Poker chips….

Yesterday I had one participant, Ms. M, who really just wanted to focus on waiting for her husband. She seems very kind and “with it”.  I pulled out poker chips used for Bingo, to try and legitimately sort them out, while spending time with her. She decided she'd help me while she waited. Sorting by color was no problem, but then counting (which was really not needed, but a way to pass time) – went very awry, and it was really interesting. I tried to explain we could stack them in tens, and she could do that – 10, 20, 30, 40 etc. Yet she wasn't willing to let them get put in the bag once counted – she felt each stack was separate and needed it's own place. While I was away hunting for ways to separate them in order to keep her happy (she was stubborn), she decided that in fact, each stack was 25. And then somehow it became a 100, so she had decided we now had 1,000 chips instead of 100. I just went along with this. I had to go get grocery bags and tissues and wrap each stack individually for her. Later, once out of her sight, I had to unwrap them again to put them in the bag together. If it had just been her, this wouldn't have been so hard.

However, another participant, Ms. E, decided to join us, and woo-ie is she interesting. She couldn't do the sort by color, or follow the simplest instruction, even though she is a nice person who can handle a normal conversation. She somehow, as far as I can tell, decided that somehow we were just kind of trading around chips so that there could be a pile for her to take home versus the normal pile. She kept mixing up colors which was irritating Ms. M. Plus another participant, Ms. G, decided to help, and she first put them in stacks of 10 and I was like yay, she knows how…but I glanced back a minute later and there were now stacks of 5 and such. Trying to keep all three of them happy when all three of them were wrong and were critical of each other, was HARD. I had to do things like slip bags aside when backs were turned, quickly think of ways to let something happen the way the person wanted it done, explain away errors, etc. I was worried about the bag of chips that Ms. E had decided were now hers. I kept an eye on her, waiting for her to let the bag go because I knew she would forget it once it was out of her sight. Luckily one of the PCAs managed this, and Ms. E never realized. That's one really nice thing – you can “fix” things without upsetting the participant, with a little cleverness.

Ok. So. I finished my Well Elderly Project, minus just basic editing of typos, and fixing references. I helped finalize Draft 2 of our Tai chi Paper FINALLY (it's my fault it took so long to get back out), I finished the basic Communications Proposal for an Assembly of Student Delegates proposal…

Today was Alzheimer's until 4pm, Virginia's at 430 to 5 to discuss stuff and return Alzheimer's books…5 to 610 was at Sarah's working on Tai Chi, 630 was Bingo, and then 745 to now (past 10pm) I've been at OTS Kerri and Brent's house along with a first year DPT student, Shannon, who is my new best friend even though she doesn't know it yet. I've been working on my Tai Chi final and blog posts while they played Settlers of Catan. A game I'm really, really bad at. Speaking of things I'm bad at, I totally believed there were flying penguins….grrrrr

Moving on, Now I need to focus on my initial eval + three SOAP notes and getting ready for Conference next week, as well as basic finalizing of everything…

Things are lightening up! I've been staying up late trying to get things done and feeling overwhelmed, but I'm starting to feel better. I need to figure out what to WEAR and pack for conference, print out the itinerary, and decide what sessions and such I am most interested in.

If any of y'all are going and want to meet up, pleeeease let me know. So far I'm gonna try to meet up with Emily and Chris of AOTA awesomeness (and by meetup, I mean, get within 20 feet of them, lol). Plus meet with Linda R, who moderates the Gerontology Special Interest Section Listserv thing. Plus um, well, anyone who says anything. 🙂

Good night!!!!!!!!!!!!!