OT in Progress

 For my media project in my neuro class, I was assigned index cards to use as an intervention or adaptive device for my client who has transverse myelitis. My client was mainly functional with his upper extremities but had decreased strength and range of motion in his lower extremities. I’d be lying if I said it was easy to come up with something to do with index cards and that it didn’t take me more than a couple of days, especially when it was for the lower extremities. This project made me realize how seemingly mundane things can become really useful for therapy with a little bit of creativity. While it took me a decent amount of time to come up with an idea, even with asking others for help, I eventually just had to really sit down and think about what would be useful and meaningful for my client, and then incorporate index cards into that. I ended up making a game out of it that my client could do laying down, in a gravity eliminated position for leg flexion and extension, w...

  For my final neuro note, I chose to read an article called “Playing Along with A Dementia Patient’s Realities” written my Carol Bradley Bursack. I chose this article because we just learned about dementia and Alzheimer’s in class, so I thought it would be beneficial to me to find another way to further my learning. In this article, Bursack talks about her father, who sustained a closed head injury when he was younger that would later be the cause of his severe dementia. The scar tissue from his original injury caused fluid to build up, and when he went for a procedure to get it removed, it left him with his dementia. Bursack explains how she tried to live in her dad’s reality instead of trying to make him live in hers. Her dad was always insisting that he had won an award or gotten another degree and would be looking for his certificates. Instead of trying to help him understand that this wasn’t true, Bursack would make fake certificates for him. She said there was no harm in t...

For my fourth neuro note, I chose to watch a Tedx video on YouTube about Huntington’s disease. It is called “Facing Death Full of Life” and the speaker is Danielle Valenti. I chose to watch this video because I did not know much about Huntington’s disease and the title was intriguing to me. Danielle learned her mother had Huntington’s disease two years after she had been diagnosed. Her mother kept the secret from her until her health really started to decline because she did not want Danielle to be filled with worry. Danielle eventually took her mother to a Huntington’s disease nursing home where her mother ultimately decided to end her own life by choosing not to eat anymore. She passed away 67 days after her last bite of food. Danielle spoke about how hard it was to let her mother do that, but she wanted to honor her mother’s last choice. From this video, I learned that Huntington’s disease has a strong genetic link. Danielle explained that children of a parent who has this disea...

For this neuro note, I chose to watch a YouTube video called “ Guillain-Barre Syndrome – Miranda’s Journey ,” which follows along with a girl in her diagnosis and treatment of this syndrome. I chose to watch this video because I did not really know anything about Guillain-Barre Syndrome and Miranda was a freshman in college when she was diagnosed so it was interesting to watch since she is relatively close to my age. Miranda began having symptoms of an unknown virus during her finals week of college her freshman year. This was ongoing and around five days later, she began have stranger symptoms like extreme back pain and tingling in her extremities and lips. When she sought medical help, she was given the diagnosis of mono, however, her symptoms kept progressing and getting worse. Three days later, Miranda was weak enough to be unable to walk and went to the hospital where she got her diagnosis of Guillain-Barre Syndrome. Her symptoms progressively got worse until her whole body ...