Week 11, Day 4, Not so bad!

Today involved my car door being fixed and a relatively smooth day in the clinic. Nothing overly exciting.


Today I got my car handle fixed – blessed car handle, oh how I missed your door-opening goodness – and got to ride in my friend’s VIPER. Wow. He confirmed something is wrong with my brakes that were just fixed (they had a visiting mechanic) and on next Thursday morning – my morning off since we work so much on other days – I get the distinct joy of going back to the car place for the 3rd week in a row. Yay. At least the repair should be free.

I also got a check for $500 – which was 3 months worth of mileage reimbursement at 30 cents a mile (HALF of what the IRS allows and much lower than normal) for about 1300+ miles, plus a little extra as a “bonus” to make up for the fact the reimbursement sucked (their therapists at least get paid for driving time which I obviously don’t). Not a thrilling amount considering I’ve had close to $700 in repairs in the last few months while there, and spent several hundred dollars on gas. But oh well, better than nothing I guess.


I was at the clinic by 115pm and was able to prepare for the kids I would be having – progress notes, billing sheets, and activities – which was great – and did some paperwork. We had several cancellations which was nice as the COTA took my kids if her kids were cancelled, plus the new clinic schedule for today was canceled due to various issues and so my OT Christy was in the clinic and could take several kids as well. I did a lot of “yoga” loosely based on BrainGym today – put a big mat in the office, turned off main lights, turned on fake fish tank, turned on soothing music, and had my kids do the “octopus” (on back, feet and arms in air wiggling), the downward/upward dogs, cobra, tree (hands in air, standing on one foot”, butterflies, an elephant with arms as trunks doing lazy 8s, etc. The kids liked the yoga a lot.

At the end of the day in the sensory room, I threw in a giant bolster into the ball bath like I typically do to make the kids push it out for some heavy proprioceptive work, but this time they started crawling on it, so I got in the ball bath with them for stability purposes and we used it as somewhat of a rolly diving board, except for feet-first only. The two little boys – one with autism and one with a major need to work on social skills – did really well, they loved jumping off the bolster and into the balls, and of course they were using me for stability – they were crawling all over me. The COTA (for child with autism), the speech therapist (a co-treat for the child with autism), and a speech aide (just saying goodbye) were all in the small room with me but not in the ball bath, and started chatting (just for like a minute), and I was like totally engrossed with the two kids, who were completely content playing with the bolster and balls with me, and then they were all like “Thanks for doing our session Karen” aahhahaha…it was pretty fun. We (the COTA and I) also went outside with the fire engine backpack hoses with those same two kids and had them squirt a brick wall (I swear, little boys love anything like that, I think it’s related to the way they pee!!!), I ran inside for chalk and drew circles on the wall and we helped them “wash” off the circles….the COTA had her hands full with the little boy that kept trying to squirt us instead, LOL.

My last kid of the day did not show up so that was nice – parents, I gotta warn you, in most cases, if your kid is the last of the day (especially if the clinic has late hours and the therapists have worked 10 hour+ days), there is a good chance he/she is not getting the best therapy – the therapists are tired after a long day and are much less creative.

Went straight to Allison to work with her on the SI powerpoint and then her little OT sib Hillary showed up to buy some of her books and we chatted for at least an hour, that was fun. Then Allison and I chatted a little bit about treatment activities for vestibular, tactile, proprioceptive senses. Her powerpoint is aimed at teachers and she pointed out her fiancee (a teacher) was like….these things have to be realistic for a teacher to implement with lots of kids. True, true. And we talked about how the main message to the teachers is – these are three senses that are often not looked at closely, but being under or over response to these senses can lead to a lot of behavioral issues due to sensory needs not being met, and that a sensory diet can do wonders – not necessarily this huge ordeal that is a lot of stress/work for a teacher, but just a general knowledge of things, like “deep firm pressure for kids that crave stimulation”, etc…and providing them with ideas for heavy proprioceptive work that all the kids can benefit from to help with hyperactivity, etc etc

Around 915pm I was like um….I had egg beaters with gypsy peppers at noon for my breakfast/lunch (lets just generously say 200 calories total), and I haven’t eaten since, and I’m getting hungry, so if you want me to stay, I need food. So Allison made me a peanut butter sandwich for dinner. LOL aww. Got home around 10pm and my neighbor had just come out and pointed out that gas prices might shoot up tomorrow depending on what Hurricane Ike does, so he hopped in my car and we headed to a gas station, just in case, since I was down to half a tank.

Now it’s past midnight. Tomorrow my OT, the clinic director/speech therapist, and I meet at a McDonalds in MS at 945am, we do one home visit that has two cousins, then we drive on to another small town to do two early intervention evaluations. That place is at least an hour and 15 mins or more from McDonalds, and I’m about 40 mins from McDonalds, so we’re going to be in the car together about 3 hours, and then I’ll be in my car over an hour as well, so lots of car-time!

I hopefully get to meet some OT students tomorrow night that I haven’t seen in a long time, I’m excited. 🙂

My cat is running around howling. His “lion ripple” cut is really looking cute now.

Today was a better day overall…still bummed about fieldwork (especially being told that the patient quota is very low there always and so typically OT students only see a few patients a day, plus it’s almost all ortho, plus my new supervisor is supposedly quite quirky and very very very scheduled which will be a shock to my system after this fieldwork but probably I’ll like it) , but at least the day went way smoother than it could have been.

So….Week 11, Day 4, complete…I can’t believe I am about to start the final week 12!!!!!!!!!!!

BTW, Sam Gonzalez, the AOTA Media Guy, Posted a Video on Facebook of Top Ten Reasons You Should Not Miss Going to Student Conclave….which is taking place in mid-November….it sounds awesome but I def. can’t afford it this time!! But those of you who can afford it, really need to go. 🙂 Because like the video narrator (Megan Doherty, assembly of student delegates chair), said……FREE PENS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No seriously….it’s pretty neat and it sounds like it is going to be a lot better even than last year’s. More on that later I guess.

Sep 12, 2008 | Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 1 | Tags: