Wiihab

Slacking!

Well, at least blog-wise.

First off, I am DONE with the 2nd semester of OT school. The spring semester anyway. We're in summer session so I suppose we're not technically grad 3's - yet. After mid-July though - HA! Grad 3! No longer at the bottom of the totem pole!

We have learned quite a bit these past two crazy semesters. The spring semester focused primarily on the pediatric population. Though I don't see myself working in pediatrics (primarily because I have little kids of my own I think I would be drained), I still enjoyed it. One of the things that I've come to appreciate, at the risk of sounding corny, is that the more I learn, the more I realize that we are just scraping the surface. For every topic that is of interest, there is a wealth of information and it is up to the reader to decide whether the information is useful or not. As much as I love to meander on the internet (a la stream of consciousness), you have to be cognizant that there's also a lot of garbage.

I also took a whirlwind course in May: Cognition across the lifespan. I think my interest in this area is leading me towards serving the people with TBI. But then again, there's so much that is within the realm of occupational therapy that it would be premature to decide right now.

Now for something completely different: we have ducks, ducklings actually. It's for the house, or at least that's what I was led to believe. This was the video that did me in to agree to this crazy idea:



Yup. Ducks.



OK. Fine. They're cute.

Coaching the Comeback

Here's an article in the NYT highlighting a day of OT Jodi Levin at the Kessler Institute for Rehabilitation.

Incidentally, our class watched Murderball this past week. It tells the story of the US quadriplegic wheelchair rugby team during the 2000 and 2004 Paralympics. One of the players from the US team gives a lecture at Kessler and inspires a recently injured patient to take up rugby. There was a quote from the film that stuck in my mind:

"Your mind becomes a bigger disability than the physical stuff."
- Andy Cohn, Murderball

Then of course I get the bright idea that if still go through with our plans of going back to the Philippines this summer to visit my grandmother, we could swing by Beijing and check it out. But of course, the time that we'll be in that neck of the woods, the Paralympics will be held elsewhere. Something about Olympics being held at that time. Oh well. There's London 2012 to look forward to!

Randy Pausch - The Last Lecture

I watched his lecture a while back. Now ABC is airing it (or some variant of it) tonight. To oversimplify, he puts things in perspective.

Go. Watch. Here. Or here.

Random entry: Look! It's raining ice cubes!

So, of course I had to take a picture. I know hail can get bigger than this but this is the biggest I've ever seen. Watching the hail come down, it looked like a huge ice tray being dumped on the ground.

OK, back to homework.

Back to the Basics

So right now, we're trying to figure what we'd want to do/where we want to go for Fieldwork II. The fleeting thought crossed my mind that I'd want to go to Australia, Hong Kong, or Philippines, all of which I have friends/relatives I could stay. Then I came across this video that describes OT in Singapore. I think they they did a fantastic job covering the basic question: "What is occupational therapy?"



Although I'd love to go overseas, I think I would miss my kids, my husband.. you know, blahblah mushy mom/wife stuff.. though it is only 6 months. Still, I suppose I'll stay in the western hemisphere.

I'm still curious though: anyone from Asia/Australia/any other part of the world that may be considered unique to that region? Are there any differences in practice between East and West coasts? I know a lot of it depends on the type of facility but I'm just wondering what's out there.

phantom limb pains

If you haven't read V.S. Ramachandran's Phantoms in the Brain, now may be a good time to pick it up. I read it several years ago and was fascinated by the cases he has encountered, one of which was his description of phantom limb pain. The New England Journal of Medicine has just published as study performed by military hospitals that was inspired by Dr. Ramachandran's mirror therapy.

CNN also posted an article that also includes pictures of mirror therapy in use.

Here is Dr. Ramachandran at TED describing the use of mirrors in therapy:


Can you tell I'm a wanna-be TEDster?

via TEDBlog