Sorry no pictures this time. I didn't plan on writing this but found myself alone at the library on Saturday night so decided to blog.
Tuesday began my first day as a PT aide at the state hospital. They said it was OK if we didn't know anything, and I really had no idea when I went in there.
I learned about 5 exercises before the patients came in. I figured since I was new, they would keep teaching me but they sent me with a patient right away. Of course I was nervous, but being thrown in ended up working out just as well. After a few hours I noticed all the PT volunteers were working with patients, the PT Interns were loitering, and the DPT was typing away at his computer. That's got to fall under exploitation of volunteers or something.
The next day I went with the OT department for a life skills class, which happened to fall on cooking skills day. Now this works out great for me. I get volunteer hours for my class, shadowing hours for my application and a free homemade lunch. And I don't really have to do anything except act really interested and smile. They were making homemade mac in cheese, and pork and beans. It was great because I had not eaten in a while and I definitely took advantage of the free food. I ate until I was full...probably too full.
The next day I went with the OT department for a class on nutrition and portion control. Definitely brushed up on my topics of portion control, and admitted I probably went overboard on the mac n cheese the day previous. It made the other OT laugh.
Being at the state hospital is quite lugubrious...(best thesaurus word I could find other than sad). I asked the OT how long the patients stay. She told me all of them were civilly committed. Which from Abnormal Psych we know civil commitment requires:
1.) The patient is mentally ill or
2.) Dangerous to themselves or others or
3.) Gravely Disabled or
a combination of those....
Some of them never leave the state hospital.
Friday began my first day at my (finally) paid job at the behavioral treatment center. It's similar to the state hospital except they are trying to intervene before they end up at a state hospital or worse.
The people working at the center were tired. Probably because I gleefully bounced in Friday afternoon, and they had been there all week. I wasn't really working at first, but shadowing to get familiar with all the specific rules...since the 40 hours of horror story filled orientation didn't cover specifics. I tried to be my overly accommodating self and took over all the paperwork which must be updated every 15 minutes (You know just so they find me agreeable and as humanly helpful possible.)
I'm not going to write specifics on my blog except 2 major things that bothered me.
1.) For any infraction all NEAT was taken away from the patient for several hours to a few days. But not just NEAT. Everything.
AND
2.) And if you don't have NEAT, your brain, especially your vestibular brain, is not getting appropriate stimulation.
One patient who had multiple infractions that day, needed vestibular stim really bad. I knew this because after a day of no NEAT, once they had made up for their infractions---they almost impulsively were hanging upside down on the furniture, cartwheeling and somersaulting on the bed...which equates to more infractions. I know how to fix vestibular issues in about 5 minutes, but I dutifully told her stop, marked the infraction and continued filling out the paper work.
And that was 5 days in a row of clinical Abnormal Psych.
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