fUTure OT2B

For this assignment I chose to watch a Ted Talk called Facing Death Full of Life by Danielle Valenti. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JRwCdmewl0. Valenti starts off her speech by talking about her mother passing away around a year ago from the 'scary genetic disorder' called Huntington's Disease. Valenti's mother somehow hid her diagnosis from her family until a year before her death. I'm sure that the genetic component of the disease pushed her to do this so her family would not be scared. Valenti explains the fact that if someone's parent has the disease, their children have a 50 percent chance of inheriting it. If the gene is inherited, there is a 100% chance of becoming symptomatic at some point in life. She describes the disease as a combination of ALS, Parkinson's, and  Alzheimer's. Valenti asks the audience to envision something that they truly love, and watching it slip away from them while they are loosing their mind and body. This connected ba...

Eryn Lobo Client: Joe O’Brien DOB: 44-45 years old Date: April 17, 2018 Occupational Profile Reason the client is seeking OT services and concerns related to engagement in occupations (may include the client’s general health status) Joe is seeking OT services because he wants to keep his job as a policeman, manage his chorea, contain his emotional outbursts, manage his depression stemming from his diagnosis with Huntington’s Disease, and because of a general decline in his wellbeing. Joe has a diagnosis of HD and has only told two of his colleagues. He wants to be able to manage his symptoms in order to keep his job. He experiences being in perpetual motion due to chorea, loss of balance, reduced dexterity, and in his late stages slurring his words. Joe is suicidal and upset about his children JJ and Meghan inheriting the gene from him and worried that his other children Katie and Patrick might have it. He wants to be able to ma...

For this assignment I chose to watch a Ted Talk given by Kevin Pearce, a former professional snowboarder. The name of this talk is 'A brain injury is like a fingerprint, no two are alike.' Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZH7-r1Wy9o . Pearce was on his way to the Vancouver winter olympics with hopes of winning a gold medal. On December 31, 2009 while training, Pearce suffered a traumatic brain injury. For the next 36 days Pearce was in critical care, which he has no memory of to this day. He then spent the next three and a half months in a Denver hospital where he did nothing but dream of returning to snowboarding. When he woke up he could neither walk or talk. The Ted Talk flashes back to Pearce getting rehab during this time and shows him with therapists throwing a ball, learning to walk again, and eventually being discharged. He talks to his doctors about dreaming about returning to snow boarding and his doctors telling him it is too dangerous because he co...

I chose to read about the Do-Live-Well framework because the name stood out to me and caught my attention. The main takeaway from this frame of reference is that 'what you do everyday matters'. The four sections of this theory include 1. dimensions of experience, 2. activity patterns, 3. health and wellbeing outcomes, and 4. forces influencing activity engagement. The first section of this theory is the person's everyday participation in occupations that they choose. The second section includes characteristics that shape health and well being, and include engagement, meaning, balance, control/choice, and routine. Health and well being outcomes includes all aspects of health including mental, social, emotional, and spiritual. The fourth section focuses on things like demographics and socio-cultural environments. This theory could be used with people of all ages including children and adults that are aware of their environments and things that influence it. The functional par...

I really enjoyed Professor Flick's lecture on public health today. One thing I learned was about three types of preventative measures that practitioners can take in their interventions. The first is primary, which is preventing something before it happens. The second type is secondary, which aims to reduce the impact of  a condition, disease, or injury that has already occurred. An example of this would be working at a clinic that provided autism screenings for at risk youth. The third is tertiary, which limits the impact of an ongoing illness or injury that has lasting effects. Another thing I learned was about occupational alienation. This is  estrangement from society or self that results from engagement in occupations that do not satisfy inner needs related to meaning or purpose. An example that Professor Flick gave was children in Africa who are alienated for being deaf. This was an interesting lecture and I really enjoyed the video she showed us about literacy as well. ...

Before coming to OT school I shadowed multiple OTs at Vanderbilt's Stallworth hospital for around 130 hours. I know now that this is a subacute care setting where clients come after being in acute care. It is an inpatient rehab hospital and they have just about any kind of client that you can see. One intervention that I frequently saw with clients who had suffered a stroke was word recognition therapy. The OT would write out each letter of the alphabet, sometimes in order and sometimes out of order depending on the severity of the client's stroke. The OT would then ask the client to come up with one word for each letter that is listed out. Sometimes they had them come up with words in different types of categories, such as items found around the house or colors. I know that this intervention is designed to help clients with recall, spelling, and handwriting, but I am curious about what else this intervention is designed to do. A lot of times this intervention was used in tande...

I really enjoyed this 'choose your own adventure' session. I have always been interested in adaptive sports. Learning about the difference between high tech, medium tech, and low tech assistive technology materials intrigued me because I always assumed high tech would be giant machines that helped people to walk instead of things like iPads. I was curious about this years Paralympic games after I read about this. Reading about the normalcy of the event and how some athletes were even suspended for doping hit home to me and made the article even more real. It goes to show that with a little adaptive help, any activity can be modified for any person regardless of diagnosis. The first podcast that I chose to listen to is the Psychosocial Impact of Childhood Obesity. This topic has always interested me as well and I wanted to dive deeper into the science behind it. Brittany Saviers is very knowledgeable about this subject and started out by letting listeners know that 17% of childr...