Ok well, 3 hours later and I'm up…just got a phone call from my OT (it's 720am) and have a bunch of things I need to pick up from the office before I get to her house at 830ish, so I'm probably going to just try and hurry up and go within about 15 minutes  ….Lester is acting bizarre and I'm worried he's sick. Since last night he's been somewhat agitated…running around a lot and meowing, but also in my face and clingy. I've checked his food, water, litter box, and brushed him…i I think his digestive system is bothering him but um, don't really know, lol. He's just acting odd. I'm kinda sad I'm leaving for at least 10 hours because poor little guy. 🙁

Better go. Send good thoughts my way and healing thoughts to my poor lil Lester the Lion Kitty.

My cat is looking at me like, You realize it's 4am right?

So I deliberately e-mailed the OT Practice editor and Kuma last week promising them their stuff by Monday morning so that I couldn't procrastinate any more. It's been not cool having this stuff hang over my head for so long. With Kuma, the student I am collaborating with for the diversity paper, I sent him a rough draft asking for his feedback. Not ideal, but I do want some opinions before I go crazy making things perfect.

For the OT Practice article I couldn't get away with that, LOL. So I stayed up until 4am – my own fault for procrastinating so much – and have submitted a much revised version of the article on online social community. Before I kind of focused on it in a “so you're scared, don't be”, and the editor was like um,  you need to revise it – we're not scared, we're busy…so I took the “here's why it's worth it even if you're busy” approach. There are a lot of charts/boxes with specific examples and I am pretty sure it will be a nightmare to edit, so it won't surprise me too much if she is like, um, let's just forget it. LOL. No I'm just being self-deprecating, I like to think it's getting to a publishable point. 🙂

Luckily I know the social media manager of AOTA has some awesome stuff up his sleeves, so hopefully the article can kind of merge with some of his unveilings…I dunno. It's 4am so now I'm delirious. I need to be up in about three hours. Tomorrow is going to suck because I'll be so tired!! Bad bad bad me for waiting so long. 🙁

I just found out today that supposedly we can take off one day a month while on fieldwork? Is that true? Maybe my OT won't find it too unprofessional if I go sleep in the ball bath while she treats the kids tomorrow afternoon. Kidding! Kidding! Not kidding! Oh the pain. I'm gonna bring lots of headache pills because I promise I'll need them. 🙂 Or maybe I can sleep on the couch during the home visits? I'm sure the parent's wouldn't mind….hahahahaha

Send energetic vibes my way tomorrow, I'm going to need them big time. I'm sooo going to bed at like, 8pm tomorrow.

Today was a fun Sunday…. I belly-danced to random Youtube Videos and SUCKED but it was a good and fun workout…then I held babies at the hospital…a 4 month old that was like seven pounds…a few other little babies that just needed some pacifier/blanketing repositioning, etc. I like to sing my own songs to the babies but I really need voice lessons, I bet all the babies go deaf after a few minutes alone with me.

 Then went to Kerri's and Brent's and worked on plans of cares etc, we had Japanese for dinner yum…..then grocery shopping and I battled a scary spider at the gate coming home 🙁 Hand me a snake, a worm, a turtle, an ugly cat, your unwashed masses, whatever…but don't hand me a spider. I was scared to death. Then I discovered I must have left some frozen cherries in my trunk and I was like PLEASE JUST KILL ME NOW I CAN'T HANDLE MEETING UP WITH THAT SPIDER AGAIN!!!!!!!!!! But it was $3.99 so I was like I must be brave like Abraham Lincoln or George Washington or whoever it was that confessing to cutting down that cherry tree.

So I took a broom and battled it, and got some spiderwebs on me, and I'm more scared of spiderwebs than spiders to some extent, I was like shivering in fear, but I DID IT YAY!!!!!!!!!!. Okay I regress. Anyways, then I decided I needed to clean my house, post YouTube videos of my romance with Bubba Bear, give Lester some quality time…and now it's almost 1am and I am not done with those two articles that I promised I'd have in today. So uh, now I'm stupidly writing this blogpost to continue my procrastination. But I guess I'm gonna go start on them right now.

Tomorrow we have our two home visits to our two blind babies, then in the afternoon several older kids come to the new clinic. I'm going to bring my laptop since the computers aren't good at the new clinic and we have so much stuff to write up. This new clinic is far away, so a lot of driving. Probably 150 miles worth by end of day. Meeting Allison after work to either do Zumba dance, Yoga, or Walking, depending on what time I get done etc. And have several other things to write up besides the articles…the good news is, once I submit these articles tonight, and finish up a few other mini writing projects this week, I'll finally have the time to catch up on a bunch of reading and artwork and stuff like that!! Yay!! No more articles hanging over my head, I refuse to write anything article-y for like fifty more years!!

I think I start Week 9 of 12 tomorrow. Wow. Time flies. Still need to write about midterm eval, low vision rehab seminar, etc.
Blah blah blah.

Have a good week everyone!!

One of my classmates just experienced this on her acute OT rotation….

“I had a pt. today who had a crack induced stroke…her goal was to be able to put $$$ into a men’s g-string again! Hahahahahah…help me think of a good treatment activity for that one!”

Update: Several comments + suggestion from a not very helpful non-OT friend. LOL

Blogger Cheryl said…

One of my classmates had a rotation in an urban area doing hand therapy. One man’s goals were to be able to make a fist, and also to be able to fire a gun. She felt like she was doing a disservice to humanity by helping him get better!

Blogger Natan said…

Reminds me of this post of mine:
http://bloggingot.wordpress.com/2008/03/03/ethical-dilemma-with-treating-unethical-patients/

August 24, 2008 10:44 PM

*Natan’s post has several comments on it as well, and is startlingly similar.

====

IM that popped up:

EvilFriend(11:36:22 PM): an activity to help a patient learn how to put money in a g string might be light archery
Me(11:36:33 PM): huh?!
Me(11:36:35 PM): lololol
EvilFriend(11:36:39 PM): the stretching of the bow, the stretching of the g-string
Me(11:37:33 PM): oooh

Slept in, met Sarah and her mom for lunch then helped with a load of stuff into her new awesome dorm, then babysat. Worked on articles a few hours all together today. About to go to bed with Lester. Here are two beautiful pictures of him, I'm such a proud new mommy.

note to self, speaking of mommies, make linguistic/sociological post on vmk/peds

Tomorrow: Helping dig up Kerri & Brent's yard as needed, holding babies for about an hour, and working on articles. And hopefully a good work-out.

I can't remember if I posted this, but I'm trying to catch up and it's one of my post-it notes from a previous session, so just adding it in.

This seemed like a bittersweet (mostly sad) moment….I felt bad for the little girl.

Four year old sister, jealous of the toys that the therapists have brought for the baby:

“Mama, when I'm a baby again can I play with that?”

“You ain't never gonna be a baby again.”

Left house at 715 to be at OT’s house by 8am to be down in rural Miss. town by 9am…that became 930ish, saw the two kids until 1030ish – mom was there with grandma, normally mom isn’t there, and unfortunately son acted up and cried a lot, boo.

Went another 30 minutes further away and saw beautiful adorable baby with Down syndrome in a trailer in very tiny town, then straight to a mansion for little boy that was 3 but born at 26 weeks under 2 lbs, so had a lot of delay, in another tiny town. Then went to a daycare for two little ones. Then ate lunch, then went to several more houses and another daycare. Daycare workers definitely know their babies.

Two of our kids today have pediatric opthalmologic issues to add to the two we already have. Our low vision baby case load is growing. Need to get that low vision stuff typed up/re-looked at.

My OT and I are both bad with directions and we had to go to seven new places today in multiple unfamiliar rural towns, and didn’t know what order of houses would be in advance, so things were a little um, lost-ful at times, but it all worked out. We got to leave around 4:45pmish and I got home 6pmish and settled in for a quiet restful night. Did a YouTube video when I got home with the toys, then went walking with landlord couple and their dog, it was for first time in months I’ve been able to join them.

The female of my landlord couple, Linda, is a brilliant marriage/family therapist doing a presentation on “Ethical Evolution of Psychotherapists” at upcoming annual conference in October. We discussed as we walked and it turns out the evolution is really a journey undergone by most therapists, period..

It’s an ethical progression – kind of along the lines of Kohlberg’s moral stages. You know you feel those developmental psychology neurons popping as you think back on some of your undergraduate classes. Pop pop pop, Kohlberg neurons going off.

You start as a therapist with wanting to know the “rule/principle ethics” – what is the letter of the law? What are the straight-forward rules guiding me as a therapist? As you become familar with these ethics and gain more comfort/knowledge, and begin to experience situations that cause you conflict, you begin to explore “virtue ethics” where you are examining more of the “spirit” of the law and how the letter of law and spirit of law interact. At this point you probably begin to realize the profound grayness of the ethical spectrum. Then ideally you evolve into aspirational/care ethics. And honestly I need to chat with Linda a little more to fully understand that last part, but it’s similar to the final stage of Kohlberg that not all people fully realize – a more evolved and celestial sense of ethics.

I just liked thinking of how while a therapist gains experience (wisdom and maturity in the process), a therapist is also undergoing ethical evolution…which is often a very difficult thing to handle. Like when your moral reasoning conflicts with your legal imperatives, for example.

Not sure that made any sense. Oh well, the conversation was a dendritic-tree strengthener, haven’t really thought that deeply about such things since undergrad when we had to write essays on Kant’ s categorical imperatives. So glad those days are over.

Goals/plans for this weekend:
1. See friends, including help Kerri & Brent dig for their water main line, and Sarah move into dorm room
2. Babysit Sat night, hold babies Sun morning.
2.5 Work out some, do random errands/chores, boo.
****3. Finish online social community article, diversity/disability article.********* OR PERISH.
4. work on friend’s-home-adaptation blog project, type up evals/plans of cares for 8 kids, AOTF scholarship application essay question, Low Vision Rehab for Children Seminar write-up.
5. Mantain sanity, rest with Lest..er…the Lion GOOSE kitty. He cracks me up when he breathes. Which is um, always. I timed him yesterday (I apparently have nothing better to do in life) and it took him FIVE MINUTES to eat a single tiny treat the size of my pinkie fingernail!

Ok it’s almost 1am, I’m going to sleep and then SLEEPING IN TOMORROW!!!!!!!! Ohhhhh the beauty of sleep. Sleeping beauty. Beauty sleep. It all makes such sense.

Sounds like one of our clinic kids.

This was posted at onesentence.org:

I told my eight-year-old daughter she could choose lemonade, lemonade or lemonade and she asked “What was the second one again?”