Some other random items from articles/emails this weekend:

I've recently gotten interested in Brain Gym, which uses movement patterns to support neural development, and the infinity pattern (lazy 8) is a biggie – I got this from a newsletter:

“If you do not have an Infinity Walk mat, tape down two hula-hoops and have the kids walk in an infinity/figure 8 pattern (Wampler, M 2008).”

I definitely wish I had more time to research Brain Gym further!

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I babysat a child with CHARGE syndrome when I was about 12 years old. He was deaf and nonverbal and had a feeding tube and breathing abnormalities among other things. He was way too complicated in retrospect for me to have been seeing him. One of the times, he threw up his Pediasure from the feeding tube all over my lap and to this day – 14 years later – certain smells bring that memory back to me.

I just saw in a UT newsletter an article about it..
http://www.chargesyndrome.org/about-charge.asp

My favorite line from the article: “The name “CHARGE” was a clever way (in 1981) to refer to a newly recognized cluster of features seen in a number of children. “

AAHHAAHAHAHAHA

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On that note, a headline I liked in a recent UT newsletter: “UTHSC out to revive anesthesiology training program “

Good choice of words.
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Auditory processing: The other day, I saw a young child with difficulty with auditory processing. I read him some silly Shel Silverstein poems about being only an inch tall, living in a crazy world etc, and asked him some questions. Seems like poems in general could be good for a variety of therapeutic uses – auditory processing, attention span, reading or auditory comprehension, silliness/creativity, poem ideation, etc.

Get some cool poems here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/

Mom wrote me on August 30th about a show that took place on August 29th:

Yesterday on NPR, The Writer's Almanac, Garrison Keillor (sp?)
mentioned that it was Temple Grandin's birthday and also that
some of her work is being used by occupational therapists these
days, especially for working with autistic children. You might
want to see if you can find it archived to listen for yourself.

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2008/08/29

One quote:

“The squeeze machine that she designed has since been used by occupational therapists in therapy with children who have autism, ADD, and Tourette's syndrome.”

http://www.crrn.ca/initiatives/fixToFunction/Workshop_proceedings.pdf

My friend “Cookie Gimp” sent this link to me – from a workshop called 
“From Fixing to Function: Exploring opportunities for the development of a
functional optimization model for intervention for children with disabilities”

Pretty good points in this.

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http://www.ot-innovations.com/content/view/41/28/

Motivational interviewing: Preparing People to Change Addictive Behavior

This is a book I wish I had…seems like a great one for therapists in mental health

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http://rehabilitation-director.advanceweb.com/Article/Equal-Footing-3.aspx

This article is about Oscar Pistorius, a bilateral amputee athlete, who just barely missed going to the Olympics, and the controversy surrounding whether or not his prosthetics gave him advantage. Originally they concluded it did, but on appeal, determined it didn't…details in the article. Pretty interesting.

Was on Garrison Keillor's (sp) site and found a poem called “Teaching a Nephew to Type” by Rebecca McClanahan, you can read it here, in full, but my favorite line was “…and your handwriting is a tangle the teachers have grown weary of unraveling…”

It reminded me of an issue that occupational therapists often face with school-aged children who have trouble with handwriting: and what point do you throw in the towel on handwriting and switch to a keyboard? 🙂

It's 230am….everybody was at the goodbye party between 730 and 830, and there were still 6 of us there as of 130am…she lives 25 miles away but add 15 miles to that because I got lost on two different roads – I have such a hard time with direction reversals – and extra fun were the occasional harsh winds of residual hurricane – oh and the dead armadillo i went over – anyway – everybody bought presents, there was lots of alcohol, and lots of laughter. Very fun. I was NOT expecting presents at all – but I got some awesome pediatric OT therapy supplies!!! And a few other cool things, more details later when it's not almost 3am! Very very kind and sweet and generous of them all.

My co-workers are sweet as can be! Yay!

Today went smoothly, included a home visit with  two cousins in one rural town (the grandma had just finished mopping the floors so we sat them in their outdoor swings with TV trays…but since it's on a farm both little boys were really distracted by “wacter, wacter” (tractors). Then lunch, then two evals with an early intervention coordinator – one at a trailer park, one at a health department, in another town. On the way back the lines of cars for gas was incredible. A little scary. Glad my neighbor got me to fill up late last night.

Now going to rest a while. More later this weekend, including a special, by-request, post, on why all y'all students need to go to Conclave, along with a link to Megan's video of reasons to go… 🙂 And then y'all can be inspired and go have a wonderful time, and think of me weeping quietly and rocking in a dark corner, jealous as can be of all the wonderful experiences you can have there. Hmm, so I have to think, based on last year's conclave, what the best parts were…

Next week, Week 12, is my final week. We have a new full-time OT starting Monday, and I don't really have any kids on the schedule (although I know by virtue of chaos I'll end up with a few at the last minute), because I have a TONNNNNNNNNNN of paperwork to finalize…..writing up a one page proposal for a psychosocial fieldwork placement that would be supervised with my OT, doing up a mileage chart/direction binder for all our home visits, finalizing an autism brochure, writing up the 8 evals + some plans of cares plus some other old evals/plans of care, finishing up addendums for Medicaid, and the list goes on and on 🙂 But I like stuff like that!! So I'm happy!

Dear AOTA,

Your grip & grin campaign was a cool idea, politically current and savvy, and y'all got on the Today show. 

Got up this morning and was reading about the evacuations of special needs populations in Houston, and saw this picture.

How about a campaign or memo or tips on how to handle evacuations of special needs populations in the face of upcoming disasters such as Hurricane Ike? Broad categories like nursing home residents.

Sincerely,
Karen

1) Hillary, the OT little sib of my classmate Allison, said tonight she checks out my blog sometimes to see what fieldwork can be like and to see how the current schooling really does tie in with fieldwork…that made me happy. She is also, btw, appalled at my cat….lolol

2) Several different OT girls now have told me they recently had an impromptu lecture from the department chair, on why using the Internet to post negative things about the school program is bad. And that most of them were wondering “is she talking about Karen’s blog?” during the lecture, and I admit when I first heard this, I was worried too that the chair was indirectly referring to my blog, but I am pretty sure that is not the case, after further self-analysis. I am dying to know what prompted such a lecture, though.

I don’t think it’s me because I almost never talk specifically about professors or classmates or anything in a negative way, and even when I do rant, I never just rant about my program. I try really hard, even when I REALLY REALLY REALLY WANT TO on bad days, to not specifically diss my program, because um, burning bridges is not cool (unless you are an arsonist), and every program has its ups and downs, blah blah blah. Plus, as far as I know, none of my professors actually acknowledge my virtual existence or keep up with my blog, so I doubt I’d be brought up elsewhere if I haven’t even been approached personally about offensive content or something.

And um, yeah. That’s all I wanted to say. Boo-ya.

Good night again for REALZ!!!11111!!!1111 this time. Yes, I’m very professional.

PS: In a startling show of generosity, after last night’s post about crying and being overwhelmed, “Cookie Gimp” (a man with spina binifda who thinks OTs should bake HIM cookies instead of vice-versa, and who has definitely opened my eyes to startling controversial perspectives on rehab), offered to share half a cookie with me.