Highlights and lowlights of Week 8 Day 1 of Pediatric OT fieldwork

Highlights of day…

…Grandparents of little blind baby encouraging her to “clap for Jesus” 🙂

…listening to mother rant/rave about health protective services being called on her last week by some of us therapists…luckily she didn't know it was me, but she was furious. Luckily my OT Christy is great at diffusing things like that and pointing out it is a matter of getting help with an overwhelming situation, not having her kids taken away…she talked about how one time her sister called the cops on her for whupping her daughter with a heeled shoe…but she hastened to add she used to flat part, and that she can discipline her daughter…and that the service worker was wasting her time there and needed to go onto a case where a baby was being put in a microwave or something…and how last week she had to give her daughter a “9-11″  (which is a whupping she wouldn't never forget) for something.  Actually the mom was quite eloquent as she talked on and on about her kids and her mothering…she seemed quite self-aware and had a good grasp of the situation…it's easy to dismiss her because her speech is so…affected, I guess, is a polite way of putting it…”fyttin to do things…” I was rather impressed with her, actually, honestly.

So far what I've learned about health protective services is that when you're dealing with an overloaded system, you're often better not even bothering reporting, unless it's sexual or like, Sybil-level severe. The services are bad about making it obvious who made the report, which pisses off the caregivers, and bam, now the kid is still with the caregivers since the system has no place to place the child anyway, but you no longer have access to do therapy or follow the child, because the caregivers don't trust you. I feel like I did the right thing by reporting last week's situation in the sense that I wanted a clear conscience, but honestly, it was probably not a good idea. It's frustrating when there is a system in place to help children, yet the system can't work as intended and in fact can do more harm than good.

…Going to Wal-Mart with my OT Christy and Speech Aide Haley…the thrill of sixty-cent markers!

…Spending an hour watering plants, vacuuming, Cloroxing the walls, and otherwise cleaning up the new clinic…

…Then letting a kid finish the vacuuming as heavy work to wear him out…hahahaha

…Working with a kid on sequencing/patterns…red green red green red green…very basic but too hard for this child…until explained the two red pieces were not nice to each other and that green piece had to go in between to separate them or the red pieces would fight…then he totally got it. LOL. He then made a “necklace” out of it and was quite proud.

…Having another kid tell me “I could kill that lady…” – story in detail in earlier post…

…Have that same kid pull off my headband and Haley the speech aide admonished him and said “Kid, how would you feel if someone took off your glasses?” His answer: “I would beat him up.” My internally thought answer: “Then you're lucky I didn't just beat you up”. Haley's more appropriate answer: Beating up people is not the right way to handle problems.”

…Walking on track with Allison and Stephanie, Allison telling me about a little girl they have who at age 2, managed to drown a cat. Ugh.

…Buying ten million dollars worth of healthy groceries…including stopping at a roadside farmer stand for the most heavenly peaches, a sugar baby watermelon (??!!!), onions, tomatoes, some corn….

…Making Lester the Lion Kitty wear a tutu for a picture…

…Proudly making turkey tenderloins but forgetting to set the timer…that was quite a disaster

…Realizing I didn't do the three most important things on my list today…postcards and two articles…tomorrow I can go to work, and work-out for sanity, but otherwise need to focus solely on those articles. Maybe I can get the postcards done during lunch.

…these highlights may seem long and boring and therefore in direct contradiction of my newly sweared vows of conciseness, but I swear this would have been fifty times longer if I had written all I wanted to.

…Oh yeah, the biggie is finding out our OT we had set up to work in another rural area doing the early intervention- has more or less backed out – so on this Friday instead of it being a like, 3 hour day, it's gonna be a SICK day…we see our first kids at 830 wayyyy far away, so I probably will leave house by 7amish to make it (takes me 40ish minutes to get to my OT's house, then it's another 45ish minutes from there)….and then we see two kids at once (cousins at their house)  at 830 on the way down to that other area (which is like a 30 minute drive further from the cousin's house), then we have EIGHT home visits to do, all kids we've never seen and places we've never been…so we'll be going nonstop until 6pmish is the current understanding,  and even then I honestly think we won't get it all done…and then if we leave at 6pm we'll get back to her house around 715 earliest since it's well over an hour away…..which means I won't get home until 8pm since I'm 45 minutes past her house…..and will probably drive close to 200 miles…and it means 11 hours – and the worst day of the rotation so far – on what is supposed to be our easy day…ugh! My OT is trying to shave off hours on her schedule here and there before Friday to make up for it (to try and avoid overtime) but it will still probably end up being overtime…I'm like I DON'T GET PAID FOR OVERTIME I DON'T WANT TO SPEND ELEVEN HOURS ON A FRIDAY DOING THIS KILL ME NOW PLEASE lol. Oh well, good experience, and has to be done, and my OT is a good sport and awesome….so no point in complaining except for this mini rant…it should be the only day of true hell we have as something will get worked out from then on I think. I hope. Please.

Ok it's 114am…luckily don't have to leave my house until 9amish as an hour was skimmed off in morning…we have several home visits in morning/early afternoon, then just see kids in the clinic…I think it includes an eval. Speaking of which I need to finish up those plans of care. AUGH! I swear I don't diddle-dawdle that much (well okay I did make a Lester video, cough), but there are just not enough hours in the day to do everything.

Aug 19, 2008 | Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none