I have a few elementary school girls, like in 4th grade, who I think would love the baton and/or hula hooping as little warm ups or breaks during our OT sessions. You know, mix fun with torture… 😉  I must remember that next school year. Yay for school occupational therapists 🙂 

Oh, and I plan to do some shadowing and extra volunteering in the NICU (neonatal ICU) this summer. I love the NICU and already volunteer there as a baby cuddler once a week on weekends, but I’ll try to do more in weekdays so I can observe the OTs! I don’t plan to leave my school OT job, but just love NICU OT and want to learn more. 🙂

Hope everyone is having a nice start to their summer!

Karen 

I’ve gotten more used to the cadaver lab – I’m still not thrilled with it and it really makes my back ache but I’ve gotten more confident in my ability to not ruin anything, and more used to the smell. This past week we cut open the rib cage and took out the heart. During the embalming process some of the blood gets congealed and stuck. There were huge, revolting “sticks” of blood stuck in the holes of the heart. Yuck. Plus our guy’s heart was covered in like a brown gravy. One table had a HUGE heart, it looked like it had barnacles on it and had been underwater for years!

I stay very busy. This upcoming week is going to be a nightmare. We had a delayed start on Thursday and a full snow day on Friday, but we can’t absorb the loss. Somehow they have to figure out a way to add in 10 hours of class to our already completely booked schedule over the next few months. This week., we have our first officer meeting, our first class meeting, and our first faculty meeting. Plus two anatomy quizzes, tons of reading for other classes, AND WORST OF ALL, I have two group presentations and two papers both due on Thursday. One is a developmental profile on the age segment 10 months to 12 months, a presentation and handout, due with one other girl. The other is an activity analysis and craft project with four other students. We are doing “Mexican Metal Tooling” and it involves a Powerpoint, a presentation, and then teaching the class the craft and doing it. Oh yeah, and the huge activity analysis paper where we look at task analysis, task adaptation, performance areas it works on, etc, all guided by the ubiquitous Practice Framework. We have the entire two hours ourselves. Scary, huh.

Have any of you tried that? What did you think? I thought this was brilliant and was ashamed I hadn’t thought of it earlier, as I’m guessing other OTs have been smart enough to try it! 

THE FEEEEEDSSS ARREEE ALLIVEEEEEE ….wittth the sounddd of……..CONFERRRENNNNCEEEEEE……

Yep. Every other Facebook and Twitter feed is about getting to San Diego for our 2013 AOTA conference. That either means I am exaggerating, or I have a lot of OT friends. 

Or more likely, a mixture of both.

I’m going to be going Friday, Saturday, and possibly Sunday morning….but after running around at work all week I think I may be pretty tired. I’ve decided all treatments on Wednesday and Thursday will consist of supine extension with vision occluded…..aka nap position. hahahaha just kidding. Can you imagine all my bouncy kids falling for that one? Yeah right. 

I’ve had several long-time blog readers email or comment saying they want to meet-up briefly…sounds great. 🙂 I’ll probably be at the School Steps Inc booth some (a great employer!) and/or wandering all over in sessions and visiting with OT friends from out of town as well as exploring the EXPO which is my favoritest thing in the world, well except for peanut butter and chocolate. And oh yeah, PRESENTING with a fabulous OT techy-crowd on Saturday on digital and social media if you want to check us out. This is where, if I wasn’t so lazy, I’d copy/paste our title and stuff. But I am. 🙁 It’s late, I have to conserve my energy. Hope to see you all at conference verrrrrrry sooon.

And oh, if you’re reading this, and you know of how to get an Expo hall badge for free, please let me know. I have a prospective OT student who I really want to let in to see the awesomeness. 

Circling her waist: A black belt with 10,000 compartments/pockets where all the necessary OT toys can be found…from the smallest writing utensil to the largest piece of lava paper you ever saw…somehow everything fits perfectly”

So awesome!

Consider uploading your own versions on Facebook, Twitter, blogs…with OT that you wrote in sand, with rocks, with Wikki Stix, Theraputty, bodies, silverware, anything you can think of….

Erik (OT Army Guy) made this. Amazing 🙂 

In case it doesn’t work as embedded: