shout-out to an anonymous commenter

Good luck Tess!! I love the AHHHH!!! ahahahahahaa….have fun.

“hey I just read your blog I'm an OTS too! I can totally hear you on the ACL! I am currently preping a one hour presentation that myself and 2 of my classmates have to deliver in class next weekend!AHHHHHHH! Good luck in your studies you'll be done before you know it!
~Tess”

ACLS new version???

Augh! New stuff for the ACLS as well? Augh!  I better get practicing, I hear on my next rotation in geriatric psych, I'll be doing a lot of ACLS stuff.

“Hello, I was very excited to see you video demonstrating the administration of the Allen Cognitive Level Screen. In November, 2007, a newly revised and updated version was published by the ACLS and LACLS Committee. It is called the Manual for the ACLS-5 and LACLS-5. To learn more about this 5th version, go to www.allencognitivelevelscreen.org. You can order a copy of this most recent version from www.dementiacarespecialists.com or from www.ssww.com. “

pushing patients, fibromyalgia

Two cool articles from Advance magazine…
Fending off Fibromyalgia
http://rehabilitation-director.advanceweb.com/Article/Fending-off-Fibromyalgia-2.aspx

Pushing Patients
http://rehabilitation-director.advanceweb.com/Article/Pushing-Patients.aspx

New NBCOT exam information for us 2009ers and beyond

http://www.nbcot.org/pdf/WebUpdate_2009.pdf

(Can y'all tell I'm cleaning out my mailbox?)

My life as Miss OTPF is over…devastation

There is an OTPF-II now!!! A revised Framework!! I learned the first OTPF and I'm in danger of losing my crown if I don't know the OTPF-II backwards and forwards!! Maybe at Conclave they can have a Miss OTPF II pageant. LOL.

I believe I heard that the Nov/Dec AJOT will have the OTPF II in it…guess I'll have to read up on it. I do know it includes rest/sleep in it. That's all I know so far. So I'm going to support the OTPF II by going to sleep soon.

sooo sleeeeepy

I'm sleepy. Going to bed soon. My cat Lester is angry at me for the dental oral rinse I inflicted upon him. I'm sorry Lester.

Today I did several evaluations by myself, and one of them I did with my supervisor watching, it was kind of a special situation where a woman with a hip replacement ended up in ICU due to some complications. She said I did a good job but that I need to elaborate even more on the three main hip precautions of no crossing legs, no internal rotation, and no bending past 90. I explained them all a tiny bit, but not as in much detail as I should have.

We had seven evals today – and only ONE treatment, which the COTA did, and then she went back to some of the evals and treated a few of them.

The pain scale is so interesting – someone writhing in pain will rate it a 5, another person smiling and talking will rate it a 7. Very “personal”.

I'm a little more nervous about tomorrow's schedule – I am feeling pretty ok about ortho evals and more or less normal evals, but we have a lot of treatments tomorrow. I'm not so comfortable with treatment! A bunch of ortho treatments – so things like lower body dressing, getting in and out of bed, etc. Sounds so basic. But I get messed up easily!!

Oh well. My mood/attitude continues to improve and hopefully tomorrow will be a good day. 🙂

And PS, I'm still way behind on e-mail, and I am still dealing with police report/insurance stuff/getting new cards/checks etc…and today I ended up working out and then going to a friend's so I got home late and now I'm too sleepy to do anything.

Tomorrow my plan is to work, go to the gym, then come home and be productive!!! And not do anything else!!!

Things you never expected…

One of the things I never thought I'd be doing…

Sometimes we put gait belts on patients, just to do some ambulation around the room, for safety reasons. The belt goes around the waist. Well, for some of our older ladies, their bosoms go all the way down to their waist. Since it would be uncomfortable to tighten a belt around their breasts, we have to obviously make sure we have not done so. We attempt by feel but sometimes with the loose hospital gown, loose skin, lines and such, that it is impossible to be sure. So sometimes I have to literally put my hand down an older woman's gown and pick up her breasts so that we can be certain the gait belt doesn't get cinched on them. Typically the type of lady we have to do this on, has some sort of dementia and is not fully cognizant of what is going on – but I still feel a little bad doing it. Of course we do it respectfully, but still. And it's definitely one of those things you don't learn about in OT school! “Hey guys, one day you might be sticking your hand down a patient's gown and lifting up breasts!”

I'm getting better at doing stroke evaluations….I did one today and didn't need as much help as I sometimes do…we had a slow day OT wise and so I spent the afternoon with a PTA who is really good. She zipped from patient to patient. Our last patient was a man with Parkinson's and he started having a bowel movement while he was up, it was quite a chore to deal with his gowns and the Posey vest (restraint) he was wearing, plus all his lines, plus maneuvering him, onto the bedside commode. Some of the feces were on his bed and on the floor. Of course I got to help deal with all that. Just a fact of life though. It seems/sounds gross and you think ew! I'll never get used to watching people pee or poop or show their privates! But you get so used to it. A lady recently was so embarassed she could not hold her urine and I assured her we think nothing of it, we see it all, every day.

Tomorrow will be a busier day – there were seven ortho surgeries today so tomorrow we'll have a bunch of hip and knee evaluations in the total joint unit. I like those evals – pretty quick and easy.

Today I hardly panicked at all – I think I'm slowly becoming more comfortable with bed mobility and everything, and I think my medications are getting regulated so that I'm not freaking out all the time. So things are looking up.

After work today I went to the gym and then went to OTS Kerri's house for a while, because I was waiting to pick up a FedEx package out east, with my new financial documents from the car break-in. She was telling me she got to make an ulnar gutter splint today (she is on a hands rotation). Pretty cool.  She made yummy fish tacos for dinner and then her husband made hot chocolate. 🙂 Then I drove to Fedex only to discover they had in fact left the documents at my house – why they decided to leave them today when they just left tags the other few days, and why they decided to just prop it up against the locked fence in plain view, is beyond me. Oh well.

I think that I'm going to go to bed. I also think tomorrow my plan is to go to work, go to the gym, then come home and try to catch up on OT e-mails and not do anything socially – I'm frazzled at how behind I am and want to get caught up.

I wish I had been better about blogging each day about what I got to experience – I haven't been good about it this rotation – but have had some interesting experiences so need to work on that.

Ok…goals for tomorrow…as always…

Speak louder, speak clearer

HAVE CONFIDENCE IN MYSELF! I CAN DO THIS!

Catch up on OT e-mails and blog about my experiences of the day.

ooh sorry my OT peeps

I just quickly skimmed the 126 mails I still need to go through from the last month and my heart is partially breaking because I have quite a few earnest/sweet e-mails from fellow OT students that I have not responded to yet. It's been a rough month! I always EVENTUALLY respond, it just sometimes takes a ridiculously long time – but it doesn't leave my inbox until I've replied.

This upcoming week is midterm week for this rotation – the start of week 6 out of 12. I think I'm behind on some objectives but ahead in others, so maybe it will all wash out in the end. Basically the students answer some questions and then fill out a form with the supervisor. Hopefully this will be a good week. Just got back from Nashville a few hours ago.

My goals for this week:

To work out at least 3x for my physical but mostly MENTAL sanity

To HAVE CONFIDENCE IN MYSELF AND KNOW THAT I CAN DO IT

Note to self:

I CAN DO THIS
I CAN DO THIS
I CAN DO THIS
I CAN DO THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh and PS: The November 3rd issue of OT Practice that comes out this week, should have my article on online social community in it. Of course it's probably ALREADY obsolete since it was written several months ago. Oooh. Speaking of which, it might mean people come to this blog, so I should like, I dunno, do some thought-provoking reflective pieces this week. Instead of my now typical “AUGH” posts. Ok

New goal:

WRITE A GOOD OT-RELATED POST

lol 

woot

I am in Nashville for the weekend. Last night I watched a friend Arnie have his debut performance with Two-Bit Eddie at a VFW (veterans of foreign war). They played 8 to midnight and they were great. I think I was the youngest one there by about a thousand years, but everybody was in great costume. There was a few old ladies SHAKING IT UP on the dance floor, although really their shaking was more like quivering…barely moving. Hilarious. And an old man taking it down to the floor….getting back up was a little precarious, a woman next to me who knew I was in OT school whispered “that man may need your services in a minute” lol.

I've gotten several really nice e-mails from OT students nationwide lately and I really appreciate it. I am on a strange laptop this weekend and oh no battery of laptop is low so im gonna hurry this up – basically just saying ill start responding soon. And that I am starting to feeel better.

Have a great weekend y'all