Here is my day is breath-takingly boring detail, but hey, it's therapeutic….lol

1. Wake up tired/stressed. And overslept slightly considering needing to be there by 8am to know what schedule is since we forgot to check Friday. Throw frozen cherries/sliced almonds/plain yogurt/apple sauce into a cup for the road.

2. Get there 8am. Realize have lost key to clinic – key that is kept on giant red shoelace – me that never loses stuff – has managed to lose important clinic key on giant object – frazzled.

3. Speech therapist Keshell drives up while I am frantically looking for key, lets me – and her – and air conditioning man who has just shown up – in.

4. Alarm goes off. I go to turn it off since I've been told the code, but it turns out you also have to know the order of what buttons to push, beyond just the code. Alarm goes off briefly. We get the code in correctly within a minute or so and assume it's now fine.

5. Air conditioning man does his thing. Keshell and I buzz around frantically figuring out what is going. I'm looking for a Microsoft disk to bring to new clinic and Keshell is looking for a bunch of items she is supposed to bring and I'm also trying to find the folder for the eval we have as well as the folders of the kids being seen today in new clinic as well as figure out who is driving with who and what time and who is going where and who needs what keys to where and so forth.

6. Cops show up. Apparently they are automatically called when alarms go off. Also, the owner, who lives in Florida, is also called. Great. Oops.

7. Give up on items I can't find as it's 830 and I have patients scheduled at 9am in new clinic, which is over 30 minutes away, plus need to stop by my OT's house on way to get key to new clinic. Stressed out, and so is Keshell, as she and my OT have a home visit to do early as well. Get numbers of Keshell and Haley, speech aid, who also is going to Holly Springs today. Print out schedule etc.

8. Leave. Linda, awesome billing chick, is driving up as I am leaving, noting the two cop cars sitting in front chatting, say hi to her car-to-car and ask her to keep an eye out for eval folder.

9. Call Haley while driving to see if she is closer than me so I can skip picking up key for new office, since she has one as well. Call Keshell to see if she can pick up apple sauce for one of babies and to see if can wait to give Christy folders, etc etc. Try to eat breakfast and take drugs. Try to speed only a little bit to get there on time. Also find out if Haley can pick up my first kid early for his speech since I'm running late.

10. Get to new clinic. Have not put on make-up yet (and believe me, I need it) but have no time as the first kid has shown up already. Run around trying to prepare for the eval that will be coming immediately after my first hour kid, and calling  main office to see if they can search for eval folder so I know approximately the age/issue for this child instead of doing it blind, esp. since I need to start it by myself since Christy (my OT) and Keshell won't be there right away.

11. Mention this to Haley who is seeing my kid early and she mentions that all the stuff is in her trunk so phew. So look at it – my kid is slightly older and has idiopathic toe-walking and that's only complaint – oddly – hmm – set up the WR-MVA or whatever it is called, it looks at like visual perception and visual motor, set up the pegboard test to look at fine motor, get out crayons and stuff to look at handwriting, get out the LAP (Learning Achievement Profile?) to look at what six year olds should be able to do just in case this kid is delayed, etc.

12. See my little boy for an hour. He mentions going to the doctor for a big shot and so since he is a basic skills kid and needs work on everything – coloring, words, naming parts etc, we play doctor (the kind with clothes on, lol) and practice having animal patients and giving shots and he is so damn cute. We write “notes” on our patients by practicing lines, and stuff like that.

13. Wait on eval to show up. Mom of another kid – one I've met once before comes in and asks me with tears in her eyes if her son – who has massive ADHD and other bizarre issues – will ever be better. She proceeds to tell me all sorts of truly bizarre stories involving shotguns, homicide-suicides, mental institutions, etc, and also includes stories of constipation and enemas, my favorite topic ever, well probably everyone's favorite topic….kid and mom are both bizarre, actually, and at one point kid calls his mom, in a thick country accent, a “lying old heifer” AHAHAHAHAAHA and she finds it amusing….

14. Eval doesn't show up. Either do the two other kids scheduled at same time. Thinking HALLELULAH except spelled right. Christy and Keshell show up and we discover we are supposed to have gone to a daycare for the eval and those two other kids – they weren't coming to the clinic. Oops. So now it's 11:30 and we were supposed to be DONE with eval, but need to go to daycare to do it and the other kids, and we also have kids at 130, and it would be nice to have lunch at some point.

15. Christy and Keshell get food to go from next door while I prep car (I brought my lunch), while Haley sticks with the mom and kid who need to wait for transportation…..and in fact gets stuck with them for the next hour and 15 minutes waiting on transportation even though she could have gone home otherwise. Not a happy camper!!

16. We drive to eval…Christy asks me to do the eval which is 100% expected/normal since I'm a student at mid-term, and really need to work on evals, and  was/had been prepared to start it when we had thought it was at clinic, but honestly, even though it was no big deal, I balked and was like, honestly, I'm feeling so stressed and disorganized right now, I'd really like to not do it. So she accepted that and we kind of did it together – i did help/contribute, but she ran it – the kid was really smart. I felt stupid/disappointed in myself for refusing to do the evaluation, especially considering its midterm week, but the morning had been so exceptionally chaotic that I just couldn't handle it at that point.

17. Kid is sweet and smart – makes a beautiful “recognizable object” out of clay that is far beyond age level – and does not appear to have sensory issues causing the toe-walking – and physical therapy previously had not stopped it – we discuss toe-walking reasons and what's been done and what's new, but there is unfortunately not really cause for OT – she is disappointed by this and frustrated too – and kid gets sad 🙁

18. By now it's 115 and we have a kid scheduled for 130 – a kid who is always early – and I'm hungry – we get back to clinic and they are waiting on us – it is like 125pm – the kid has just had McDonald's but the PBJ sandwich I'm assembling looks good to him and he offers to share it with me…I was like sorry, it's mine, yo. LOL. Which now that I think about it, the kid I had right after him, is allergic to peanuts (clearly not severely). Ack.

19. Me, Keshell, and Christy, try to do what we can to see this kid and another kid together/co-treated as much as possible, as well as using the Medicaid rule (You can bill for a 15 minute unit after 8 minutes), since we have a home visit to do to our baby that is blind/deaf, plus a TON of paperwork.

20. Mom of a kid calls and is lost. Right as another mom comes in to ask about Medicaid stuff. I'm supposed to be seeing a kid, but we have no receptionist or anythin
g down at new clinic yet. I put mom of lost kid on phone with drop-in mom who lives in area to help with directions since I sure as heck don't know what to tell her. Call main clinic on my cell phone in meantime to get billing/scheduling lady on phone for drop-in. And sister of kid being seen needs Tylenol, etc….it's crazy and I'm running around doing receptionist things when I should be seeing my kid, and Christy and I are using our cell phones along with office phone, as we play office tag with drop-in mom, lost mom, etc.

20. Grandma, kid, and I, get in ball pit to work on his counting skills since likes to count 1, 2, 6…refuses to say three. Plays dumb for psychological reasons, very odd. Also try to incorporate other kid in, who is non-verbal and surprisingly sharp/smart when it comes to his matching/colors, etc, he has never been so focused before. Interesting.

21. Christy has literally stacks of paperwork to go through still – decide that Keshell and I will go see our little baby in Keshell's car and that Christy will drive my car back to main clinic, and that Keshell will afterwards drop me off at Christy's car which is kind of on way to clinic and then I'll drive Christy's car back to office so we can switch back cars, and we close up clinic, get some drinks, Keshell runs in to get a hearing test thing, I run in for the drinks, Christy takes my car, we move toys to Keshell's car, etc.

22. Keshell and I get to housing projects loaded down – Christy's friend let her have an old exer-saucer which she is giving to the baby which is soo sweet – we knock and knock and knock and no answer for a while, and I start to call Christy only my phone battery dies so my phone is dead and I have no charger, so Keshell, whose phone is dying, calls Christy, then we hear voices and finally the door gets answered so we come in…the baby is asleep. It's 3:45 and we have to be out of there by 4:15 so we can get back by 4:50 so Christy can have her car so she can leave right by 5pm max.

23. I start working on exer-saucer while Keshell works on waking up baby and on her feeding skills, giving her apple sauce (we forgot it, but I had apple sauce in my lunch box so I let her have mine, lol) – luckily mom is more um, engineering-savvy, and puts it together, and baby keeps falling back asleep, and it's basically a worthless session as baby is just so sleepy….and then it's 420ish and we leave, but don't even get back to main highway until 450, and we get to Christy's car and I'm still easily 20 minutes away from clinic considering the traffic, and so obviously it's going to be late, not to mention my phone is dead, etc…

24. Get back around 515, Christy has had to give up on going to gym for a class and is now helping the billing/scheduling chick with the crazy scheduling since the therapists are working in so many different areas and there are all these PRNs etc – and I do the billing sheets, try to find folders of kids we're seeing + evals for tomorrow + print out schedule for tomorrow + prep things in general….finally leave around 6:10pm

25. Drive home with the vibrating giggling cow and other assorted talking toys going off, phone dead, and utterly stressed out. LOL.

26. Cancel plans to go out east and see Kerri/Sarah/Christa – just going to go walking in Midtown with Allison for some stress relief/exercise, and call it a day. Feel bad about flaking out on my friends but also need to protect my own sanity.

27. Walk with Allison and her PT roommate Stephanie who spent the day watching videos on digital anal massage for spinal cord patients, plus self-catheterization, to learn more about autonomic dysreflexia (a lot of spinal cord patients end up with like bladder or bowel distention because they don't realize they have to go since no feeling, which can lead to life-threatening problems, and while nurses do the anal sphincter stimulation and such, it's important for therapists to know how it works conceptually etc),  so I feel slightly better that my day only involved discussion of poo instead of close-ups of relaxing anal sphincters. Spend a while looking for key to clinic, I'm really unhappy/stressed out that I lost something so important and so big, I'm hoping it's just sitting somewhere in the clinic since I can't fathom where else it would be, I just cleaned my house and car, and I know I had it Friday when I was last at the clinic! Grrr!

28. Shower, rest, therapeutically blog, and now about to get into bed in preparation for tomorrow. OT Christy and me plus two speech therapists are all going to new clinic tomorrow – two evals are scheduled for Christy plus I see two kids – the afternoon is a home visit + a few kids, and normally we work until 7pm but I hope it's earlier, although probably not, because truly there is easily like 5 hours of paperwork…but I want to meet up with some out-of-town fieldwork students that leave next week and also see some other friends so I'm hoping we get out earlier…

28.5 Do my daily mushing of my Amish friendship bread bag from Virginia, thanks! I think tomorrow is the add sugar/flour/milk day!!

29. There are just not enough hours in the day……too much chaos….oh and I also lost a little timer….losing things DRIVES ME INSANE and I can't fathom where these things are jumping away to! I'm convinced there is a poltergeist kleptomaniac stealing my stuff, yo!

30. It's not like I had any life or death situations in my hands today – or anal massage – so truly I can't say the day was that bad in the grand scheme of things, but it was just a high level of stress all day long as there were constant demands or miscommunication or conflicts or questions, pretty much nonstop! Yuck yuck yuck yuck! I just want us to spend a day catching up on everything, but every time we try, more and more things pile up and new situations arise, so it seems impossible! 🙁 Maybe tomorrow will be the magical day.

31. Haley speech aid and awesome person extraordinaire just called for directions to the daycare – she is seeing a kid there tomorrow – she confirmed she and everyone else had a crappy day as well!!

31. Ok I'm popping another valerian root pill and GOING TO BED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

32: All you potential fieldwork students – today sucked – but in general- the kids are fun, the clinic is fun, fieldwork is fun!! And this placement is fun, overall!! So don't be scared!