Nexair: Exploding into the future…poor OTS Brooke

Y'all know that a Nexair truck carrying a big ol' oxygen tank had the tank explode a few days ago in front of my school. OTS Brooke was an innocent car-driving victim, whose windshield was cracked by shrapnel. Traumatizing. Anyway, you should vote for her in the ASD elections because she needs some love to make up for that experience, and then you should vote for me because I'm her friend and I'm cool. When we came in this morning, Neal, our superhero tech dude, had made up his own slogan for Nexair.

Nexair: Exploding into the Future. With a traumatized Brooke standing by.

20,000 page views…you love me, you really love me ::weeps:::

Guess what guys!!!

Today I hit 20,000 page views!!!!!!!!! I don't know how to tell how many users, but still! Yay!!! Woo!! Hoo!!! Yay!! You can't tell but I'm totally doing jumping jacks on my coffee table…

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming….

Check back tomorrow for GERO GNEWS!!! Aging in Place, Authority Figures….I am going to have it ALL, yo!

Gerontological Gems & Tornadoes & Social Participation: OT-related!! Well except for the tornado part

I’ve been having so much fun with my fellow OT classmates lately! We’ve been going to the gym for various classes in large groups and I hope we keep up with it. We did Total Body Conditioning yesterday and Yoga today. We’re sore!! I’ve also been having OT friends stay here or going over to OT friend houses. I’m having the best time of my life socially.

Ok this tornado stuff is getting kinda scary. I’m always the one that stands at the window excitedly when the storm is really bad, while all the seasoned Southerners tell me I’m stupid and to get away from the window. It’s dark and windy outside augh!! If I never post again, you know why, okay? I will my books to….jk

We had a Perspectives in Aging class today and we talked about some of our upcoming projects. We have to design a lot of Well Person activities, do occupational profiles, do some MIFA deliveries, etc etc – it sounds pretty neat. While I don’t think I want to work with geriatrics for a living, I do love learning about ALL populations, so I’m excited to share some of what I learn here. I think my next post will be on Aging in Place, since I got several reader comments on that, as well as a few other gerontological GEMS!!!!!!

My random OTish post of the day

I posted yesterday that there was an oxygen tank explosion on a Nexair truck driving in front of UT Memphis. OTS Brooke was right there and got a cracked windshield from the shrapenl, but her attorney boyfriend saved the day so that her windshield should get paid for. She is understandably shaken up – it is a miracle no one was killed. Most of the cracked windows in the buildings were a story or two up, so the shrapnel mostly went over heads and not into heads. Yay.

Also, yesterday I got a cool blogging t-shirt from Rehabcare thanks to Josh, I’ll post a picture of it soon!! The same day I got a scary calendar of two cows licking each other so I’m glad I had the shirt to lessen that trauma.

Today I came home to…dum dum dum…”Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures” by Vincent Lam, and “Final Exam:A Surgeon’s Reflection on Mortality” by Pauline Chen. They both look really good, I’m excited. I love the healthcare profession! My grandfather Nacho sent them to me, I guess I talked too much about all the doctor blogs I read when I saw him at Christmas! He got the hint!

Oh no tornados in Arkansas coming to Memphis we’re all going to die nooooooooooooooo okay I’ll type fast.

OT definitions make OT students cry

I think all OT students know the feeling…

“I'm so bad at giving the definition of OT that I programmed it into my telephone so I could tell people” – a certain hilarious OT student in my class, today during Leadership as we discussed OT definitions.

Augh! Explosion at UT! Drama yo!

I'm headed out to hang with with OTS Kerri but wanted to share this little tidbit with you guys!

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/jan/07/oxygen-tank-explodes-injuring-one-uthsc/

OTS Brooke and I were there when it happened, in front of the university. Brooke was much closer and actually had her windshield cracked by shrapnel. Yikes. I was a few blocks down so I just heard and saw the aftermath, but was out of the danger zone. The reason being that she turned left out of the parking lot and I turned right. Ack! Scary stuff!

I'll post about today + a few funny quotes, later on tonight!

I need to work on my campaign flier too! How about… Vote for me, I like OT….jk!

Part 2 of our 1st few days of OT school…with OT pictures!! Ooh!

Go read the post below this one or this post won’t make sense.

Friday, January 4th, continued:

So…anyway. We started out happy to see each other…

but we did get annoyed with the scheduling conflict!

(I told them to make their angry faces for the camera, they don’t just all hate me)

We did get a chance to hang out some though…

And take some pretty pictures…

Here are OTS Kim, Virginia, and Stephanie (who just got married!)

—

We finally got into the classroom and our lecture was on “Aging in Place” and it was pretty interesting. It has to do with trying to help people well, age in place, ie, not have to move to a nursing home or something….stay independent as long as possible. This can vary from cheap home modifications like a wheelchair ramp, or to very expensive remodels that a person can “grow into”, so to speak. OTs can help with this through education and giving suggestions on home modification, among other things. I want to post more about this later by itself.

—-

Then we had pizza with the new students. It was fun. They then went to anatomy orientation, where they were given their bone boxes, and had to pick out a body. I had warned my OT little sib about the right kind of body to grab, so she got a great one – not too much fat to peel off, but not so frail as to have paper thin muscles! Yay!

So in conclusion…we have had two days of OT school and a total of 2.5 hours of class. I don’t understand why we couldn’t have just started on the 7th and added in that time elsewhere, since people had to come home 4 days early just for that. But, I know if my professors read this they would say we already had a long break, they can make the schedule how they see fit, blah blah blah…I’m venting but I understand and am apointing out there are multiple sides to the story so that I don’t get in trouble! Augh!

Yikes I don’t want to end this on a bad note. So let’s talk about happy things. Like eating chocolate-covered pretzels. Or Brooke & I putting 150 OT schools into Excel so we can make envelope labels for our campaign fliers. Oh wait, that isn’t happy, that’s just tedious….okay happy…happy…it’s hard to think of happy at 1:30am….ok hmm….sunshine! lollipops! teddybears! puppies! People helped by OT! People who love OT! Yay! OT! Yay!

The End.

Our first few days of OT school…with OT pictures!! Ooh!

OT School is officially back in session! The new students started Wednesday, and my class started Thursday…here is a mini diary of the last few days. I’m trying to get back my OT Blogging Mojo to update daily, but it’s kinda hard! I need MOHO on my MOJO. Haha omg I’m dying laughing! Ha ha ha! Ha!! …..ok not.

Wednesday, January 2nd, day:

New students (MOT Class of 2010) start. They all look petrified, which is exactly how my class looked a year ago. OTS Brooke, Virginia, Kerri, Mary, and me, served as “guides” to lead the new students to different areas around campus to get things dealt with, like ID badges, insurance, tuition, etc. Everyone seemed excited and nervous, which I think is pretty typical. I liked that the orientation was changed so that their first day was only 1-5pm and did not include cutting into a cadaver. Last year, our orientation started with an 8 to 5 day and that FIRST DAY we were SKINNING THE BACK OF CADAVERS!!! It was REALLY stressful! Most of us went home and cried! All the new students seemed really nice. My group of students were actually the Chattanooga students, who come to Memphis for orientation, but otherwise stay in Chattanooga.

Wednesday, January 2nd, night:

The Chattanooga students, new and old, several students in my class, plus some new Memphis students, all went to Huey’s for dinner. There were about 25 of us in all and it was a lot of fun!
This is not the most flattering picture but you get the point…

Thursday, January 3rd:
*Let’s preface this with a mini-blurb that we were originally told we wouldn’t start back until the 7th, and then that changed to the 3rd.

We were supposed to have a guest speaker and have class from 10am to noon. At 9am, I got a call from a professor that the speaker cancelled due to emergency, and that we needed to start the phone tree to get the word out. Well I started the phone tree, but almost immediately got another call that another professor would like to use the time, so I restarted the phone tree to say never mind, class isn’t cancelled, since only a few people had been called by that time. We have class from 10am to 11pm on Research and what to expect with our various research projects. The lecture is depressing because the professor says all our free time in the schedule will actually be sucked up with projects, most especially, research. It makes me want to commit Sudoku (straight face). Class is then over.

Several of us decide to stay and listen to the new student’s being given a lecture on “Distance Education” by our seasoned Chattanooga students. This includes advice such as talking loudly so the microphones pick up voices, while also avoiding noise pollution, such as rustling papers.

Many from my class then go to Pei Wei (Asian food) en masse…11 of us total. It was lots of fun! And…I took pictures, but where are they now? ::ponders this::: Ooh I found them.

Chattanooga students Nikki, Rebecca, and Haley…
Memphis student Joe, Chattanooga student Ashlee, and Memphis student Mary.

Me and Brooke – VOTE FOR US!!!! ASD Steering Committee Election coming up soon! Look how cute and competent we are! You want to vote for us! ::waves hypnotic chain:::

Okay. After Pei Wei, I ran ten thousand errands.

Friday, January 4th:

Our schedule says we have class 10am to noon. Turns out, orientation for new students is until 10:30. We can’t just switch classrooms due to the distance education component. So we sit around until 10:30 and have class until noon. Then we have a pizza lunch with the new students. To be continued on the next post since I’m about to run out of picture room because Blogger is stingy….

OT-related reader mail catch-up!!

I was pleased to get quite a bit of OT blog reader e-mail. Some highlights:

• Suhaila, a 3rd year Singapore OT student: Glad you are so passionate about OT!!
• Nivea: Future OT student, blog URL changed to futureot10.blogspot.com
• Diego: Thank you for writing me, but I didn’t understand how to get to your OT website. Resend the address, please?
• “Cookie Gimp”: Recommends a website that could help OTs better understand disability activitists: http://www.stevegoldada.com/
• Vanessa G.: High school student interested in OT. Hope you end up choosing OT !!!
• Keith: Points out he uses a mouthstick to type (cool!), but that it makes his neck tired. I’m waiting for permission to share a paragraph he wrote about how OT students have helped him with his daily needs. 🙂

Random assortment of pictures from the last week…

New Year’s Eve…my friend Doug and I

Talli, my OT little sib, looks curiously at my computer…we hung out Friday night after she had completed OT orientation!

Doug blows bubbles near all my OT books! We were experimenting with taking bubble pictures with his new camera…
I forgot to rotate this and now I’m too lazy to care. I’m grossed out by the bubbly goop. Sensory issue anyone? By the way, look closely at my necklace…it has MOLECULES (neurotransmitters) ON IT!! Yes that’s right! It’s really cool! www.madewithmolecules.com, thanks Nacho! (A Christmas gift from my grandfather.)

Ok…anyway…moving on…