So I figured out how to do this awesome HTML-hide trick if I post from within Blogger (thanks to some code tutorial), but typically I prefer to e-mail myself the post and do it through Gmail instead of Blogger. Not sure how to use the HTML hide trick via e-mail, since it requires this HTML code but it also requires adding something to a label and as far as I know you can't do labeling through E-mail. So I'm a little bummed but I guess I'll figure it out eventually.

I'm staying in tonight -absolutely exhausted – doing some stuff on my to do-list for OT (which included figuring out how to hide my text so I would stop getting yelled at for writing too much) and then going to bed soon.

Allison wrote this tonight (well technically she wrote a whole group protocol but I am only c/ping a part) – in preparation for her group tomorrow with five kids…on frustration…using a jungle theme and yoga poses…she found a really neat child yoga site….I plan to try some of these poses with a few of my kids…she has done some really neat groups, I am impressed with her ideas. Was given permission to post.

http://www.childrensyoga.com/ForChildren/TryYogaNow/news_nd1211125356953.htm

Description:

      Today, we will go around and welcome each child to the group.  Each child will color and decorate a jungle animal of their choice.  They will practice making decisions, sharing, and creativity.  We will discuss things that make us frustrated.  We will go on a jungle adventure experienced through yoga exercises.  This will give them another outlet to help manage and control their frustration.  I will begin to teach them 4-5 basic yoga poses.  I will then continue to ask for them to demonstrate the yoga poses and increase the speed.  The point of this example is to frustrate them so that we can discuss how we feel when we are frustrated and techniques that we can utilize when we feel this way.  We will then go through a jungle adventure through yoga poses.   

References:

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3745658 

http://www.dltk-kids.com/animals/mjunglemobile.html 

http://www.childrensyoga.com/ForChildren/TryYogaNow/news_nd1211125356953.htm

So…today was non-stop busy at clinic…but sooooo crazy hectic even after clinic ended…i finally left around 7:15pm…my little 13 year old Patric called me right then to invite me to his family's house for a late dinner (but could not because of previous plans)…then right after that OT Virginia called to ask me a question, then chatted at that point on phone w/ OTS Kerri, then OTS Brooke, then OTS Allison, then friend Sarah, OT Supervisor Christy, friend Suzanne, within the next hour or so…with multiple call-backs since of course one would call while on phone with another, etc.

Went to Allison's dorm around 8pm to walk briefly on track just for some fresh air – she was in workout clothes and i was in full scrubs (don't hate me) – i was like hahaa people will think you're crazy and I'm your attendant –  and then we went inside to work on tommorrow's group she would be leading- which I'm gonna post -met another friend after that – while with friend at my house I got texts from Haley the speech aide about some stuff, plus Allison, then got a call from my little sib Talli and talked to her a really long time, etc. And of course was talking to a few other people online after that ….Just tons and tons of non-stop action –  finally was alone and/or off phone at like 1045pm – so had dinner around 11pm lol. Which was okay since I have no appetite when I'm busy! Not to mention I ate like seventy thousand candy pumpkins at Allison's. 😡

Which btw, dinner was that new parmesan crusted fish lean cuisine, and the box said “Remove film from where fish is” or wherever, but you know what, the damn fish takes up the entire tray, so I was like….um. So I kinda removed half the film. LOL.

So…that was phone calls and texts and visits starting at the end of clinic at 715pm…..not even mentioning all the phones/texts before that (I glance at texts when I can but don't take the phone calls of course), or all the personal emails I get in gmail daily – around 30+ personal ones a day (ie not mass mails, humors, or listservs, but purely aimed at me), or the blog comments, or the Facebook messages, or the AOL mails, etc…I think I really like overall that I finally have a lot of friends…to make up for those cruel cruel childhood days AHAHAHA – although wish I had more time to devote to everyone. Did I ever talk about my recent OT midterm and how apparently I sometimes come across as Asperger's – like? Based on some of the kids I see who are diagnosed with Aspergers, I probably, had it been a popular diagnosis back then like it is now, would have had that diagnosis. I dunno.

Somebody asked me today how my friends feel about all the time I devote to Lester the Lion Kitty….and the answer is…well….A) if you were a tiny creature that lived on the floor in my house I'd probably give you more attention and B) I am gone 12+ hours daily so he really doesn't see me that much!!

I feel like I'm missing some crucial elements…let's see…I want to respond to some important e-mails asap, but I guess that is otherwise it…beyond posting Allison's group protocol with her permission…oh…and mentioning two other random things

1) My social community article is going to be published – barring unforeseen circumstances – as a small “In the Clinic” article in the November 3rd issue of OT Practice…just heard back from editor. The first feature that was available wasn't until late June and since the topic is extremely dated, that would have been way too long a wait.

2) Highlights magazine has some great indirect ideas…like they have a “Creatures Never Before Seen” column…I showed it to a kid today and tried to get him to come up with his own creature…we brainstormed a little but ultimately moved on as it wasn't his thing…I think – I know –  he struggles with creativity…but I have some other kids I definitely want to do it with – what's cool is the child could do the creative drawing and dictate or write out the explanation, and then we could submit it to Highlights…whether they use it or not, it's a great meaningful activity and can work on a lot of different skills, from ideation to handwriting to attention span, etc. 🙂

Ok…I've been feeling pretty wired after going nonstop without a single pause all day long but I have finished my therapeutic blogging so I guess I'm ready to do some email responding and go to bed.

I don’t even know where to start. Today was HECTIC (once I woke up at 1045am, I love having Thursday mornings off but don’t like 10 hour Tuesdays etc LOL).

The day started with a txt msg asking me to lunch but I couldn’t make it, I ran by UT to pick up a fieldwork manual for my OT to use as a guideline, then ran by car place so they could order the car replacement piece, got gas, then was on way to clinic to do paperwork (my schedule was 1 to 3 paperwork then kids 3 to 7) when my OT called to ask if I’d go on the home visit with her at 130pm so she could do some urgent paperwork.

So I joined her – the home is only 2.6 miles away from the clinic (mileage) lol – I worked with the 2 (?) year old boy while she sat on sofa and did her paperwork – this kid is really cute – he likes using the dry erase board, we make cookies (circles) with chocolate chips (dots) and then we use our fingers to erase, going nom nom nom nom nom. He loves the nom nom nomming. We also played outside some – did some blocks, made a block tower, made a train of blocks, worked on concepts of “hard” and “soft” from a sensory standpoint using a cool drum the mom provided, and then did part of a puzzle and he would mutter under his breath “Now where does this go, hmmm” – in a very stylized/stereotypical way – clearly something he had heard repeatedly elsewhere, not his own words. He is two. VERY cute. 🙂 And his little baby sister loves to cuddle and I love just hugging on her!

Then my OT went onto the new clinic far away to do some kids while I went back to the old clinic, me and the COTA had crazy schedules with lots of hard kids one after the other as well as overlaps, co-treats, etc.

Kid 1: Little girl with Aspergers but I wouldn’t have diagnosed her with such, she seems perfectly sweet to me – I co-treated some with speech and we did some work on frustration tolerance, idoms, and then I pulled out some half proverbs – there is a joke e-mail that goes around explaining that a first grade teacher asked her kids to fill in proverb blanks – since of course they don’t know them – and what kind of stuff the kids came up with – since having to complete odd sentences works on creativity/imagination/ideation which a lot of kids struggle with, it seemed like a good idea.

Here were hers, some of them had to be partially explained to her but this is pretty much her own stuff:

It’s always darkest before…./noon

Never…./eat something without asking…

You can lead a horse to water but…/you can ride it too

Don’t bite the hand that…/is on your dog

No news is…/funny

A miss is as good as a…/toy

Love all, trust…/my mommy

The pen is mightier than the…/pencil

Happy the bride who…/got married

A penny saved is…/money

We also worked on 3-4 part directions…using some colored circles, puzzle alphabet pieces, and vocabulary cards…like “Hand me two blue dots, a green K, and a leaf”……she did pretty well. 🙂

At the end we pulled in the COTA’s excessively shy little girl and we gave them each a puppet to use…I gave my kid a snail puppet and we got the Magic C Bunny of Handwriting without Tears for Shy Girl…lol…it kinda worked. 🙂 Then we had the shy girl sit on the rolling board and had my girl pull her out to the waiting room which she required assistance with, but it was fun.

The wating room was chaos as our next kids had arrived and they are wild – I had a young girl with Down, around 7 (?) and my COTA had a little boy with Down. The two kids adore each other but are both quite defiant and difficult to manage at times. Charlene (awesome COTA) took them into sensory room and let them play in the ball bath (I threw in a really heavy bolster “by accident” and had them push it out), with the tunnel, with heavy balls, etc, while I prepped their activity….good ol’ French fries since they are both low level. They cut out french fries on manila envelopes (just cutting lines across it), tore up red construction paper with their fingers for ketchup, then glued it all on there, and wrote names on the back. They did a relatively good job of staying on task. We had dim lighting with the fake fish tank up, Nick Jr radio on softly, and they had just gotten some heavy work in, so they were relatively calm.

Then my next kid came in but Charlene took him since her kid didn’t show up. In the meantime I had a 9 year old with Asperger’s who is very immature, plus a six year old, and we played with that marble down connective tubes game, plus with grocery shopping, etc…it wasn’t a great session for either one of them – or me for that matter – but the two kids are both very prickly and so it was a good social challenge. The best thing that came out of that though is that the kids pulled out this really neat fireman water tank that was hidden away in a cabinet…so when the 9 year old left for speech, I filled up the water tank for the six year old and we went outside ….you wear it like a backpack so it provides some heavy calming input, plus the hose part that comes out requires some hard-core action to pump the water out…and we blew bubbles and had them blow the bubble fire out…it was pretty cool. He loved it.

So of course when our final kid of the day came, a boy around 9 with Asperger’s who is SO classic Aspie, you can tell within 3 seconds…….he is very smart and sweet…I really like him. We spent half the session outside using the water-filled tank/hose – it was a co-treat with speech – and I filmed him – he would say (his own creation) “Hi my name is XXX and I’m a fire kid. Putting out bubblefire is my cool trick” AHAHAHAA. Then we went inside and I introduced him to Mr. Snail, that snail puppet that I make talk in a primordial dwarf voice (very high-pitched) since it’s the only voice I can easily do. He LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVED Mr. Snail and talked to him the entire session, which was great for the speech therapist. “Don’t worry Mr. Snail” he’d say, and pat it reassuringly. At the end of the session he was playing with some screw-driver toys and he was like “I am really good at screwing” and I was like ummmm….lol. The only thing I could think to say was “You sure are!” He would try to carry around Mr-Snail on my arm as if he were real. He got SO into Mr. Snail. He wanted to show Mr. Snail EVERYTHING. LOL.

Ok that’s enough for one post. Moving on, I have several other little things to post.

Tomorrow we have just two home visits – one home visit with two little boys, then the little girl with bilateral hypoplastic thumbs – looking forward to the little girl, we haven’t seen her since the eval, we’re going to be working on basic compensatory strategies for reaching/grasping, considering her thumbs mostly just get in her way…. 🙂

Sometime during the middle of the night I was having this weird dream about warm air in my face, I opened my eyes and Lester the Lion Kitty had his nose-less nose pressed against mine, breathing me in. I was like whoah nelly. Speaking of whoah, somebody left a comment on one of my Lester youtube videos (they come to me via email)and it said “the narrator in this video is my worst nightmare. ” AHAHAHAAHAHA yikes. I can't help using my primordial dwarf voice with Lester, it's a primitive reflex or something.

It's 1030 and I'm already running behind – gotta jet. I'm feeling a little tired/quite a bit more anxious than normal and so I hope my schedule – which is full of really hard kids – is liveable – the COTA has an equally hard schedule today – so it's gonna be chaotic. Deep breaths. 🙂

This sad OTA student wrote me and I'm trying to think of good advice beyond “Sounds like you have a crappy program and need to find a better one”. Off the top of my head – talking to people in class above for advice/tips, study groups with classmates, going to dean/head of dept/academic counseling to ask for some assistance/intervention if such large portion of class is doing poorly, etc.

         Hi. I just started the OTA program at my college…We are in the third week and most of us are already stressed out. We took the practice Framework and half of us failed it. We have 25 students and 15 either made a D or F. The way our program is working is we cover a system on say tuesday and the next day we have class is thursday and we test over the material. We dont go in depth over it either. Its basically lecture out of the book. We dont have powerpoint or pictures. So we are all having a hard time with it.
 
Can you give me any pointers, advice or sites that would help me. I downloaded and printed everything from your tip column. I could use any help you could give me.
 
Thanks,
 
OTA Student

Amy Lamb, Penny Moyers Cleveland, and Mr Tim are blogging about their experiences representing OT in the 2008 Dem/Repub conventions, and they are all quite amusing writers. They are having really interesting experiences and they are all great networkers so I'm sure they're doing wonderful things for our profession. 🙂 Check them out – and leave a comment – at

http://otat2008conventions.blogspot.com/

Had trouble sleeping last night (well more accurately I kept dropping everything to film my beloved lion kitty); two nights in a row of not much sleep = grumpier Karen.

Morning:

We saw our little blind baby at her house…continuing to work on standing/walking, texture tolerance, cause/effect, keeping her head in alignment, etc.

Saw two little cousins in the home..inside because of the rain…they did great with the portable LiteBrite and even helped each other…very cool.

Had a really yummy lunch of Zapp's Spicy Creole Tomato Chips Mixed with Lemon Pepper Tuna. Very spicy and crunchy and delicious. Oh and a side of sweet potatoes, LOL. The girls think I'm crazy. I don't blame them.

Afternoon:

Worked with baby that is blind and deaf…convinced she is having serious neuro damage from seizures or something…has like no muscle tone. Her scapulas are really winged and she is always congested, I wonder if ribcage mobility to expand ribcage would help with scapulas + breathing ability. Also we (with speech aide) tried pudding and we're pretty sure it came out of her nose – she doesn't seem to know how to swallow unless it involves sucking from a botle. She REALLY REALLY REALLY needs a doctor visit to see about her congestion, her seizures, etc…also the OT/Speech were enamored by the cutest little mange puppy sitting outside a doorstep in her projects…they are both dog-lovers/rescuers…I LIKE other people's dogs but have no ability or desire to take care of one, I am very much a cat person.

Went straight to clinic for two evals…one shy little boyhad a cheery motivated mom and the other little boy was very destructive and had a very depressed mother who freely admitted having almost no toys in the house…things like that make me sad.  This little kid was bright/picked things up quickly, but clearly didn't have a lot of experience with toys.

Then saw two brothers…I had the younger one make a tower and I swear I noticed a tremor, it was odd. And there was this horrible horrible smell…turns out the OLDER one – the like ten year old one – had soiled his pants and didn't want to admit it. The lovely speech aide got him a trash bag to put his underwear into. Turns out he had done the same thing at school today. So two days in a row we had old children soil their pants…ohhh olfactory.

Talked about this rival clinic in the area that is a lot stricter…my OT Christy who is very compassionate (and very free-spirited/flexible) was talking about how it's not fair to punish the child for parent's not being able to come consistently…like this clinic kicks kids out if they don't show up 3x…I was like….yeah it's not fair to punish the kids, but I would prefer to work in a place with more rigidity, I'd just rationalize “places like Christy's place exist to take on the scheduling- high-maintenance kids”…and she was like…you think way outside the box…I guarantee they'd never let you fence down the hallways….I was like good point. LOL.

Had a good night…including meeting a date for Japanese…yum sushi…was fun…it ended with helping Allison work on Sensory Integration powerpoint…we were looking at the chapter on SI in Case-Smith OT for Kids book and I was like ooh I need to re-read this, it had great explanations of things like somatodyspraxia, vestibular-proprioceptive issues, the links between tactile and visual perception, sensory modulation, registration, low muscle tone, frustration, etc etc.

I'm waiting for my stupid YouTube video of Lester nibbling on a straw…nom nom nom… to finish uploading…but I've been swearing I've been going to bed for like 3 hours now…just keep putting it off to do other things…like OOOOH new facebook pictures…OOOH new email……OOOH new friend to chat to…and in the meantime my to-do list just sits there and stares at me…but when I am gone like 14 hours I just want to sit and do NOTHING – ie nothing of importance/value – when I finally get to sit down for a while. Speaking of which, when I sat down for dinner tonight in my scrubs with giant pockets, I finally discovered the glue stick I had been trying to find earlier for an art project with some kids 🙂 I could hide a damn elephant in my scrub pockets.

Tomorrow morning I am off…which is good because I need to get my car door fixed so I don't have to roll down my window to get out, stop by UT to pick up a manual, and run a few other errands…I work 1pm to 7pm and have a kind of crazy schedule starting at around 3 when school lets out…luckily have a few hours to write up evals and such seeing as how we have six from within last week alone!…anyways have lots of high-maintenance kids one after the other, including overlap of two very prickly kids, that should be interesting. Send good vibes my way. After work am meeting several friends to go walking. Then SLEEP.

GOOD NIGHT

So….I left my house at 8am with less than 5 hours sleep, worked steadily from 830am until 745pm (with a lunch break though), and got home a little bit after 8pm….a looong day…

but it was AWESOME in many ways (sucky in a few). Let's count the ways. Okay wow this got really long.

1. I only had one kid this morning and otherwise got to do a ton of paperwork. I was in the groove man, whipping out those plans of cares and evals and progress notes and you name it.

2. Got to eat a yummy lunch at Newk's with my OT, billing specialist, and clinic director…I had brought spinach leaves and tuna but a lobster/crab bisque and ham sandwich sounded way better, LOL. The director accidentally ate a clove of garlic!! And then she was sweating and her arm was tingly and I was like um, I happen to have a baby aspirin in my purse to ward off heart attacks, please take it, even if it's just garlic-induced heartburn, my beloved grandma has spent the weekend in the hospital with a suspected heart attack, just humor me, LOL. But seriously, why the hell do I have baby aspirin in my purse? I'm like Mary Poppins for druggies perhaps.

3. Paperwork, beautimous paperwork. These days our schedule is relatively calm until 3pm when kids get out of school, then it explodes.

4. Saw a kid I haven't seen before and his eval made him sound mildly scary (talk of hissing and such), but he actually did pretty well….we did Mr. Transformer and Mr Spiderman and SpongeBob Potatoheads…the speech therapist happens to have several and it was a co-treat for half the session. I have remembered from my LeBonheur Children rotation that cutting thicker paper (like manila folders) is a lot easier for kids with poor scissor skills because the paper doesn't bend…so I drew some lines across a manila folder.. he cut them…then glued them onto paper…then scribbled on them with red marker (ketchup)…entitled “French Fries” lol. To take home.

5. Saw a kid with tactile defensiveness/severe aversion to stuff like fingerpaint, so of course a goal is fingerpainting….he also needs some serious work on social skills…I asked my COTA to bring in her (much younger but very sweet) kid when it was time for a break so they could fingerpaint together…and he did really well both socially and with getting his palms covered to do a painting…I've been doing a lot of painting and artwork with kids lately. While his palms were covered with paint and face-down, I drew with marker around his hands so that his two palm/hand prints became kissing turkeys. When I told his mom about him doing so well socially and with fingerpainting, her eyes lit up. 🙂

6. A kid cancelled so our schedule wasn't quite as crazy…when all of us have high-maintenance kids it can get a little hectic. We had a kid with autism playing with Bubba Bear and when Bubba asked him what his favorite toy was, I swear (as would my COTA and ST) that his answer was “crack” LOL. I'm sure it wasn't, but it sure sounded like it. We were all trying not to laugh.

7. One of our sweet older kids with Down syndrome soiled his pants due to an upset stomach…poor speech therapist had to scrub the chairs and everything down…it smelled horrid…and his mom had brought him extra undies but not extra pants, so he had to leave the clinic just in underwear, poor kid! LOL.

8. One of our more interesting kids, he looks like a little Abercombie & Fitch model, has PDD-NOS (pervasive developmental delay not otherwise specified)…very unusual kid…he is like 9 years old but has very poor speech, like saying things like “nake” instead of snake, the way a 2- year old would. Well, his mom had warned us he was hyper because he had started a higher dose of Risperdal yesterday…so we did a bunch of sensory stuff in the ball bath and all that, but then when it was time to settle down and he was coloring, he said, in broken speech “I'm glad to be here with you today” and I was like….um….really…wow…thanks…why…and he said “Because I haven't seen you in a long time”…and I was like….whoah…lol. Very sweet. And then he made several other interesting comments. Like he was coloring in a snake and I was like hmm is that a snake or a caterpillar nad he was like “Snakes are scary so I want it to be a caterpillar” and then there was another caterpillar on the page and he was like “Plus now it won't be alone”. This is a kid who usually ignores the real world and only wants to talk about cars. It's amazing what medication can do to enhance a child (or destroy a child but that's another story lol). I was really impressed. It was a reminder that a lot of these kids who seem so aimless and lost are really in there…just have to find ways, whether through medicine or therapy or whatever, to reach them. Oftentimes, once sensory needs…or biochemical needs… are met, behavioral issues clear up immensely. –

9. Our last kid was supposed to end at 7pm which is when the clinic closes. His grandma didn't show up until SEVEN THIRTY. I spent that extra 30 minutes playing “grocery store” with him, he is only like six and has no concept of money/costs but he loved this fake cash register, I would buy corn and he would make it be like 39292929493 dollars, lol. He didn't like that the coins said 5 or 25 though if the bill was like 4992017 because he wanted there to be a 4 coin, a 9 coin, etc.

10. When I left at 740pm  my OT, director etc were still there…going strong…working on scheduling…it's a nightmare dealing with lots of part-time schedules, early intervention, home visits, two different clinics, COTAs, OTs, PRNs, etc.

11. My friend Sarah CRACKED ME UP by telling me a story about a psycho friend of hers who e-mailed her this looooooooooong mean rant, and Sarah's response? TL;DR. Now I had no idea what this was, but apparently it stands for “Too long; didn't read.” This cracks me up to NOOOOOOOOO END because talk about letting the wind out of sails…lolol…what a PERFECT response. I love it. I am surprised that most of my reader's don't just comment with TL; DR lol.  In fact most people will probably respond to this with TL;DR. Now I have to admit I like to say TL DR without the semi-colon because the semi-colon requires me looking at the keyboard to find. But Sarah scolded me. Hey do people who had colon surgeries think about semi-colons?

But anyway I think from now on it doesn't matter who e-mails me what, my response will just be TL DR, it's just so perfectly snarky, and is it ironic it took me like a huge paragraph to write about the merits of not reading something?

12. My cat Lester cracked me up by chewing up my drink straw, I guess technically that's just sucky, hahaha but it amused me greatly. He is so silly.

12.5 I rested my poor chocolate popsicle against my rice. Chocolate rice is yummy, as I so serindipitously found out.

13. Chatting with friends online and uploading Lester videos. Going to bed soon.

13.5 Just took about 20 close-up pictures of Lester eating on the straw. I'm OBSESSED.

14. I just feel like things are going really well right now…not to say everything is ALWAYS sunshine and lollipoppy, but overall…I'm a lot more flexible and relaxed…give me a kid, any kid, throw him on me last minute…hand me two kids…hand me random paperwork…hand me anything…I feel prepared. Now of course I say that and then tomorrow during an eval I'll be like OMG WHAT AM I DOING NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO….lol.

15. I should stop numbering now. I should go shower and go
to bed…I've spent way too long playing with Lester videos 🙁 Bad kitty mommy.