Occupational therapy with sick babies?!

UPDATE: OTS Emily ran in the St. Jude 1/2 marathon quite successfully despite being in pain! Go Emily!!

Saturday morning did not quite go as planned…

I wrote this yesterday:
It normally takes me 5 minutes to get to the local pediatric hospital where I volunteer. This morning, it took 45 minutes. The St. Jude marathon was going on and they were running all around my area. I tried to go down Peabody. Nope. Went down Union. Blocked. Went to Madison. Blocked. Went to Jefferson, Washington, tried to go to Poplar…blocked. Went up a back alleyway. Got stuck. Two lanes only, and a stupid cop lets a hearse take up one of the two lanes. Seeing as how everyone in one lane is completely blocked and needs to turn around, a hearse blocking the other lane wasn't very helpful. It was sad there was a hearse there at all though, obviously. Anyway. Called the hospital security and was like um….I've been trying to get there for 30 minutes now. What do I do? They looked at a map and the only thing they could figure out to do was to take this huge circle around downtown, which I am not familiar with enough to be comfortable executing. I finally did what I should have done immediately had it occurred to me – park at UT Memphis and walk up the hill to the hospital. So I was 30 minutes late instead of 10 minutes early.

When I get there, I found out my two favorite babies of all time there, had passed away yesterday. Huge blow. 🙁
Held adorable babies for an hour and a half. I feel like my OT knowledge helps me better understand their needs, both medically and developmentally. I'm getting a lot more comfortable with the babies.

I feel like the pacifier fairy sometimes….running around just popping in lost pacifiers. I typically end up holding 1-2 babies in a 2 hour session. With gown changes, dragging up a chair, checking with a nurse, repositioning tubes, gingerly picking up the baby….it is a long process. Once I have the baby, I keep them for at least 30 minutes to an hour and a half plus, depending on how the baby is doing. So when I finally transition from one baby to the next, I pop in pacifiers for the crying babies as I go…with hand cleaning each time, of course! I am sad I'll miss the next three weeks while out of town, but starting in January I'm going to try to go at least once a week, maybe two. I'm excited. I find it very rewarding to hold these babies.

Went home…marathon still going on, so took me about 15 minutes with a few detours. Glad to see so many people support St. Jude, but it sure made my morning hectic.

I was thinking about how much I enjoy volunteering and/or the idea of being an OT with this type of population…sick babies. To me, it is kind of funny how I can cry at Gary the Snail from Spongebob almost starving to death, and yet two of my babies die and I'm like Ouch. Moving on. No tears. But I've thought about it and it's not that I don't care or have an emotional problem – it is that I know that if I want to keep helping these babies, I have no choice but to keep the heartbreak contained within a tiny area, so that I am not overwhelmed. I think the kind of person who can work with this population is just as compassionate as anyone else – we just have the ability to set emotional boundaries. If you would have asked me a few years ago if you thought I'd be an OT for sick babies, I probably would have laughed at you. And I haven't even started my Level II fieldwork's, so maybe I'll change my mind again. But for right now…working with the frail sick babies makes me most happy. Not the tiny babies though – I'm still freaked out by the newborns. They have to be a few months old before I stop being scared. I think with time I'll even get used to the teeny babies.
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Saturday night was the OT Christmas Party and it rocked! A lot! More details – and carefully chosen non-PDE ruining- pictures, coming soon.

Professional Development Evaluations….make it stoppppppppppp

It's a Friday night at 730pm and nobody is allowed to mock me for writing on my blog instead of being out. Saturday and Sunday are going to be incredibly socially busy with a combo of OT and non-OT friends, and I am still not done with my professional development evaluations (PDEs), and I am tired. So in all honesty I cannot wait for it to be like 10pm so I can go to bed early for once…normally I work 9 to midnight but I got off tonight due to a long story.

The picture attached is from a presentation done by Allison (curly hair), using Emily as her guinea pig…I think it was on Motor Relearning, but I don't remember now. It was months ago. The picture is a test to see if Blogger will cooperate if I put up a picture in a different way. I curse you, Blogger, for your pictorial meanness

Today I went to Costco for sheet protectors and giant binders (my friend is also giving me some giant binders YAY). I swear to you that you could fill almost an entire bookcase with just BINDERS full of OT papers from the last year. Sheet protectors are really expensive, but Costco had a great deal – 200 heavyweight for less than $10. I almost cried with joy. Ok not really. But I was impressed. I need the sheet protectors for my PDEs.

In PDEs we have to show we are ethically grounded, evidence based, occupation centered, and leader change agents. My leader change agent binder is like ten thousand pages thick! Who woulda guessed I'd end up a leader change agent in my old age!

I hope my enchilada suiza Lean Cuisine hurries up in the microwave, I'm hungry….ok back on topic…

Several OT students told me today they were really appreciative of all the pictures I've put up on Facebook over the last year cuz it is turning out to be really handy for PDE evidence! That made me happy!

Tomorrow:
8am: Bug Man comes, according to my landlords
10am to noon: Hold babies at the local peds hospital, in their Special Care Unit
Sometime randomly tomorrow: my landlords pick up their two new golden doodle puppies. I'm excited but also scared they may bark all day and force me to go postal from the noise pollution.
Afternoonish: Do my stupid dishes, keep working on PDEs, get some food in the house to last me a week, make phone calls, blah blah blah normal errands/chores
5pm: Go to OT Student Christmas Party at Kerri's house, woot woot…we are having taco night and some of our faculty is coming, and even our tech genius man who helps with all our distance education, will be there. Kerri & her husband Brent have a Wii and a bunch of games, so we should have a good time. I'm excited.

Sunday:
Try and meet Sarah and her mom around noonish
3pm: Go to an ornament party
3pm+: Meet with Brooke for a “PDE Party” to finish our PDEs.

Monday-Thursday: Meet up with my friends Paul & Angela, meet up with my OT little sib Talli, go to Costco for a stupid tire rotation/balance and hope my brakes aren't causing the bumpiness, go to the library, have my PDE eval, meet my friend OTS Virginia…meet my friend OTS Kerri..meet my friend OTS Brooke..meet my friend OTS Allison…you get the idea. And oh yeah, pack for being gone three weeks. I leave my house December 7th and get back December 29th. I'm visiting some friends in Nashville, some friends in Florida I have not seen in over 3 years, and then also spending several weeks in California with my family, of course.

WOW THAT BITE OF ENCHILADA WAS REALLY HOT OW

Ok. This wasn't the most OT-centric post, but you know…a true balance of occupation requires the occasional change of topic. This next month will be challenging from a blog perspective, since I won't have any school material to post…but I'll try to catch up on new picture collages, OT video editing, fixing typos in old posts…and will probably frequently also be off-topic. Sorry. Maybe I'll come up with some astoundingly profound OT material too. I do plan to do the ACLS (leather lacing test for cognitive levels) on my family, do the mini mental state exam on my grandmother/grandfather, and stuff like that…so maybe I can report back on how that goes.

Raise your hand if you are the biggest OT dork in the history of the world! ::raises hand::

Raise your hand if the AOTA National Office is well aware of that fact!! ::raises hand::

Raise your hand if you think I should go focus on my enchilada and stop typing! ::raises hand:::