Oh man oh man

It's almost midnight and I'm exhausted, but I desperately want to write about the last two INSANE days, but I also have 50 emails to deal with, and about 10 Facebook messages, and a big pile of papers on my desk related to OT, and there are just not enough hours in the day. :( Why oh whyyyy!!!  I guess I'm just going to go to sleep - I'll jot down what i want to write about so i dont forget. Check back this weekend for Wednesday Thursday and Friday's entries I guess. Sorrrrry.

Those of you who have written me in last month about OT - I promise your mail is in my box to be looked at - not ignored - just give me more time please.

ooooh wednesday

Wednesday....oh I so badly want to write up my Wednesday...which was quite an interesting day from start to finish....but alas I need to run and omg it's KILLING ME! i WANT TO WRITE IT UP NOW!!!!!!!

Also, in the last few weeks, I have officially gotten like one long e-mail a day from people interested in studying OT. I think most of them I'll end up having phone conversations with this weekend, since they have so many questions, telling them how awesome it is and to go into it. AOTA, feel like picking up my phone bill? Thanks, lol.

Anyway, i am going to tear myself away from my typing crack and go see kids from 1pm to 7pm, then meeting up with friends. Maybe I'll write late tonight.

HAVE A GOOD DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Week 3, Day 2, Pediatric Fieldwork, my first day of AUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHh

Today was a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong day. Longcat is looong. I am waiting for 316 pictures to download from the last few weeks of fieldwork. :X

Let's start at the very beginning...very best place to start...when you sing you begin with a b c...when you blog you begin with ....umm.

It's 1110pm and I was gone from 7am to 10:50pm. I was just going to jump in the shower tonight but the water pressure is insanely low from my landlords doing laundry I guess (they just got back from a funeral :( ) so I will wait until morning. So I'll just therapeutically blog then go to bed with my mind emptied.

7am: Get up.
7:30am: Leave for work almost an hour early due to open house for new clinic in small Missisippi town about 40 minutes away from this one.
8:00am: Meet my OT at the normal office. Plan was for everyone to drive down together. Drama ensues as this turns out to not be the case. Try to follow other people once finally catch up, but they speed and I draw the line at catching up with them after I steadily go 80 MPH and there is still no chance of catching up. More drama as we get slightly lost. Finally catch up.
845am:Everybody assembles in new clinic. Open house commences with catering, chamber of commerce, mayor, others present. People mill around, get tours, chat, blahdey blah. I take hundreds of pictures because that's how I roll, yo.
10amish: I inform the mayor of this town that he has balls.

Undetermined time: Any faculty that reads my blog has immediate heart attack.

10amish+ 1 second: Mayor laughs hysterically. (I had encouraged the mayor (who was very personable) that he should get into the ball pit for a picture. He laughed and said he could see the caption now, something about mayor losing his marbles. I said no, it could say "This mayor has BALLS!" because I had talked to him enough to know he'd find it amusing and not offensive. :P) (Just for the record, the clinic director thought it was funny too. But in retrospect it was really stupid of me, yeah. Just sayin'. )

Undetermined time: I receive mail expelling me from my OT school and a stern letter from my fieldwork supervisor.

11amish: We pack up leftover catering to take to our home visit for the baby that is deaf-blind. I drive  me and my OT + two speech therapists to projects. I sit on sofa entire time so that the two young speech therapists (who have never had exposure to this sort of thing) can participate fully and get to hold baby and such.

Side note: I'm proud of myself...one of the home therapists had brought a neat battery-operated fan-foil thing the baby loved but it ran out of batteries while we were there. It also needed a screwdriver to open....I dug out my eyeglass kit in my purse for a tiny screwdriver, then took two of the batteries I had been about to discard because my camera had used them up, and put it in there, because I had rsuddenly emembered reading that cameras use a lot of juice but the batteries that aren't good enough for a camera anymore might be good for small items. So yeah, it worked. :) YAY!

Noonish: Head back to town, me driving three therapists....anybody who knows my driving history knows this is an amazing event (I've always been a scaredy cat of driving, especially others...not anymore I guess).

1pmish: Have been warned that afternoon will be crazy. Run to gas station down street to buy some honey nut cheerios/milk to gulp down for lunch and eat in 10 minutes. See schedule for first time. Cry inwardly ;)

1:30pm. Quietly grab first client, umm Pamela. She is a little girl that is so brutally shy it almost hurts. I have watched maybe a few minutes of sessions with her, enough to know she is there for visual perceptual difficulties, and problems concentrating, and social interaction because she is sooooo shy. I'm usually a little outgoing with kids but I know to be quiet/calm with her. I prepared some My Little Ponies stuff I knew she liked while I ate my cereal, in advance, so I was ready for her. I had her write down the six words she was going to search for in the puzzle (I color coded each handwriting line with a different colored circle), then we would systematically search for it in the word search, then she could circle it and cross it out on the other sheet. This was soo slow and it would have been slower if I had sat on my hands more...but A) I suck and B) this was my first session with her and I knew she was very shy and easily frustrated and didn't want it to be torture. Anyway. Then we did some fun Pony things that involved tape and I had to keep from cringing as I watched her struggle just with taping things. THEN I found some good worksheets and went to hurriedly copy them, leaving my fingers on the sheet as I did so without thinking...well the worksheets had my fingers copied onto them. I told the little girl she might as well give me some nail polish (color my nails in) on her worksheet, and as she did so with a red marker, I got the one and only smile for the session - that's how shy she is.

2:30 until 6:30pm: Start getting stressed. All the kids I see at this point on are more or less strangers to me, and are older and have issues with visual perception and/or handwriting, for the most part. My OT is caught up in several mini crises and other issues and is with the boss a lot, and I'm getting frustrated because while I know I need to be flexible, I'm having trouble even finding these kid's birth dates, or knowing their most recent goals/progress, so in other words, I feel like I'm going into it blind, with very little clue as to what I should be working on, and, worse, I feel VERY unsure about myself when it comes to these older kid skills like cutting, gluing, handwriting, visual perceptual games, etc - I have my play therapy down cold with developmental young kids, but the academic skills I haven't had a lot of exposure to. And since I have severe visual perceptual issues of my own, I struggle in that area - I can't help kids with puzzles because I can't do them myself without thinking a while (not even four piece ones - I'm not kidding :( ) - I can't do mirror images or rotation, I can't copy items, I have a very hard time finding items in the I Spy books, you name it....I was getting very frustrated with myself and feeling out of ideas and the kids just kept on coming so it was like I had no time to sit and regroup (or at least it felt that way even if it wasn't exactly true).

The final straw came after a few hours - maybe 4ish - when I was at the tail end of a struggling session with a kid with visual perceptual issues, and then a therapist walks in ready to hand me a SEVERELY autistic child who is very difficult to handle, that I have never worked with, and I'm supposed to overlap them for 15 minutes. I almost cried. Luckily the kind therapist had no body else right then and she stayed to watch that kid for like 15 minutes while I just treated my kid alone since realistically I would have found it hard to babysit those two in a room, let alone do something therapeutic enough to bill for! Luckily things calmed down after that, I got to watch my OT deal with the child with severe autism and get some clues, etc. So while I make it sound like I was like completely tossed into the deep end, that was just my perception as I was frazzled and tired and unused to dealing with these kinds of kids (our COTA is on vacation as of today for two weeks). So I guess I'll get used to it soon, wow. Craziness. Between vacations, mini constant crises/emergencies/dramas, personell/staff vacancies/hiring, new clinics expansion, home visits, etc, it's pretty insane!!

When I finally left today I was pretty stressed out and frazzled and feeling bad about myself and my abilities...I know everyone else was stressed too. My good OT friend had invited me to join her family for dinner tonight, luckily, though, and she gave me some GREAT tips on how to handle some of the things I faced today. I literally sat down on the floor with a piece of paper and pen as she gave me ideas/explained things about visual perception, trunk control, etc. Very very very very helpful....will write that up in a second. She also gave me an AWESOME scarf!!!

I stayed with her family a while and then visited my friend Kerri's and Brent's who live down a few streets for about 15 minutes around 930pm, and they gave me two tomatoes randomly. Then I went to my friend Paul and Angela and their son Patric, on the way home for about 30 minutes and they gave me twelve beautiful orchard peaches, made me watch several YouTube Videos on a really insane show, let me play with their adorable dog, and just overall entertained me...and oh yeah I chatted with my friend Suzy on phone on way to Paul's and with friend Doug on way home from Paul's, and also must mention Talli who I ranted to on phone on way to OT friend's from work, and um so anyway, then I got home around 1050pm and now we are full circle, time to write up the great OT tips I got and then go to bed...midnightish.

Tomorrow I think my OT and I are down in the new clinic a lot, and then I babysit.....i hope tomorrow is a less stressful day.

And I REALLY hope Thursday is a short day since 45 minutes more the other day, 45 minutes more this morning, leaving only 15 minutes early tonight and having only about 15 minutes for a lunch, plus working most of a full day on Friday, means that if I have to work until 7pm Thursday, that I've worked like, way over time! Okay yeah I'm going to stop now. Tips, tips, gotta remember tips. Okay wow I feel like a cheater to keep saying I'd write it, but now I'm too tired to write up the full version tonight because she gave me lots of stuff to write about/think about, I think I'll have more brain power tomorrow, but for now, the MASSIVE key....HUGE HUGE HUGE key to my sanity, that she handed me tonight along with lots of individual ideas I'll write up tomorrow.....

SANITY KEY: SINCE OFTEN YOU CANT PREPARE FOR PATIENTS IN ADVANCE IN SITUATIONS LIKE TODAY, YOU SHOULD BE PREPARED WITH A "HOW TO COOK WITHOUT A BOOK" LIKE RECIPE - WHERE YOU HAVE GENERAL ACTIVITIES PLANNED OUT THAT YOU CAN JUST GRADE/ADAPT/MODIFY FOR VARIOUS CLIENTS...SO THAT EACH PATIENT MAY DO SAME THING THAT DAY ACTIVITY WISE, JUST MODIFIED FOR THAT PERSONS WEAK SPOTS. Like instead of thinking, what specifically do I do with this specific kid with visual perceptual problems, it's, here is a bunch of activities good for visual perception skills, now let's figure out how to grade it for this kid on the spot.

Since I'm so tired I don't have any ideas right off the top of my head that I want to share as an example but check back tomorrow, lol. And man I hope that tickling I feel on my leg is like my blanket and not a spider. AUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Today was my worst day yet - based solely on the afternoon since the open house went really well which is great for the clinic - but it could have been a lot worse. My mental health level is surprisingly good, considering...and my OT friend helped a ton with making me feel better about the rest of this week :)

Picture is of me and my OT at the gazebo in tiny new clinic town today :) And the ball pit I spend so much time in. That is, if the pictures show up.

Week 3, Day 1, Pediatric Level II Fieldwork Placement, Occupational Therapy Student, BABY!

I'm so efficient. I write my blog posts while my hair dries. Pretty awesome, yeah.

Today I saw my two little girls and I tried a few new things with them based on the manic spree I had last night going through my house finding fun stuff. We did some magnetic tin girl-dress-up which they liked, some coloring in S's that I had done in Snake-Like formation, and umm, nothing very exciting beyond that. Oh yeah, I put a glittering star sticker on my forehead when I helped with the first little boy of the day and then forgot about it -  and so when I went to the waiting room to pick up the little girls, they lit up, and the parents laughed at me. Oopsies. LOL.  Then I had my little boy with gravitational insecurity who is getting a little better - each time I challenge him for a few seconds with things like a roller board, or a bolster, or just anything that challenges him - he doesn't like it much after about 5 seconds but he doesn't put up a fight immediately - once he starts whining I let him go, and I'm always holding onto him securely, so I'm not pushing him too far or anything. I think he's doing better and better. He's doing some great things in the ball pit, so that's giving him a work-out. I put some ankle weights on him (his feet were securely on a stool) and a weighted vest on him when it was time for tablework, and he liked it for a while...although he is NOT okay with touching a pencil or crayon - just because it is no fun to him at all. But he did like the magnets of the magna doodle, too bad it is missing the pen piece of it. I guess I could glue a magnet on the tip of a normal pen or something, hmm.....anyway He is nonverbal but he makes it very clear what is okay and what isn't, with his insistent "Eeeee's" either being smiling "Eeee's" or frowning "Eeee's" LOL.

Then it was time to head to the tiny town in Mississippi. We went in two cars - the clinic director and my OT in one, me and a new (to me) aide who knows the director well, in another car. We had lunch then saw my little boy who often plays dumb but is sweet and cute as can be....he transferred to the new clinic. Being in a new place was exciting so he didn't do as well as he has been, but did pretty well considering. It gets frustrating when he doesn't seem to know his colors one minute after he knew them 5 minutes before - it's basically all motivation driven. He knows them if he has the incentive.

THEN we had two evals...a mom with two autistic children. I won't lie, working with children who have autism is not my passion - I LOVE reading about them and am fascinated by autism in general, but I have a hard time with the lack of responsiveness...these two kids were soooo low level and nonverbal, and it was really hard to keep them from getting into everything. The younger one seems to have more "hope" - he loved being rocked and manipulated and I think it will be easier to reach him in general. I sang to him "Wiggle worm wiggle worm where do you go, wiggle worm wiggle worm I don't know" and he smiled as I jiggled him around singing, so that's a good sign I guess.

THEN, running late, we headed to go see the baby who is deaf-blind living in the projects. The family took forever to bring the baby out, which was a little frustrating. The baby was not in the best mood today, extra tired, so we didn't manage to get a lot of work from her, but she is tolerating vibration more, took her bottle well (although the flow of her bottle is way too fast), and overall is improving. We did figure out today she has right hemiparesis - weakness on her right side - and we noted it for the mom so she could ask the doctor about it - since they have a doctor appointment tomorrow after way too many months of not taking her. This baby has a massive soft spot on her head which is odd considering she is almost a year old. Or maybe it isn't, I'm curious to go research that.

Also, I've noticed, that many of the young black children we see, have HUGE belly buttons, like not just outies, but like, protuberances, it is really bizarre....anybody know what that is? Why?

Hmmmm what else. I ended up taking my OT back to the clinic in the clinic director/boss's car so that she could stay behind with the aide to finish hanging up pictures in preparation for tomorrow morning's open house in that new clinic. We were running late so we got back and finally left work around 5:45 instead of 5pm, whoopsiedoodles. Came home, ate and crashed, then met my friend and OT classmate Allison to go with her to the grocery store. Then we went walking on the track for a little while. She is under the weather with some sinus issues, bummer. I gave her expired medication because I'm an incredible friend. Kidding on the incredible part, not kidding on the expired part. LOL.

Also, tomorrow we have to be there at 8am to go straight to the little new clinic for open house...will be there in morning, then see kids in the afternoon in normal clinic. I don't know if we'll be staying until 7pm - depends on schedule - but I hope not considering the 45 minutes extra today plus the hour early tommorow! Am going to a friend's for dinner afterward. Wednesday we are in the new clinic in the small town most of the day. Thursday is hopefully only a half day since Friday we'll be in another small town for most of the day doing home visits/evals, etc. I kind of had to push for details today just to find out the most basic of plans for the week - while I know flexibility is key, I do at least like having a ROUGH skeleton idea of the week in terms of when I can expect to be there/go home, and roughly what TOWN we'll be in, and roughly how many kids I might be expected to see. Historically I would have wanted to know every little detail , like who was when, and then plan out a big ol treatment....now I'm like, hmm, okay, in 5 minutes I'm going to start seeing patients for three hours, guess I better think about what I want to do and find out what ages/kids I have.... ;)

I'm having a mini existentialist crisis here where I think....am I helping these kids enough that insurance should be billed? Am I really doing anything that a normal person wouldn't do?? How common is common sense? Is this child improving because of me or because of time? I guess I have a lot of doubt because even though realistically I know the theory behind play as an occupation, it's hard to validate playing with balls as a form of therapy. Even though rationally I can argue why it is, it's still kinda weird to think about. I dunno. I have low self-esteem/insecurity to some extent, regardless, so then add in BILLING people for my presence, and I'm like AUGH! Am I worth it!!

I talked with my blogging mentor and luviepoo Merrolee, and she confirmed this is a common feeling for OTs...at least the self-doubt...of...this seems like such common sense...but....common sense is NOT common...and a lot of what us OTs consider common sense is only common because we've had the training ingrained into us....I dunno. This is too deep for my brain, I want to sleep. Guess I should go blow-dry my hair first though - last night I slept on my wet hair and it was uncomfortable. I also dreamed that my fieldwork supervisor told my fieldwork coordinator that I was really inappropriate and in my dream I cried. I also dreamed my sister disappeared in the ocean and I cried a lot over that too. Craziness.

By the way, while my massive amount of supplements did make me gag this morning, I otherwise felt pretty good, so YAY!!!

I love my OT and employees I love my kids and I love the traveling...I even love the traffic-free commute and all the restaurants nearby...ahahahahaaha I'm so shallow..I wish I had a better grasp of what was happening when, and a better grasp of the process from start to finish (from referral to eval to being seen to discharge and Medicaid etc), which I guess will come shortly, and I probably need to sit down with the OT to discuss goals and objectives soon, but other than that completely random stream of consciousness that just flew out of my fingers, everything is going pretty well. I'm going to bed. GOOD NIGHT.

These are the letters that make OT worth it :)

Got this via email today...

Karen,
 
   I guess the best way to start this email is by giving you some background info. I recently came across an occupational therapy students webpage of which you have your email address posted on. I suffered a spinal cord injury at the c1, c4, c5 and c6 levels in a snowboarding accident on December 22nd of this past year, just weeks after my 22nd birthday.
Ive recovered quite well, and without people like you who are interested in and love the field of occupational therapy, i dont think i would have progressed as far as  I have. Despite some fine motor and extension problems in one of my hands, the amount of progress ive made is fantastic, and much of that progress is becuase of poeple like you.
I just wanted to write and tell you my story, show you that what you do does make a difference and that we really appreciate you're love for OT and dedication to it.
 
Best wishes in your studies and your future endeavours,
 
Josh

Woot woot

I was feeling a little guilty that I did absolutely nothing for fieldwork this weekend, so I got a little manic and went through my five massive boxes of art supplies - a lot of it is pure junk, like leftover pieces of ribbon, wire, bottle caps, etc. And I also went through my books, toys, and OT supplies. I grabbed out a chewy toy, some pencil grips, and a handwriting without tears crayon set that I got as samples from AOTA conference. I cut out some non-skid liner to put under puzzles, grabbed a few of my favorite kid books (like Animalia), and also put together a little clear jar that has an assortment of interesting things in it - marble rocks, tiny toys, puffy foamy things, feathers, etc. The things can be sorted by type, or color, or can be used for tactile things, or fine motor things, or cognitive things like shapes, colors, sizes, types.....and I also brought a tin to put things in and to have the child rattle it and guess what is inside. Oh that reminds me, I want to cut a hole in a shoebox to bring in to work on tactile discrimination. I also brought some stickers to use as reinforcements since we're running low on candy (primarily because employees eat it! LOL. That includes me too, boo bad me)...when I leave my present to my OT will probably include a large bag of candy, ahahahaha.

Anyway, I now feel like no matter who I have tomorrow morning, I will have stuff in my own personal OT bag to interest them...I'm feeling a little tired of all the things at the office even though I now I've barely touched the surface of possibilities there. OH yeah, I also brought in like 2 lb ankle weights to experiment with (like to put on the kids feet for extra proprioceptive input while working on a tabletop activity), a few small stuffed animals to use as assistants (since Mr Spider and Mr Horsie were big hits), and a magnetic tin set for my two little girls to do some fine motor stuff because it involves using small magnetic clothing to dress a magnetic girl.

YAY! I'm excited!!

Gearing up for Week 3....

I'm getting ready for Week 3 of my pediatric Level II fieldwork! We go to small Mississippi towns on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which is exciting to me! I rested a lot this weekend as well as saw a bunch of different friends so I'm feeling ready...my scrubs are clean, my stuff is prepared for tomorrow....and I guess when I get there in the morning I'll figure out what I want to do with my kids! I bet I have them from 9am to noon straight but who knows!

Today at Target I was like in OT heaven although I didn't buy anything, restraining myself though. Crayola has "pipsqueaks" now that are small markers, kind of like "handwriting without tears" - the shorter the markers are, the easier it is for the kid to hold correctly. They also now have triangular crayons which are easier to grip, plus rock like crayons that are great for toddlers/kids with really primitive grasps! And Twistables, which are great for kids who use their pencils so lightly it is hard to see - the twistables are pretty bright/soft so that you still can actually see something!

I was like I want this and this and this and this! Augh!!

I bought a bunch of supplements today - like B12, fish oil, magnesium...and tomorrow I'm unwisely taking a whole bunch of them at once so I'll either be really jazzed up and awesome tomorrow, or really nauseated...I'm going to vote for option #1. LOL.

I think I'm about to go jump in the shower and then go to bed. Tomorrow after work I'm going to go straight to meet Allison to work out, then help her with some random Memphis chores...which helps ME because it means I can't just jump into my bed and take an unhealthy overly long nap!!

I'm behind as always on e-mails and stuff! Don't hate me!!

Oh yeah, my other big thing is that I need to make some major revisions to my OT Practice article. I need to not procrastinate on that! I made some changes then emailed the editor to ask for some clarification...hopefully can get that done in the next few days!!!

I saw on Facebook that the class below us just had wheelchair lab...oooh the memories. I've got to say I LOVE not having homework!!