thanks OTs

Thanks OTs and OT students for your thoughtful responses to questions on social media. I passed them all onto the editor of OT Practice. 🙂

I had SOOOO MUCH fun in the Amazon jungle with a day/night in Peru, a day in Brazil, and a lot of time on the Amazon River and in Leticia and various islands of Colombia on the river. The Peru/Brazil stuff was all really close together as we were at the point of being on 3 borders. Pretty cool. I had MONKEYS on my head and got to hold a sloth and a bobcat and parrots and see iguanas and toucans and owls and all sorts of stuff. Oh yeah I held a tiny crocodile too. The scariest part to me were the spiders. I have pictures on Facebook and need to write up the experiences soon. Maybe this weekend?

I'm still having fun here in Bogota, observing and occasionally assisting at the rehab center with its special program for land mine victims. I met a man the other day who lost both arms in a land mine after removing something from his cows. I would be interested to watch the progression of pre-prosthetic training and post-prosthetic training in the USA as compared to here. One of the things they do here as pre-prosthetic training is make a harness for a generic prosthesis then put weight on it and have a patient wear it around to strengthen up their trunk/shoulder. My favorite patient was a man who was born with one arm that never worked and then his other was cut off in a work accident. So effectively he had no use of his arms. He was such a great guy and while he had been dealt a difficult hand, he handled it quite nicely. So far almost everyone I've met here has been soo nice. 🙂

Today I was in a small car accident – my taxi rear-ended a stopped taxi. Almost nobody has seat belts here so I flew forward and smacked my shins/elbow on the front seat (I was in back), but we didn't hit hard enough to cause me to hit the windshield or anything, thank goodness. It's so amazing and scary to think about how quickly – in a single second – your life can change dramatically. Makes me want to live in a portable bubble 🙂

I was just searching for Spanish hand-outs today, patient education materials. Ohio State University has GREAT patient education materials in general and they ahd some in Spanish but most had to do with like pregnancy or medical stuff, not rehab stuff!

We had a lady come in today, 3 months post carpal tunnel surgery, who is still having a LOT of pain in her L hand and is babying it (her non-dominant hand). She doesn't move it much because it hurts. Her scar is healing well although hypersensitive, and her hand isn't swollen or red, so it doesn't seem like its CRPS/RSD, but something along those lines. To me CRPS/RSD seems like it is directly correlated to the level of depression/anxiety a person has. The more depression/anxiety a person has, the more likely they end up with CRPS [my anecdotal experience].  I was trying to think of ways to handle her pain and I wish I had more of my OT resources here. Oh well.

Dec 09, 2010 | Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 1