kid to spell their name but has to falter to check the chart on the spelling, lololol. Some of these poor kids are going to be like 30 before they can spell their name because it's so long and unusual!!

I am glad this was a short first week….I really like my OT and everyone else at the clinic. 🙂

Next Friday is National Cow Day at Chick Fil A or whatever…me and my friend Christa are probably dressing up like cows to go get free food after work…..we'll see. ahahahhaa

Have a great Fourth of July everyone 🙂 Take care of your pets and kids tomorrow night to make sure the noise doesn't drive them all crazy!!! Auditory defensiveness anyone?!

Jul 04, 2008 | Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 1