Today ended up crazy! I've always equated tons of kids = crazy, but I'm slowly learning (much like I learned the hard way that it can be shining sun outside and still be negative thirty, in Norway), that sometimes the craziest days have the fewest kids.

10am: I wake up after going to bed at 3amish. Clean.

11am: my friends Sarah/Burt come over, Sarah just got her first car!!!!! Awesome!!! They ooh and awe appropriately at my new bed, new hutch, etc. We go to the Cupboard for lunch – yum.

12:45pmish: Get to work early to kinda get my bearings/settle in. Spend some time bugging Vanessa, the originally Indian/South African, PRN OT, who is really sweet and thinks I'm a “breath of fresh air”, I guess she must live in a smoky world…;). She also thinks I should be an actress. Whoah.

1:30pmish: Observe session of COTA with visual perceptual/shy kid. So cute. I'm present to learn some “handwriting without tears” and provide some social distraction. I meet the Magic C bunny, and learn about the smiley face in upper left hand corner, and the bumpy handwriting types of paper, and the big lines, little lines, big curves, little curves (not “big fat bellies” as I like to call them). Learn about the chalk-board left-right, top-down writings, and just in general enjoy learning some handwriting without tears curriculum, I think it's a good one, and I think Crayola has hired an OT with knowledge of HWT, for their new products that are coming out all seem to be along those lines, ie the Pipsqueaks, short markers. I show the little girl my glow in the dark snail tattoo, normal snail tattoo, and dancing pineapple tattoo.

2:30pmish-3:15ish. Do paperwork, chill.
3:15pm: Start work with kid that is severely autistic, using SpongeBob on a timer reinforcement schedule. Am surprised and impressed when he points to the non-skid liner “blanket” I've been encouraging him to use to put SpongeBob to sleep, wanting me to get it, and says to turn off the lights….I've discovered through experience that the “Good night” game seems to be the easiest “pretend” game for kids to grasp, and serves as a stepping stone to other types of pretend…so I've been playing Goodnight Spongebob (blanket, turn off lights…good morning Spongebob, turn on lights, take off blanket) with him each session …so was thrilled he initiated it today.) (He also stared very intently at my dancing pineapple tattoo)

3:XXpm: Get pulled into speech therapy office to speak to a parent whose daughter has just been put on the gluten/casein-free diet and is doing better, since I've read a lot about it and am a huge fan of Karyn Seroussi (sp?) book on Unraveling the mysteries of autism and PDD, and the dietary changes it promotes.
4ish pm: Re-take on Spongebob Kid, he is sitting in my lap and he starts laying his head back to kind of brush his face against my neck. After a few times of this, he kisses my neck. Then brushes off his lips with a surprised face. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA.

4ish pm plus a while: Craziness hits. The boss and my OT are in paperwork hell catching up on the last month and need my help. The COTA takes on some of my kids, plus has to “babysit” a kid whose mom is late, I also co-treat a kid with the speech aide, Haley, for about 30 minutes. She starts complaining she feels weird and so with the hypothesis her sugar is low, I get her a cold paper towel for her neck and wrists, get her some peanut butter crackers, and a water. In the meantime I can hear her discussing bugs with our kid. 🙂 Then I treat him alone a while since time was up for her, it was a little boy with some autistic like tendencies, and he likes to mimic/go along with things said to him, and seeing as how I sing (poorly) made-up songs or just sing my sentences a lot, he was amusing me as he went along with what I would say and repeat it. A computer man came in and I was like “I bet that man is hungry, let's make him a strawberry (one of the cookie cutter pieces for Play-doh). I think I heard the man giggle. 😉    We also made a “fence” to keep a mean biting bug out, with horizontal/vertical lines… I had no idea pre-handwriting skills like drawing lines were so important for kids!!

Oh, and Haley also sees a man for nervousness with speaking at work, and she had him talk impromptu about some things for me and the billing chick, Lindsay, he was kinda cute!!

The rest of the day – is spent – in intermittent thunderstorms – working on computers frantically working on old evaluations, plans of care (their goals), addendums for insurance, answering Medicaid questions, tracking down dates/billing/folders/notes/asking/answering questions, etc. It was truly crazy. I'd write up the eval/POC based on the folder, and print it, so my OT could review/make changes on it, then return to me to make the changes, print again, so she could sign it, and get it put into billing stack….I did several today and it was a good learning experience, and have hours to do tomorrow – I stayed almost an hour late until almost 8pm, tonight – then dropped clinical director off at home on way, stopped to get a cheap pizza, and got home around 820pm……..now I'm lying here like a comatose vegetable typing this up for therapeutic purposes and then probably going to sleep soon.

Tomorrow is a home visit that my OT will do alone and I'm going to go straight to the office to finish typing up evals/POCs etc while she does that. The COTA and clinical director are coming in too so it's a paperwork catch up day. Only one other kid is scheduled that the COTA is going to see. My guess is I'll end up doing about 3 hours of paperwork but maybe less – I don't know though – we have a LOT to do. I think once tomorrow is over though, we'll be caught up and it shouldn't get that crazy again. In fact, I won't let it, at least on my end, because I really hate writing up evals/POCs on kids I don't really remember! All the info is in the folder, but still.

We have learned how to write goals in school that had like a million parts to them and were so precise and measurable and beautiful, but in this world, it's more like “Child will copy vertical/horizontal lines 5/5 trials. Child will improve safety awareness to fair+, 50% of time. Child will stack ten cubes 5/5 trials.” – kinda vague, but whatev.

Tomorrow night the little baby that is severely delayed/deaf/blind is having a birthday party at Pizza Hut as she is turning 1 years old. My OT is taking her husband/daughter and the clinic director and maybe the speech aid are going to go as well. I'm thinking about joining them because it should be a very interesting experience – and I may end up taking home Lester the Lion Kitty – not sure yet. My OT called me tonight to say she found a blind puppy and did I think my low vision OT friend would want it? AAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA

No.

Anyway….day was intense with paperwork issues but it all went well overall, everyone is really flexible and nice. Sorry this is so long and boring but now my mind is clear. And I no longer remember what I did yesterday, so I can't write about it. Oh well. LOL.

Okay I think even though it's only 9pm that I'm going to get into bed. No exercise for me today I guess!! GOOD NIGHT