Journey Through OT School

Today in Neuro OCP, Lauren presented her case study on dementia. Her case study was on Ronald Reagan was our 40th president. In 1989, Reagan was thrown off the back of a horse and developed a blood clot, which is thought to be a cause of his dementia. I had no idea Ronald Reagan suffered from dementia, so I was very interested to learn how he coped after being diagnosed. One of my main questions is if the stress of being president had anything to do with his diagnosis. I think it would be interesting to see if there is any correlation between high stress level careers and the development of dementia. Lauren talked about some of the home modifications that are commonly used in dementia/alzheimer's clients homes and some activities that could be done to work on cognition and memory.

Today, I presented my case study to my group on Richard Pryor, who was a comedian that was diagnosed with MS in 1986. Richard was diagnosed when he was 46 years old. It's interesting to look at Richard's journey with MS because its likely that he was diagnosed due to environmental factors. Richard was a heavy drinker and drug user. He had a heart attack, triple by-pass surgery, and a suicide attempt before he was diagnosed with MS. Most likely, all of this is a contribution to his development of the disease.

Today in Neuro Tim gave his Case Study presentation on a 19 year old woman named Heather who was diagnosed with Huntington's disease from a documentary he watched. Heather's mom and brother both have HD, which is the main reason she decided to get tested. Normally, symptoms don't arise until your 40s, but Heather was diagnosed at 19. I didn't know much about HD until Tim gave his presentation and an interesting thing I learned was that HD is genetic, but it is not recessive. So, if you have the disease and have children, your children have a 50/50 chance of developing the disease. However, if your children never show any signs of HD, their children won't have a chance of developing the disease. I've never heard of a genetic disease that does this.

Today we had our debrief/course wrap-up in Foundations and I wanted to share what I learned throughout the 4 months of class. 1. I learned a lot about what exactly it means to be a good therapist and how you can provide the best care to your clients. 2. I learned how to be a better listener and to empathize more with my clients. 3. I learned what OT was founded on and what drives our practice today. 4. I learned how to be creative and think outside the box. 5. I learned practical things about the assessments I'll more than likely be using in clinical settings and when they are best to be used. 6. I learned a lot more about my classmates and my professor, which is a huge reason why I wanted to come to UTHSC. Those are the top 6 things that come to mind right away, but I know theres much more that I've learned. Overall, Foundations OCP was a fun, insightful class that I enjoyed taking.

Today in Neuro, Kiera presented her case study on Brandon Cox, who has myasthenia gravis. Brandon played football for Auburn and was the starting quarterback. Myasthenia gravis is an autoimmune disease that attacks the nicotinic receptors. Brandon was diagnosed at 15 years old. His major occupations are playing football and being a full time student at Auburn. His main complication with his diagnosis was double vision, which gives the appearance of doubles. This was a major problem as a football player. Before Keira's case study, I had never heard of myasthenia gravis, however I have heard of Brandon Cox so it was interesting to learn that he had this autoimmune disease.

Today in Foundations we learned about the therapeutic relationship and ways to strengthen it. The therapeutic relationship is the relationship between the client and the therapists, but in most relationships, both participants benefit. In the therapeutic relationship, it is all about the client benefitting. Inadvertently, the therapist will benefit because often helping client's is very rewarding. Some of the ways we learned to strengthen the therapeutic relationship were to develop good communication skills (verbal and non-verbal), work on being a good listener (through active listening), develop trust with your client, and to be empathetic. There were several other ways, but this is important in developing skills to work with your clients and lay a Foundation for us as practitioners.

In Neuro OCP today, Sarah presented on ALS and did her case study on Stephen Hawking. Sarah mentioned that an interesting fact about Stephen was that he was diagnosed in his 20s, which is rare for ALS since it normally affects older people. He was very healthy before diagnosis and didn't have a lot of risk factors for developing the disease. He also had low levels of stress. At this time, Stephen is wheelchair bound and has around the clock care. He has completely lost his ability to speak, and relies on assistive technology to communicate. However, that has not stopped him from public speaking and teaching. His main priorities are to continue teaching and speaking and to fulfill the role of a grandfather by playing with his grandchildren. The biggest role of OT for Stephen would be to educate caregivers on assistive technology and provide updated assistive technology. Stephen has also suffered from depression due to his ALS.

On April 26th, myself and some of my classmates attended the Memphis Rolling Grizzlies basketball practice. This is a local wheelchair basketball team that is sponsored (in part) by the Memphis Grizzlies NBA team. After watching the team practice for a few hours, we got the opportunity to get in their wheelchairs and see what it was like to play an adaptive sport. We also got to ask questions, and the players/coaches were very open and receptive to us. This was an awesome experience and I very thankful we had the chance to not only watch the practice but also get involved and participate. Being a former athlete, I often get frustrated with the level of play in the leagues that I play in now. On the Memphis Rolling Grizzlies team, there was a player who was a former college basketball player before he was shot one night while at a bar. The coach of the team said that if this player had not sustained a SCI, he would be playing in the NBA right now. Trying to put myself in this players s...

Today in Foundations we talked about culture. I think the idea of culture is something that is often times lost in translation. People think of culture and automatically think of ethnicity or where you are from, when culture embodies much more than that. Culture is more about tradition, which is where I think it gets confused with being where you are from. The best personal example I have for culture is my grandma. My grandma was born and raised in Thailand and was raised as a Buddhist. She met my grandfather after the Vietnam war when she as 18 and moved to the US with him. When she got here, she was exposed to Christianity and she converted her faith. However, even though she didn't practice Buddhism as a part of her daily routine, the traditional aspects still carried over into her life. When I was little, my grandma always got on to me for touching her on her head (I was little, climbed all over her, played with her hair, etc.). I didn't understand why this was such a big...

There are a ton of specialty areas that you can pursue after getting your degree in OT, but I wasn't sure exactly how many. After doing some research, I stumbled across an article that listed several. There were a couple that caught my eye- CAPS (certified aging in place specialist) and LSVT BIG (Lee-Silverman voice treatment BIG). I think I'm interested in CAPS because it relates to home health and that is a field that I am interested in learning more about and possibly pursuing a career in after school. I learned about LSVT BIG in Neuro OCP when we did a case study on Parkinson's. LSVT BIG focuses on using big movements to improve overall movements in people with Parkinson's. In terms of relating to AOTA's vision 2025, I think CAPS is easy to relate to that. "Occupational therapy maximizes health, well-being, and quality of life for all people, populations, and communities through effective solutions that facilitate participation in everyday living." -...

My main take away from Haleigh's case study was helpful repetitive exercise can be for a client with PD. Haleigh showed us progress of one of her mom's client's from using a 4 week intensive program called the LSVT BIG program, which is a program that focuses on using big muscle movements to help with gait, coordination and bed mobility. Haleigh showed her client's progress through videos taken one month apart and the improvement of her client's mobility is incredible. This program increased his ability to participate in things that interested him, like going out to eat with his wife.