OMG! This is so horrible, its hilarious

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/personal/05/15/oprah.caring.for.parents/index.html

“Bill and I are training his dad to ‘go toward the light,'” said my friend Anne, whose father-in-law no longer recognizes his family. “Any light we see — lamps, flashlights, the TV — we steer him over there. We figure he can use the practice.”

*This was intended to be humorous, a point in the article about having to take your struggles with a grain of salt…but still, WOW. Even *I*, queen of inappropriateness, wouldn’t say that.

Seriously though, the article brings up some good basic points – it’s hard to take care of your elderly parents. It requires support. It requires laughing so you don’t cry.

I WILL PASS………

Studying studying studying. Still have a long way to go. I take the new NBCOT exam May 23rd and will know my pass/fail by June 1st. Have not been giving my blog much attention lately but I should. By the way, most of my OT classmates have jobs now and I've heard a range from $24/hr to $40/hr (no benefits). Most on average will be making in the 50,000 range I think. That's most realistic in this area. Pediatrics pays less, but nursing homes etc can pay really high. I still have no job, more or less by choice. I'm waiting to hear from a particular hospital here – hopefully by mid June at the latest, and depending on the answer, I will be moving away pretty much ASAP to try my luck in another city. I'd REALLY like inpatient peds but I am discovering that is close to impossible to get as a new grad without connections EVEN THOUGH I COULD BE AWESOME. Oh well. Will keep trying in various states and places ….peds, mental health….will do whatever I can to NOT be in phys dys (physical dysfunction)…just not my bag, baby….

I guess I'll go to sleep now. My plan for this next week is to study a minimum of 3 hours each day until Saturday, and continue taking as many practice tests as possible. I WILL PASS I WILL PASS I WILL PASS………

nightmares! real world too scary to face!!

Having nightmares. Feeling like stomach swooping on a roller coaster and heart racing. One of the nightmares has become recurrent, where I have to somehow navigate past a rapidly spinning/moving obstacle that others seem to bypass easily but I can't figure out. I get scared I'm about to be squooshed to death or something. My other nightmare was actually rather amusing as while it was scary, it did involve Rainbow Brite/Care Bears teams fighting against each other in a star battle in a mall.

A lot of my nightmares – I unfortunately have a ton – have to do with crawling or getting through a tiny space which brings out massive claustrophobia and fear and make me feel like I can't breathe. FUN!

Anyways, I woke up around 345am with my heart racing from several of the nightmares and now it's 532am and I still feel icky!

I think these nightmares just reflect board exam/job process stuff/prospect of moving soon. I've been in Memphis almost 10 years now – my entire adult life (17 to 26) – and it's all I feel familar with. But there is NO JOB in Memphis that appeals to me besides a hard-to-procure position at the pediatric cancer hospital. I love to volunteer at the other local great peds hospital, but A) they're not really hiring and B) I've spent enough time there to know I have personality conflicts with some of the rehab staff, making me feel like I'm back in high school as a total loser!!

Anyway…I've been studying for boards quite a bit, some alone and some with classmates, trying to stay active (I'm a couch sweet potato), and that's the focus these days. I did finally finish my Christmas thank you notes, LOL.

ONE DAY I will catch up on life. But I've been telling myself this for years. I guess it's not possible. Maybe if I take a tiny bit of speed for like, 3 days, I could catch up. JUST KIDDING…….but wouldn't it be cool to take a pill and get all your chores done quickly and easily?!

ANYWAY AGAIN. I guess I'm going to attempt to sleep some/rest. I can hear Lester snoring. HE IS SO CUTE. Anytime I have something in my hands he tries to investigate to see if it's food for him. Which is so adorable since he stands up on hind legs and tentatively puts a paw out, that I have to go get him food, popping the dry bits into his mouth as he enthusiastically chomps. I guess rewarding him for his behavior reinforces it but that's okay with me.

I think I may be slightly delirious. Maybe soon I'll post a really really good and articulate post…..just kidding, we all know that's impossible.

Good night, or I mean good morning….

Study study study

I have been reading sooooooooooooooooo many books lately from the library. Mostly health related autobiographies/biographies. Tons of them mention OT at least once. Unfortunately it's usually in a sentence that dismisses OT, which sucks. Usually they dismiss the benefits of OT because their particular OT practitioner did a crappy job of developing a therapeutic relationship/understanding the true needs. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. NOT A FAN.

What I am a fan of, however, is watching my Facebook OT friends bestow virtual gifts upon each other such as raised toilet seats. Gotta love it.

Studied a lot today. More studying tomorrow.

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