30 Aug 2008

Have a good holiday weekend

Have friends in from out of town…..about to go swimming. I have four evals and 1 plan of care, plus one monthly progress note, to write up, as my “homework” but otherwise don't plan to do much OT related, besides just the typical copy/pasting of stuff I stumble across, to this blog ๐Ÿ™‚

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

30 Aug 2008

A swim at the pool for everyone

My friends are in from out of town. Didn't get in until around midnight. I'm sitting in hotel room.

http://www.burbia.com/node/1912

I stole this from my friend's StumbleUpon page, a sweet article written by a man who watched a mother and her son with severe disabilities, play at the pool. ๐Ÿ™‚

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

30 Aug 2008

YAY For (official) OT Becca!!!!!!!!!!!

The wait is over!!

from otbecca by otbecca
AFTER WEEKS OF STUDYING AND FEELING AS IF AT ANY MOMENT SOMEONE WAS GOING TO TELL ME – “ARE YOU CRAZY” THEY ARE NOT GOING TO GIVE YOU A LICENSE – YOU KNOW NOTHING!!!”, I HAVE PASSED THE NBCOT EXAM AND AM NOW AN OFFICIAL OTR (JUST WAITING NOW FOR THE /L. YEAH – I CANNOT BELIEVE I HAVE PASSED OVER THIS HURDLE. WHAT AN EXCITING TIME.
IN ADDITION TO THIS I HAVE A JOB ALREADY AND A JOB I AM SOOO EXCITED ABOUT. WHAT A GREAT DAY!!!!

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

30 Aug 2008

OT in Public Schools Blog :)

Just saw this blog posted in the School System Listserv! Pictures and everything! Awesome! I love the idea of Wiki stix on the wall!

http://www.otinpublicschools.blogspot.com/
Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 1

30 Aug 2008

29 Aug 2008

GerotranscenDANCE

Last night in bed I read up on the ninth stage of Erickson's life cycle…it was on ” gerotranscendance” and the dystonic and syntonic elements and blah blah blah. Quite interesting…a chapter from Erickson's book..didn't realize he was so literary and personal.

ย I felt like I was in undergrad again though since it was a relatively bizarre/tough read!

I don't know where the copy of the chapter came from….I have a box of stuff to go through by my bed and it was with some articles on mentoring…I was just going to read a little bit but it was beautifully written so I kept going. More later, I'm in a rush to get to work, but brought up some interesting points I want to share.

Lester snorfles HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII to his beloved fandom

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

29 Aug 2008

Networking, weekend goals, etc…

Ok it's 130am but I got a lot done organizationally!

Tomorrow I need to be at OT's house at 915am…we have a home visit wayy down in rural Miss at 10am, the family with all the awesome butterflies…then we see our baby with bilateral hypolastic thumbs around noonish…YAY..she was adorable….haven't seen her since the eval…..i loooooooooooove baby work ๐Ÿ™‚ I mean baby play….lol

Then we head back to clinic and back by 2pmish and work on evals, plans of cares, mileage paperwork, billing grids, etc.

I also want to stop by UT to pick up a fieldwork manual, and a few other stops..

Weekend will be busy but fun with friends!! And I want to try and do the little paperwork I have left so that I can start focusing more on catching up on reading, artwork, etc ๐Ÿ™‚ Plus I should probably start getting ready for my next fieldwork with adults…reading up on stuff, practicing transfers and manual muscle testing, etc

————-

NETWORKING

National Student Conclave is coming up…I think in mid November…..which I can't afford this year so I am not going…but I am planning to try and go to TOTA (Tennessee OT Association) Conference near Dickson, TN, in late October..since it's only a few hours drive and I can probably stay with Nashville friends…it's a few days after I turn 26 years old OMG I'm so old ๐Ÿ™‚ A friend pointed out to me the other day “You're closer to 50 than…nothing”. Gee thanks LOL.

I also am pondering attending the annual AOTA's Houston Conference in April…financially and somewhat chronologically I can't afford it, but if my New Zealand blogging mentor Merrolee goes, and/or if the class proposal that she and Natan and a few others spearheaded, gets approved for conference, then how can I resist?!!!!!! Who needs food or shelter anyway, I'd live in a cardboard box eating dry Ramen noodles if it meant getting to meet my Merro…:)

We'll see what happens….I love networking with OTs/OTAs so it's hard to stay home when I know I could be surrounded by them!!!
Sorry for the random rant, I got a postcard from TOTA in the mail about the upcoming conference, plus the COTA Charlene was discussing annual AOTA conference, so it's been a bumblebee in my ear or whatever that expression is.

——–
Some Weekend goals:
Write up Low Vision
Write up final version of diversity as form of disability within Centennial Vision part of collaborative article
Work on Home-Adaptation Blogging Project with friend
Work on finalizing any evals or POCs that don't get done tomorrow afternoon
Work on beginning of autism brochure which is my “project” for this rotation
Work on closing office procedures for new clinic as asked by director, work on assembling clinic pics to get printed out to go on a bulletin board
Work on mileage for July/August (ack)
Work on catching up on peds reading
See friends a lot
Work out
Rest
Maybe hold babies
Stalk my precious lion kitty
Figure out that whole HTML/blog coding so peeps don't have to read so much
Etc

Seeing as how it is almost 2am, I better go to sleep!!

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

29 Aug 2008

Challenging Geriatric Behaviors, PESI workshop with CEUs offered

This looks like a really great way to earn CEUs and learn some new stuff…my landlords are social workers and got it in the mail but it's for pretty much anyone that works with geri pop.

“Challenging Geriatric Behaviors” – by PESI Healthcare – Day-long workshop –

Knoxville TN on Weds Nov 12th
Nashville TN on Thurs Nov 13th
Memphis TN on Friday Nov 14th

It's $164…”new insights into the care of geriatric patient with challenging behaviors”….and listen to this alphabet soup…it's by a lady with these initials: PhD, APRN, BC, ANP, GNP

lol

I'll be on my rehab rotation then, I wish I could take this course!! I bet they'd let me off, but I'm a poor student and don't want to pay the money, esp because I don't need the CEUs…just the insight. ๐Ÿ™‚

Come (possibly) join me!!!!!

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 1

29 Aug 2008

BloggingOT …new blog

http://beginningot.blogspot.com/

A new OT blog for us to benefit from, here is a paragraph bio excerpt:
a little background would be nice…I am 24 years old, a first year OT student (yeh class of 2010) for the entry level masters program in california. Maybe writting and watching olympics wasn't a good idea, totally distracted. Anyway, I graduated in Biopsychology last year, and took a year of before going back to school. that decision was due to many reason: money (mainly), nervousness, doubts…..Finally applied for MOT program and yeh got in. I really can't say that I'm an expert in occupational therapy, as I just learned about it last year; however, I can be sure that it is the profession for me becasue it combines all of my passions: biology, psychology, most importantly helping people. I mean come on what other field helps a person to do what they really really love. I really hadn't come across any other field that was so powerfull that it affects everything in a one's life….from getting up to performing ADL's and to doing things that one loves. I am really really exicited to start my program and learn about this great (sadly…not really familar to many) profession.

The reason I started blogging was to record my experiences about OT student. One day, I hope I can go back and look at my acheivements, failures (or as my inner self calls it unexpected achievements), life in general so I improve improve and improve….

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none

29 Aug 2008

A pretty good sensory day

Today I slept in until past noon, quickly got ready and headed to clinic…thought I had a kid at 1:30pm at clinic…

Got a strained phone call at 1:35pmish asking me to come to a home visit that my OT was on…which is luckily around the corner from clinic…she had just gotten a phone call from the new OT they had hired, who decided she was too tired to come in today, on her first day of work (to the new clinic)!! NOT a good sign!!!!!!!! So she was frantically trying to figure out how to adjust schedule and was really disoriented and since it turned out I didn't have any kids scheduled until 3:30pm, it was okay for me to come do the home visit…she did her phone calls and supervised…so I swooped in and worked with the kid…we did shaving cream on a dry erase board which he loved but his mom has serious sensory issues and was like AUGH! LOL. Then he and I went outside for like 20 minutes (remember this is Southern heat, in August, so it was muggy and hot) and we ran around doing FREEZES…it was fun but I was like augh there goes the makeup I just put on. LOL.

Went back and my next kid was a 7 year old girl I hadn't worked with before…printed out her goals and they included frustration reduction, increasing self-esteem, and increasing body schematics…apparently at time of eval she couldn't do jumping jacks etc.
Honestly some of our hardest kids are our easiest kids – the ones who function pretty normally – it's hard to figure out to do with such smart kids! A lot easier when the child needs to work on EVERYTHING. ๐Ÿ™‚

Well we broke up the session into two parts – first half we did painting – we did a painting of things that made her happy and she picked her mom as someone who makes her smile and laugh. ๐Ÿ™‚ Also her dad and a cat. I showed her Lester the Lion Kitty and her comment was “he looks like someone who has been tortured”. LOL

She did NOT add her cousin (in the waiting room) to her list of things that make her happy because “we fight a lot” LOL. …then we worked on a more abstract painting – based on a list ofย  things she likes about herself…she needed a little assistance but overall did great…and we did just happy stuff of wiggles and wobbles and lines and dots and stuff like that for that painting…then I wrote in the items on her list once she was done painting. She was going to put it on her bedroom door and I told her she could add stuff in as she thinks of more stuff she likes about herself. She was SO sweet and calm and cute.

THEN we did an obstacle course through a tunnel, over a heavy bolster, on the trampoline, etc…and it turns out she could do jumping jacks just fine now….she started gymnastics recently and it's helped a lot…so…not sure what happens in cases like that where the goals are met asap…maybe time to discharge her already. (She was evaluated quite a while ago but because of Medicaid approvals etc it's often over a month before we can actually start seeing the kid)

THEN I saw a little girl with Down syndrome who is very mischievous and defiant most of the time…we started with the obstacle course I had set up earlier to get in some gross motor heavy work, then we worked on a tabletop activity of tracing her name, but I had her sit on a red wobble disk, and we turned off the lights and put on the fish machine, and played some music….she was a lot calmer with all this input and didn't once try to run out to her mom (her typical MO involves us fighting in the hallways), and we cut out stuff using manila envelopes instead of normal paper since it's thicker and therefore much easier to cut…we did some finger painting…and then she played with Bubba Bear….she was laughing hysterically at him, the most I've ever seen her laugh. I like that the bear will say things like “Are you doing anything important? And the kid is always like “yeah”. She was actually quite calm for once and I liked hearing her laugh so much.

THEN I saw my child with low frustration tolerance and problems with self-expression, the one who can't tolerate toothpaste….he spent the first 15 minutes or so with me and a giant blue bolster, hitting it and kicking it from the trampoline, he was like “I got these moves from Kung Fu Panda”…

I'd let it fall over so that he'd have to pull it back up…lots of great heavy work for a sensory kid…then I pulled out the shaving cream to use on the mirror in that same room…he grimaced and wasn't thrilled, but he helped me smear it all over the mirror…then got into it and made a snail and SpongeBob with his fingers…..pretty big deal he touched it…and lucky him, we ended up going out to do bubbles with the COTA's kid and speech therapist's kid…with our bubble machine…and unfortunately the bubble machine was having a rough day so we pulled out normal bubbles…I took lots of pictures…and we were out there a long time because it was 3 kids who all need a lot of work on social skills…so it was great to have to practice taking turns etc. I am including a few that don't show the kids faces.

Overall today all my kids were more well-behaved and calmer than normal…I felt pretty good about our sessions, that the kids had gotten what they needed out of it, some sensory input etc.

Oh – most bizarre/funniest/neatest part of day – right at the end of day, the clinic director's mom hobbled in on a cane and sat down with us around 630pm as I was about to leave – and I grabbed my foam fencing swords and her eyes lit up – she stood up without her cane, took a sword from me, and started fencing me!! I was like whoah lady! Awesome! LOL! She was walking back and forth in fencing pose…the clinic director tried to introduce me to her step-dad and of course as I was distracted she poked me in the chest! It was one of those perfect “meaningful activity” things – I'm sure if I were like, yo, get up and walk without your cane, she'd have been like NOOOOOOOOOOOOO…but she saw the fencing swords and hopped up because it was symbolic of a meaningful past occupation.ย  Blah blah blah. mOTivation.

Maybe I'll bring my foam swords on my next rotation, a rehab hospital, too! ๐Ÿ™‚

PS: I'm so excited Lester the Lion Kitty (a bunch of new videos up on his blog) made it onto UglyOverload!!ย ย  ย  At UglyOverload, Lester joins the ranks of freakish spiders and fractal octopi, so it's quite an honor. ๐Ÿ™‚

Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: none