"The blind can only see the heart and intelligence of a man…"

 
Also in a Smithsonian I believe. I know there’s a glare, but read that last paragraph if you can, about this man waking up blind in a hospital, but that the experience was “revealing” (interesting choice of word).

“The blind can only see the heart and intelligence of a man, and nothing in these things indicates in the slightest whether a man is white or black.”

Sometimes we pity people who have lost a sense because we take in so much through each of our senses. But sometimes they receive a gift through that loss. A “blessing in disguise”…a reminder that what matters is much more than skin-deep.

Keep that in mind when you meet people who you may be quick to write off due to appearance! Don’t let your eyes decide, process further. 🙂 We have many lessons to learn and often from the people we least expect.

*Hopefully the relevance to OT is obvious!!

IEP meetings, yep`

I am my mother's daughter…

Lester the Lion Kitty, Love of my Life :)

lesterthelionkitty.blogspot.com 🙂

This is Lester the Lion Kitty. Feel free to type in Lester the lion kitty on youtube and see his amazingness live. I just posted a video of him “shaking” for a treat under the name Meemaw teaches Lester how to shake or something like that. My Youtube name is OTStudentKaren if that helps.

He’s my star attraction of the South. I just briefly visisted Birmingham, AL for the weekend and we made a quick stop in Montgomery, AL so I could see my baby. (He was originally mine when I lived there, but I gave him to my good friend’s mother when I left as it would be too challenging to get him cross country with all his braciocephalic aka flat face issues leading to respiratory distress).

 I think I’m going to see about getting him some occupational therapy though. His fine motor skills are atrocious and so is his sequencing and problem solving. The mojito he made me was absolutely awful.

By the way, our big goal for the year is to get him into the 2014 Bad Cats calendar!!! So doable!! I’m always having to bail him out of jail….

Taking your shoes off or "Doffing" your shoes :)

This was such a cool, simple idea, also at a daycare in Norway…a way to easily take off your shoes. Basically the little ones could hold onto the blue rail while using the wood to help get their shoes off by sticking their heels in it. Kind of similar to a shoehorn, only more stable. Especially great when the floor was covered in wetness so they couldn’t sit down on the ground. I could totally see a large version of this being AWESOME for the elderly, and so simple to make! (Of course safety comes first, ENSURING it’s stable). Great for doffing shoes..to use OT terminology (we always said don or doff in our OT notes!)

Storing kid boots

Saw this in a daycare in Norway. So cool! Nice and efficient and manageable…all words we love in OT!

Friday give-away ends tonight

Last week's Friday give-away ends tonight at 11:59pm Pacific. You still have time to enter, and I highly recommend you do, 

Me :)

I love this. My lovely and talented friend, Sarah, who I have known since she was a 12 year old fencer, is now a biomedical engineering college graduate and roller derby superstar! 🙂  I gave her a picture of me (at a time when I was having a rough time when she was still in high school) and she re-drew the picture in marker. I adore it. I didn’t think about until later that the picture showed a pretty classic pose for me, hand-wise. I tend to have a lot of flexion poses that I don’t realize are so unusual or different until I see them in pictures. People who have had strokes or brain damage often have some pretty strong internal rotation and flexion of their arm joints at elbow, wrist, etc, and while I don’t have the “tone”, I definitely find myself in those positions. 

But this is my theory. You know how a lot of psychiatrists and psychologists may be brilliant at their work, but are also utterly screwed up themselves because they went into psych. in the first place due to wanting to help themselves at least on a subconscious level? Same for OT, some of us go into OT and can do a good job but went into it recognizing our own developmental quirks, for example 🙂 

Level II fieldwork in mental health, Margaret, and I

Occupational therapist (Margaret) and OT student (me), 2009. I had just completed my final three month mental health rotation with her (our school required THREE three month rotations, one had to be in mental health). I did a locked geriatric psychiatric ward. Another blast from the past. I really enjoyed working with her and her Australian accent. And she is back in Australia now!

A blast from the past from fieldwork

I found this in my “draft box” and it’s literally almost four years old, from when I was doing my FIRST Level II fieldwork, apparently near the very end of that first 3 month rotation. So here’s a blast from 2008 I think. I was just writing notes to myself to remember, I guess…



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Moment of the day:

Child with Aspergers says to Child with Down Syndrome and Open Trach: “Hey! What’s that hole you have there?!

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Some interesting treatment thingies:

1) Child with autism that we have discovered LOVES climbing on heavy bolster within ball bath, then jumping off it into the balls…but I’m standing right there in the balls to keep the child from just like, cracking his head open…anyway…he climbs/uses me as if I’m inanimate in the sense that he doesn’t particularly care where he holds onto me, lol, but today he kept on kind of grabbing me and having me look into his eyes…would smile…and since things were chaotic of course my attention was divided, but he repeatedly – at least 4 or 5 times – turned me slightly to look into my eyes and smile. Very unusual…and definitely not typical of him.

2) Another child with autism who was doing well today…so I pulled out the fingerpaint and painted his face in the mirror because I suddenly remembered reading somewhere about it….not like elaborately painting, just a few strokes on his face for novelty sake…and I asked him where he wanted me to put it and he actually answered (he usually has to be coaxed to answer questions or, most often, completely ignores you)…and actually wanted it…and he would look at himself in the mirror, and then I’d put some on me, and he’d look at me. Very cool.

3) Child with severe behavioral issues…used a heavy bolster for him to kick and punch some…then laid down on a mat with lights off,read some from a relaxation book for kids…did some squeeze and tightening of muscles and then relaxing into a wet noodle…I actually wasn’t thrilled with the wording of the book, I’m like, I need to make my own! So we’d squeeze everything then loosen up noodley…

4) Child with Aspergers…working on a puzzle with trusty Mr Snail…and he needs to work on frustration tolerance…Mr Snail was asking him for lessons on it…he was like…”Stop…breathe…think!”…etc.

5) COTA got a grasshopper up her scrubs while we were outside playing with bubbles, hahaha

6) I just realized I didn’t tell a single one of my older kids – ie, all the kids above, that I would not be back…yikes. I guess it just doesn’t feel like I’m leaving so it didn’t even occur to me to say anything. And I took back some of the toys I had brought in – the snail puppet that one kid loves so much, the SpongeBob Potatohead (that apparently is not easy to find) that another kid is OBSESSED WITH, the Gary the Snail blow-up that another kid loves, etc…a lot of cool toys…

Okay….augh it’s 120am…gotta be up in six hours. Better go to bed. Tomorrow I have to create an autism brochure, maybe help write up a one page proposal for a community psychosocial fieldwork or at very least set up stuff for it, set up stuff for someone else to do mileage/direction charts (or do it myself if there is time but I doubt it), finish up a few plans of cares/addendums for Medicaid, and put together all the pictures in a folder to transfer so they can deal with making a staff/kid picture wall. Gonna do the Medicaid stuff first since it involves money, then the autism brochure since that’s legitimately a project, then make sure all pictures are together, then work on those other projects. Oh yeah, and in the early afternoon I guess we’ll be doing my evals!