Happy 50th!!!!

On July 23rd my mom will be celebrating her 50th birthday, we celebrated with a party on Saturday with food and dancing. For those of you who have not met my mom she is a wonderful and exciting lady who knows how to have a good time. People say I look like her and some even say I act like her and she says I act like my dad. I don't mind being compared to her because she is a beautiful lady with the personality to match.

So Happy Birthday MAMA!!!!


Me and my mom dancing at her party

No Title Would Really be Appropriate

In my time as a student physical therapists I have encountered many fun characters, many of whom I have written about in my blog. Sadly none of my previous patients hold a candle to the lady I worked with today, ans she is not even my patient. Here is a brief history of why she is at the rehab hospital at which I work. This women weighs 300 plus pounds and she was admitted to the hospital for Chronic Illness Myopathy, which is a fancy way saying she has general weakness and cannot move by herself.

Amazingly enough today she was able to stand up with little help and slowly turn and sit down in a wheelchair and leave her room for the first time since she has been admitted. Other than the fact she weighs so much and she can't physically sit up alone, she also has another problem that makes it painful to sit up. The problem is that her uterus is prolapsed, meaning it is not on the inside anymore (if you want more info GOOGLE it). Imagine how uncomfortable it would be to have 300 pounds sitting on your stomach or any other part of you for that matter. You may be asking yourself, with the current medical technology why hasn't she gotten that fixed? The answer is simply she chose not too many years ago.

Her having this condition is not the only thing that makes her interesting though, it is the fact that she refers to that area as her "Ding Dong." I don't know about you but that is just funny to me and I can't help but laugh out loud every time she says it. She constantly says "I'm sitting on my ding dong", "watch out for my ding dong", and when we ask her to do something "as long as it doesn't hurt my ding dong."

Today at the end of her treatment she made a request that I thought I would never hear and hope I never hear again. She asked one of us (the 3 therapist in the room) if we would put oil on her ding dong. Apparently it had become dried out with all the moving and getting pushed up and down the hallway. At that point I looked at the other therapist, who are ladies, one of them walked out of the room to get the nurse the other just smiled, then I just turned away and started laughing. I am happy to say that I didn't have to put oil on her "ding dong", and my clinical instructor informed me that would never have to put oil on her "ding dong."

People like this make being in the health care profession fun and keep me writing in this blog.

Question of the Week

This weekend I was at a wedding and as I do at most weddings I was thinking about how it will be when I get married. Then I began to wonder who would attend, other than those who are obligated, like family, and the people who are in the wedding. There are several factors that affect who is able to attend a wedding the two most important being date and location.
This line of thought led me to the following HYPOTHETICAL question, How many people would attend my wedding if it was some place exotic like THE MOON?

I realize there are several limitations to a wedding on the moon, but if you eliminate the cost issue and the face that going to space requires training and what not, would you come to my wedding.

These are the people who have RSVP 'd thus far:
Cris Carpenter
Alex LaBounty

So make your reservations and I'll see you on the BRIGHT side of the moon in the year 2050.

Those Three Magic Words

For the next 6 weeks I will be working with people who have had strokes and one of the things that can occur when someone has a stroke they can lose the ability to express themselves. The loss of the ability to express oneself or to understand verbal instructions is known as aphasia. One of he people who I am treating is experiencing expressive aphasia and right hemiparesis (paralysis of the right side of the body).

What makes this lady so interesting is that when I first went to see her on Tuesday she only said three words "yes", "no" and "shit". When she is trying to give instruction or let you know how she is doing she simply says "yes yes yes, yes yes yes yes." On the other hand when she doesn't want to do something during treatment she tells me "no". When she is in pain or I ask your to do something she doesn't think she can do she says "shit", but she does it with a nice little smile on her face.

As this week has continued she has added the words push, don't, up, down, and the numbers one through twenty. It is the funniest thing when she counts because she can't begin counting until she hears me say one, and she continues fairly consecutively with some prompting and since we we stop the exercises at twenty she sometimes just skips right to twenty so she can be done.

I think I will enjoy this affiliation especially when I get into the swing of things and get to see my patients progress.

I hate Orientation

Today was my first day at my new location and I spent a little less than 8 hours watching videos and filling out paper work. I had packet after packet of information from healthcare law to fire safety each of which was followed by a quiz. To make matters worse I was confined to a room that was relatively 8 feet by 8 feet with the HR lady checking in on my every 30 to 45 minutes to make sure I was doing alright. The up side to it all is I got a free lunch out of the whole thing and I was able to go home early. And to prove there efforts weren't in vain I will impart some of the wisdom I've gained upon the two to three people that read my blog.

1st Fire safety:
The first thing to remember during a fire is R.A.C.E.
Rescue
Alarm
Confine
Extinguish or Evacuate

There are 3 main types of fire extinguisher
Type A is for normal combustibles like paper and wood
Type B is for gasoline fires or fires caused by other flammable liquids
Type C is for electrical fires
There is also a fire extinguisher that is made for all three types of fires, so if you are going to by one I would suggest the one that can extinguish all three

The final thing to remember is P.A.S.S.
Pull the pin
Aim the nozzle at the base of the fire
Squeeze the trigger mechanism
Sweep nozzle so there is an equal distribution of extinguisher fluid

Now for Hazardous Materials
All facilities should have a Materials Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) this is so you know what protective equipment you need to where when working with chemicals.
This book also lists boiling points, chemical that adversely react with whatever you are using and a physical description of the substance.

For everyone's sake I will stop there because I can't take anymore excitement and I know you can't take it either. I will keep you posted on what else is going on at my latest clinical site. Later all.