Week of Sept 12 - 18

Tuesday September 14, 2010

Today I volunteered for 2 hours. In that two hour time span we saw two patients. One patient, Ms Zebra had a brain tumor removed. As a result she has left side paralysis and we worked on trunk stability and transfers. Ms Zebra is an especially fun patient because she only speaks Spanish and I was able to brush off my Spanish and translate the instructions from the PT. I am a little rusty but she was able to understand and participate in therapy.

We also met with Mr. Gator again. He is making good progress. He has more stamina and learned all of the safety precautions. We went outside again and he loved it.

One of the things that I focused on this visit was the work of a physical therapist. I asked the PT where she had worked in the past and why she chose Shands Rehab Hospital. I also asked her if there were any aspects of her job that she did not like. She told me that the only bad things were that because of the excessive hand washing, her hands were VERY dry and that sometimes with overweight patients, the gait training is taxing on her body. Taking these things into consideration, I am not deterred and still want to go into the field of physical therapy. I am also glad that I will be entering the field with my eyes wide open.

Thursday September 16, 2010

One reason I love my volunteering schedule is that I get to spend all day Thursday at the rehab hospital. This gives me a feel of what it would really be like to be a physical therapist. I now understand what it feels like to be on your feet all day and that it can be difficult to stay positive and light hearted at the end of the day.

Today we mostly met with patients that I had met with previously. Mr. Gator’s family was visiting him today during rehab and he was so funny… he was showing off for them. He is usually easily tired but today he kept asking to do exercise after exercise. His spirits were much higher and he kept joking and teasing us that he was going to leave us in the dust if we didn’t start walking faster. It was a pleasure to see Mr. Gator in better spirits today.

I was also introduced to a patient who had two knee replacements less than a week ago. What a man! He was up and walking around! It was obvious that he was in pain but he kept working and really wanted to be able to accomplish his activities of daily living.

We also worked with a man, let’s call him Mr. Lizard. He had recently had a stroke which affected his Broca and Wernicke areas in the brain. As a result he has global aphasia and is not able to speak or understand what is being said to him. He was having a difficult time as he knew that we were speaking to him and he was not able to understand and he was not about to express to us when he didn’t understand. He also had right side weakness and so we worked on pre gait training to prepare him for walking and get his muscles working again.

We saw several more patients that I won’t discuss but one unique part of the day was that I got to attend an in-service about tracheotomies. My PT invited me to attend… and how could I refuse?! A pharmaceutical rep came to the hospital to teach the therapists about the different types and methods of removal of the products. It was very interesting and was a unique addition to the day.