Musings

The end of at least the application process is in sight. I am basically just making all my copies of everything now and am in the process of organizing all the papers into the appropriate site folder. Of course, after making all the copies of my AAPI Part 1 last night, today I got the confirmation of my match number. Although I know that it is perfectly fine to wait and give that info to the sites later (most people have to do that, in fact), it will bug me if I don't go ahead and put it on there now. So I'm just going to reprint that first page with the match number added. I still haven't finished all my cover letters. I'm working my way through them in order of the application due dates. Although my goal is to get them all out by Monday, I'm making sure that at least those November 1st ones are done. I am picking up the remainder of my letters of recommendation tomorrow from plus my AAPI Part 2s. It's so annoying that there are so many little extra things for each one. A couple of my sites want copies of my evaluations from former training sites. A couple have their own supplemental applications. One wants you to completely recategorize all the hours and clients you've seen in a totally different way than you have to do on the standard AAPI (and there's a program I've been paying for for the last 4 years that does that for me). But, I will say that this part of the process is much more enjoyable than writing the comp paper and working on my proposal, so I'll stop complaining!

Thankfully, it hasn't been quite as hectic at Casa Colina this week. I only had one full evaluation yesterday, and it was a pretty standard one. I got the report done this morning. I just did feedbacks this morning, then had my brain injury education group and supervision. Because we have such a need, I'm developing a new group for young women with acquired brain injuries (but not frontal lobe damage). Basically women under the age of 40 who've had strokes, AVM ruptures, encephalopathy, aneurysms, etc. Amazing there are enough that I actually have a group. I think it will be an interesting and rewarding group to lead, because I have tested all of the clients that will be in it, and they're all fascinating cases and very interesting women.

I am continually amazed by the human spirit. It's an interesting thing to see people when they are at the most trying point of their life. Although there's no right way to grieve a loss (and anyone who goes through a devastating medical crisis experiences great loss), it is interesting to see how people respond. Generally, people respond the same way they respond to "normal life" but in a more magnified way. The people who were apparently a$$wipes before their brains got messed up are even moreso afterwards. Those who faced everyday complaints with grace seem to have the same approach to recovery. One of the young women in my group is truly alive only because of a miracle (to put it unscientifically, her brain basically exploded). Despite the huge mountain of obstacles she faces and the fact that she is one of the most severely impaired in our area, she is always cheerful and pleasant. She inquires about how the other patients are doing, and she actually is interested. She is even kind to the most frustrating of patients. Every day she plugs away at her 7 hours of therapies and asks for more homework, striving for the smallest of improvements. She is quick to talk about her faith and to list the blessings she has received. It is amazing to see how people can summon up courage and march on through the worst life can deal you.

I'm interested too in the role that other people play in recovery. This borders a bit into my research interests, but it is abundantly clear that those who are surrounded by love and support do indeed get better faster and more completely. This was certainly true for me in my own ordeal, and I think it was the same with my dad's recovery to live to see Rebecca. I watched this same patient and her mother (who was just there for support) today in my group. She stroked her daughter's hand absentmindedly, just out of some kind of habit of reassurance. She noticed her daughter's prism glasses were crooked and straightened them for her, then smoothed her hair. It reminded me of my own mother giving me pedicures and rubbing cuticle oil around my nails in the SICU and all the "magic mama kisses" I received to heal up everything that needed healing. I see it every time Rebecca gets a boo-boo of any sort, and she runs to me or Ramy or Grammy for us to kiss it so it is "No More!" and then she's convinced the hurt has been eradicated. I guess the message in that is that we should always be trying to show love to the people we love, because the power that has goes much further than we give it credit.

Whoa! I'm completely unsure of where all that came from, because I had no real intention to bore you all with the things that float through my stream of consciousness at the end of the day when I'm holding Rebecca and trying to get her to fall asleep and typing one-handed.

There was a funny event of the day, kind of. I did feedback with this one guy who was run over (as a pedestrian) by a car and had a traumatic brain injury as a result and most affected was his frontal lobe. Frontal lobe damage is often associated with a lack of awareness of your impairments. I generally start feedback with clients by talking to them about why we do the testing, what it can tell us, and then I ask them about how they felt about the testing, what they found difficult, what they found to be most easy, etc. In most cases, it opens the door to talk about the results, and their impairments are usually in line with what they already mentioned as being difficult. So that's how I began. However, this guy started telling me how he thought it was really easy and he was surprised at how well he did. Errr, no. In fact, he did not do well at all. The best part was that this guy makes up non-words (e.g., framulas, pragits, mixicals - all words he used today) to cover up the fact that he can't bring to mind the words he actually wants to say. So after I explained the results of his tests to him and talked about how frontal lobe damage can cause lack of awareness of these problems, social inappropriateness, etc., he said, "Well, [expletive], that's the best [expletive] way to live I ever heard of! All my life I quixivaled (???) and now I got this [expletive] brain damage and I can act like a meffelump (???) and it's a great excuse!" Not exactly the outcome I like to achieve with my clients, but I guess it is a good example of benefit finding!

I'm a little worried about my Rebecca. Her allergies got stirred up when we were in Tennessee, but I thought they'd calmed down. However, both Nanny Rebecca and I have noticed a couple of times when we're holding her (as she falls asleep) that she feels unusually hot. Then when she wakes up and is active, she feels normal temperature. I took her temp while she was falling asleep just now, and no fever, but she was radiating heat like a furnace. She was really cranky this morning and just crabby all day today for Nanny Rebecca. However, she is less congested (possibly because she also reached that red-letter favorite milestone of my mother's - she can now blow her nose!). I'm going to see how she does tonight and tomorrow, and if she isn't 100% by tomorrow afternoon, we'll go see Dr. Jeng.

And because it is election season, here's a little bit of my political humor for you.