Happy Mother and/or Maternal Love Day

Studied today. Held babies for 2.5 hours at local children's hospital. One baby I held for approximately two hours, she was older and needed more attention. She finally, finally fell asleep at the very end, right after I put her in the most uncomfortable position (for me) possible. After a few minutes my back was screaming! It still hurts! Sometimes I take aspirin or something right before I go since I know invariably I'll end up having to hold a position for a long time and it hurts! They need more comfortable chairs!

You can't shift most of these babies around like you would a normal baby – they have tons and tons of lines and tubes protruding from their bodies in various places so even if you can keep those all managed, most of these babies sleep very lightly due to all the pain, noise, etc, so if you shift the baby very much or even at all, most of them wake up immediately. So once a baby falls asleep, so help you god, you hold that position as long as you can so the baby can get some much needed rest in the arms of a comforting human!

I thought there would be more people there today since it was a mother's day but I was mistaken…although I was there kind of late in the day, 4pmish, so maybe people had gone home.

I also studied some. I focused on a rather boring chapter about service delivery – evaluation, intervention, outcomes……I prefer the chapters with lots of diseases! Spinocerebellar ataxia symptoms? Gower's sign? Brown-Sequard ? Bring it on. Ok don't bring it on. Well okay do, I have to be prepared for boards coming up.

I have gotten some great feedback from people who commented or E-mailed from my job blogposts, most of them saying good luck but it's unlikely you'll get that kind of job. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Oh well. I'll keep hoping. Hope hope hope. I appreciate the feedback, good or bad.

I WILL PASS THE EXAM. I WILL FIND THE “JUST RIGHT” JOB! I WILL BE COMPETENT!

Taking the exam on May 23rd….augh!!! Yay!! augh!! Yay!!

Just got my authorization to take letter from NBCOT. I am now scheduled to take the examination on Saturday, May 23rd, at 1pm. I chose that date for several reasons including that I could take it at 1pm when I'm more on my game than 9am!

That gives me about 12 days to study hard! We get results on June 1st so right after graduation (May 29th). I WILL PASS! My new mantra. I WILL PASS.

Job Gods, do you hear me?

I'm not going to give up hope that writing on this blog for TWO YEARS still hasn't made me job connections!!!! Because that would be a failure of social networking, and we can't have that!! DO YOU HEAR ME! ::whimpers:::

Anyway. Been studying a lot for boards- trying to retain spinal cord injury levels, dyspnea/angina levels, primitive reflexes, obscure types of muscular dystrophy, decubitus ulcer stages, cardiac rehabilitation MET levels, etc etc etc, in my head. Lots more to go.

Not a lot going on – trying to stay healthy and sane while also studying a lot. So far it seems to be going pretty well. Right now I'm waiting on my classmate Virginia to bring over her cat, Marley, for a playdate. We've compared cats and both of ours seem to have Aspergers so we'll see if they get along. Both of them will walk right up to other cats/dogs and be like, what up? As the other cat/dog goes WHAT THE HELL. So maybe introducing the two of them will be a match made in heaven. Marley & Lester, BFF4EVA.

 It probably won't go as well as we hope, but it will be short anyway because we both need to study.

Most of the rest of the day is studying, and I may go to Assisted Living Bingo tonight to loiter with my elderly homies. That is all.

Lester the Lion Kitty gets OT Feeding Intervention

Job searches: overwhelming with a capital O

The TherapyEd.com NBCOT review course, taught by Susan Robertson, PhD, FAOTA, ABCDEFGHIJLKMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ, was really helpful and good. I learned that I have a lot to re-learn or review. I am a GREAT test-taker but I don't retain material. I learn for the test, not for my brain, even though I know better, just by like, brain habit. ANYWAY, that means cumulative exams are often killers for me as I haven't remembered anything.

DR. Susan & I talked (because I was asking her at lunch) about going on to get a PhD. I'm not interested in research or teaching, but I do love to write & it makes job opportunities and all that alot easier. I am tired of school for now, but at heart I'm a (not very erudite) academic and think after a year of so of working, I'll be ready to try for a PhD. Especially if I get some sponsorship so I can do it full-time. We'll see.

I'm rather bereft because I rather erroneously hoped that with my blogging connections, people would be falling over dead to offer me THE JOB OF A LIFETIME. Unfortunately, not so much. One of my lovely blog readers who I call Annanahahdidnanahi because she is Indian and her name is really hard to remember properly, e-mailed me with a few jobs fitting my inpatient peds description. One looked AWESOME (inpatient peds, promise of mentorship) but had two major flaws.

1) It's in Hampton, VA, and I am really hoping for a job in TN, CA, or NC….I'm not a huge fan of East Coast or from moving even further away from my CA family/TN peeps

2) The job is offered through OceanMed Staffing…I'm not sure the pros/consof taking on a permanent placement with using a staffing company versus going directly through the hospital, but when I go to the hospital listing I don't even see the job, so who knows

I know I should maybe just take a job at some random SNF (skilled nursing facility) but when I recall my fieldwork in acute care, it was often the most difficult patients headed to a SNF. I was usually relieved to see them go and felt sorry for their upcoming therapists,and so to be that therapist does not appeal to me. I really think I have a gift with peds, love inpatient, and desperately want mentorship as I feel I have lots I can absorb from experienced therapists. So I'm pondering. Take a job I would LOVE, but in a place I really really wouldn't want to live/have no relatives/friends, or take a job I don't love so much, in a more appropriate location? These are the days of my lives.

The comments and e-mails I get from people REALLY REALLY HELP……I feel rather alone even though I'm surrounded by classmates in the same boat. The more advice, tips, mentorship, whatever, is appreciated and I soak it all in.

TherapyEd.com's NBCOT review

HELP WITH THE JOB HUNT???!!!

This post is especially aimed at my long-term readers, a “please help me network/connect”. (I got the idea because of a really awesome OT in Ohio who offered me a job in her private practice!)

So……it's easy to find a job in occupational therapy as a new grad. If you want to work in tiny rural towns or work in most physical dysfunction settings (ie rehab hospital) or a nursing home.

The kind of job I want, especially since I'm picky about location, is NOT so easy.

My ideal job would be working with hospitalized babies under 1 years of age, like in step-down NICU units. My second ideal job would be working within pediatric oncology. My third ideal job would be geriatric mental health and/or anxiety/depression mental health and/or pediatric mental health- in other words, mental health with populations unlikely to kill me. My fourth ideal job would be inpatient peds with a lot of mentorship.

ANYWAY…those are the jobs hard to find, period, especially as a new grad. I think any of those jobs I could handle with just a little mentorship at first as I'm relatively intuitive with peds and mental health! I have glowing recommendation letters and lots of written documentation attesting to my (mostly) sparkling abilities in those areas!

 I'd like to target Tennessee, North Carolina, and California, as my first choices of states, but would consider elsewhere, although states with harsh winter climates/firmly on the East Coast, kinda stress me out!

Any thoughts on where to look besides AOTA.org, monster.com, etc? A friend recommended getting a LinkedIn profile, I'll try that.

Or better yet, anybody who has read this blog long-term, want to network/connect me to someone who can help?!?! I'd adore you forever.