week 7

Wow, how is it already week 7?? I'm over halfway through with this placement now.
Things have been going really great. I had my midterm review last week and got really great feedback. My supervisor gave me all 3's (out of a possible 4)- and said I already had enough points to be passing at the end if I just keep on doing what I'm doing. She said that she feels I'm just about at the level of an entry-level practitioner which is amazing because I'm only in my first fieldwork placement!
Today she basically said I would definitely be able to get a job with one of the facilities under the same company as my placement. That is really exciting because right now I am looking to move to Arlington, Va or Charlotte, NC and this company has facilities in both of those cities!

I'm treating 4 patients right now and will probably add a 5th next week. My patients right now are 1. CVA with L hemianopia (meaning he has vision loss in the L side of each eye),  2. R foot fx and R wrist fx, 3. TKA, 4. CABG.

My favorite patient is the guy with the CVA just because he is so interesting and he is the first stroke pt that I have been able to treat on my own. Its fun getting to do some tx for the vision loss. Here are a few things that I have done with him:
1. Put numbers 1-10 on post-its and taped them to the wall - 5 on R and 5 on L but with the numbers mixed up. I had him stand up in front of the numbers and I stood behind him. Then I would call out a number and he had to visually scan through the post-its to find the number I said. This worked on visual scanning and learning to compensate for the loss of vision by turning the whole head to look to the L
2. I set out two rows of playing cards and asked him to scan through all the cards and flip over all the black cards. He left ones on the L side so I had to cue him to look to the left to find them.
3. There is a US quarter map in the dept so I got that out and set it on the table. The quarters are in little slots at each state (i'm sure you have seen them). I instructed him to find 5 quarters with his left hand and hold them in his hand. He was then supposed to keep them in his hand and set them back in their slots one at a night. He had decreased strength and some sensation deficits in his L hand. This worked on in-hand manipulation, visual scanning and fine motor skills.
4. To work on item retrieval- such as gathering clothing in room or items in the kitchen- i placed about 8 colored cones in the room and asked pt to walk about and find each cone.  If cones were to pt's left side, he really didn't see them and so he needed cuing to look to the left side.
5. Ball toss- when i toss the ball to the L of midline he just totally loses sight of it and it just kind of bounces off of his hands because he isn't anticipating it coming at him but its good to cue him to turn to the left and try to focus on the ball the whole time.
6. He has decreased strength in this L UE so we have done some simple strengthening using hand weights

He's really fun to work with and had a great sense of humor. He said that if he needs to look to the left I should just sing The Cupid Shuffle part where they say "to the left to the left to the left the left the left..." if you have heard it you know what I'm talking about it.  We have a fun time in therapy and he keeps me laughing!

Anyways, that's just a little update on what's been going on with my fieldwork since I last posted!