I AM SO SCARED OF MY UPCOMING PHYSICAL DYSFUNCTION LEVEL II FIELDWORK ::CRIES::

I’m very nervous about this upcoming rotation. I’m easily flustered, have a very weak core/back, and um, I dunno. I’m just scared. Scared of hurting people, scared of saying inappropriate things, scared of hurting my back doing transfers, scared of sounding or being really stupid, etc. I have days where I am like – oh man – I’m going to be a good OT, I’m cool, I’m all that and a bag of chips (to go like all 1990s for a brief minute, forgive me)….but then days like today I talk to Virginia and Brooke and they both just had their physical dysfunction rotations and they are so smart and knowledgeable and awesome and I feel puny in their majestic presences.

I guess it’s a matter of comfort – I feel very comfortable in pediatrics working with developmental delay – but physical dysfunction is a whole nother (whole nuther? what in the world??? why do we say this? it makes no sense grammatically??) ballpark. I have very little interest in phys dys and so I don’t retain it well – Functional Independence Measures, mod/max/min assists, manual muscle testing, neuro-IFRAH, hip precautions, BLAH BLAH BLAH!! Scares me!

Ok moving on to the rest of the day that does not involve massive drama (but does involve getting massively lost)

Virginia is amazing and went over documentation with me from the hospital system I’ll be at that she just finished at – stuff like abbreviations in medical charts such as EOB (edge of bed), BSS (Bed side sitting), tf (transfers), LOB (loss of balance), plus she showed me/let me practice on her, getting a client with stroke out of bed, reviewing some Neuro-IFRAH stuff like how to facilitate scapular mobility while shrugging shoulders, retracting the scapula, etc. And Brooke came over too and we all had fun visiting with each other. 🙂

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This morning I joined Curves gym – Kerri’s aunt owns the one at Exeter & Farmington and Forrest Hill Irene area – and had a CurvesSmart orientation – it is an AWESOME program – for women only – you have a circular circuit you do of machines (it takes about 35 minutes and you do the circuit twice) and the smart microchip keeps track of speed, range of motion, reps, etc, and it flashes different lights at you so that you know how you’re doing – you want to always work consistently in the green light – if it turns orange you are not working hard enough. So it pushes you like a personal trainer! The instantaneous feedback is exactly what I need and I highly recommend the Curves program – and those two locations – to any female looking for a fun easy way to do some strength training. Join. Tell them I sent you.

Let’s not talk about how I got completely lost getting there and had Kerri guide me over the phone, then got UTTERLY and futilely lost on the way home (both times I was going for adventurous short-cuts and failed miserably). I ended up in COLLIERVILLE when I was trying to get to Midtown. That’s like going to Hawaii on your way to Maine. Poor Brooke was waiting on me but she was amused at how lost I got and that apparently took away some of the sting, because yeah, that’s pretty bad. We had lunch at Soul Fish Cafe – yum – and walked around Midtown..including petting a cat through the mailbox slot at the closed House of Mews- then I ran some errands – including throwing a Fedex box in a Fedex thingie that probably wasn’t intended for boxes of that size so I’m curious to see what happens – ahahahaha – and met up with Virginia and Brooke…which I already talked about above. Fun day, better get to bed – tomorrow I observe/volunteer at one pediatric hospital in morning, then stop at UT to drop off some things, then have a very-very-very-very late orientation at the other pediatric hospital – I’ve been volunteering there for um, oh, I don’t know, many many many months now – so it’s pretty funny to me. Seems kinda silly. Maybe I’ll learn something new tomorrow though. Then I’m meeting up with some friends.
PS: My computer is acting up – I’ve done disk clean up and I’m running a virus scan and next I’m going to defrag – but pray for its poor electronic soul, for I am nothing without my laptop!!