Hodgepodge of thoughts

I just got back into town a few hours ago, and my landlords handed me my 3 weeks worth of mail. Right on top was the newest OT Practice, June 25th edition, and my blog did make it in! Yay! I’m excited! If anyone wants to submit a guest entry, e-mail your post to the address listed in the header paragraph. I’ve spent most of my June break in California and then a few days visiting friends in Nashville, so please forgive me for the disjointed blog entries I’ve had this month. I start back in school in another week and hopefully things will smooth out then.

A random oddity…I told a woman at the airport with me that I was in occupational therapy school, since we were making idle chit-chat while waiting to board. She said oh yes, I’ve read a book about the pioneer of OT! I asked incredulously, you mean the book about Ora Ruggles called the Healing Heart? She said yes. I was shocked. I don’t think I’ve met a single person yet who has read that book besides me (which is like the best book ever, but out of print and obscure and hard to find). She is a 68 year-old retiree from a little town in Tennessee. What a bizarre coincidence that she has read that book too.

The friend I’ve been staying with the last few days in Nashville just had rotator cuff surgery two weeks ago. I got to go to her physical therapy sessions on Wednesday and Friday as well as just get to experience in general what she is going through. She’s pointed out to me things that will one day be helpful to me as an OT to remember with rotator cuff patients. Stuff like the sling getting sweaty or bothering her neck, how to make a slushy icepack using alcohol and water, buying clothes that don’t require going overhead, how to put on deodorant (using Codmann’s (????) position), etc. She has a pretty high pain tolerance and had a great surgeon, so she is healing nicely. And her physical therapist let me use his goniometer to measure her external rotation in the scapular plane! It was cool, I guess I get excited at the little things in life…

It’s past 10pm here and I’ve had a long day of traveling, which included driving through a horrific storm and having to pull over on the side of a freeway for a while because the rain was so torrential. That was a rather harrowing experience. So I’m tired and going to go to bed, even though ideally I’d impress any new blog readers with a stunning & articulate new blog post (ha!).

Feel free to read old blog entries if you desire by clicking on the Older Posts link at the bottom, or clicking on the archives on the sidebar. Otherwise, check back soon, I’ll try to post something interesting! Also, all the OT blogs and OT-related blogs I’ve listed on the sidebar are great reads.

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PS: The picture is of my California cat enjoying the sun…he liked it better when we’d sunbathe together.

Jul 01, 2007 | Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none