I’m quite tired today. I woke up at 2am to try and see if I could get the free Air Asia tickets back to KL, but epic fail. Though I did find free tickets to and from to Singapore, which isn’t much use unless I’m actually in Singapore to fly to Malaysia. Spent from 2am till 3am trying to find alternative flights, but didn’t work.
I’ve been rather busy at work lately, travelling up and down visiting clients as well as dealing with the enormous amount of paperwork with each client. I’ve got to do some Job Start paperwork and boy, are they a stack of documents! It’ll be the 1st time I’m filling them out tomorrow, so hopefully all works out.
After work, I still have my exam paper to write, which is due next week *gulp*
I’ve written out the headings and I have a rough idea on what to write it on but having the time to actually sit down and write it, uninterrupted. Looks like I’ll be writing my paper over the next few days. Just need to pass this exam paper and finish up my prac and portfolio and I’m home free and ready to graduate! Speaking of graduation, I handed in my Intention to Graduate form today. So in 5 weeks, I can have my Letter of Completion! Talk about fast. I’ve got to get my Police Clearance and things sorted out and I’m good to go.
Feels like my life story has taken on a new chapter. Next I’ve got to go job hunting. I’ve had 2 JCs tell me that I should apply for a job. I love it and everything, but paywise is a bit less than hospitals. The thing I like here is that I have autonomy and its a brilliant place to work at, the place is full of friendly people and there are quite good job perks. I’ve yet to decide, but 5 weeks is a good enough time frame to decide 
Enough pondering about work and stuff, got to get on with life. Exam papers to write, paperwork to sort out! Goodnight
I’ve been doing prac/work at AAWA for the past 6 weeks and I’m beginning to slip into a routine now: Get up, change, drive to work, sit in front of computer, go out for facility visits if lucky, more computer work, drive home, do work, sleep, repeat routine. At the end of next week I once again change ‘jobs’, I switch prac places. Trying to switch jobs once a year is bad enough but switching 3 times is just very tiring. I’m beginning to fatigue from it, beginning to hate the 7 weeks cause once I begin getting used to the routine, I get uprooted again to be placed somewhere else.
I’ve been reflecting on life a bit of late, thinking about cell and my future. For those who don’t know, I’m in the midst of completing a 7 week placement, doing a group assignment, managing my migration application and applying for registration as an OT. Amongst other things I am doing 3 projects for work, which involves me bringing home the company computer to work on it and try and finish 2 projects in 1 day. The other project is an ongoing one which I will have to finish by the end of next week. I have a whole heap of paper work to fill out to apply for permanent residency here in Australia and I’ve got to get that done as I go alone so I have enough time to submit the papers before my visa runs out.
Recently I’ve been thinking about what jobs I will apply for as an OT and found out yesterday that if you are a health professional working outside the health department, the pay is less than if you worked for the health department. I was thoroughly surprised at that, seeing as how government servants aren’t really highly paid. So that pretty much set me on a path to apply for work at one of the public hospitals, preferably Charlies cause I’m already quite familiar with the system there and I know the OTs there. I looked up jobs on Seek there are quite a few, though one of the conditions was that you need to have a right to work in Australia, so I would have to lodge my migration application first before everything. I’m anticipating a very busy Christmas period, filling out forms and making dozens on phone calls and submitting documents. I’ll be going down South for a while when my family comes so I’ve got quite a bit of paper work to bring down South Working holiday. Actually, I can’t even remember the last holiday I had. This is bad. It’s high time for a holiday huh?
I think I’m probably addicted to being busy. I feel rather useless when I’ve got a block of time that I can’t schedule for say doing some Bible study to shopping for groceries. I think my diary speaks for itself. It’s full of all sorts of reminders as well as appointments and peoples’ birthdays. I think a hospital job would be good for me, I actually like carrying around pagers Feels important. Hahaha….So I had never used a pager before, so forgive me if I like prodding the buttons and being paged 
I’m currently on my laptop typing this entry up, with the work computer next to me and I’m doing things on both computers at once. Talk about really multi tasking. I’m also sitting on a fit ball just so I get the exercise while doing work. Haha. I got off work early today, there was nothing going on in the office and my supervisor let me off at 1.30pm and I skipped out of the office, well walked out since I was carrying 2 laptops and 2 other bags and waltzed to Ange’s house. It was 27 degrees today and it was a beautiful spring day! Though it was a lot hotter than I expected 
Anyways, here’s a picture of my current work station at home with the 2 computers.
I guess the only reason I have the two on is cause the left one is the mine and the work one has the programs I need and space to save the stuff to bring back to the office. Speaking of which, I need to lug the computer to work tomorrow while on public transport. I hate to admit this, but I’m a bit spoiled already cause I have a car but oh well, just one day won’t kill me I’m off to go get some work done before the night ends. Toodles!
I have been out of the house since 7.45am this morning and got back at 7.45pm today. I woke up to a very rainy and grey day. I’ve gone and delivered a mattress to my aunty’s house, along with a suitcase and some angku kuih. I must admit, I think carrying a mattress like that in my car (front passenger seat folded down and back seats folded down as well) wasn’t the safest thing to do, since the mattress blocked the view of my left blind spot. Luckily the route to her place does not involve looking much into that blind spot.
Next I rushed off to work, since I had spent quite a bit of time playing with the baby over at my aunty’s place (he is sooooo adorable!!!) and inevidently forgot all about the time. Did that and had a go at finishing my strategy sheet for the clients I’m going to see tomorrow as well as fixing the resource sheets I’m doing up for all the resources at work. so far it looks spiffy and I’m beginning to see the results of my labour
Went off to lunch after that and off to my Design for Dementia course. So far I’ve only gotten placements in aged care but I think this is probably the area that I want to work in. I guess you could say that I’m knowledgeable in this area or feel for the people in nursing homes or hostels that are left to their own devices most of the day cause there just aren’t enough staff to give them optimal care unless they pay exorbitant prices for care. We all deserve a reasonable amount of care and meaningful activity in our daily lives and sometimes it takes someone to tell care staff to do things a bit differently to enable a person to take part in a meaningful activity or just to provide the person an interaction and thus decrease all the behaviours such as wandering, agitation and anxiety. Sometimes it takes maybe a little extra in terms or time and effort to save a lot more in the long run.
We just did an education session with a facility about sensory based activity and the need for the person to engage in meaningful activity that is sensory based as the dementia progresses. The disease robs the person of the ability to plan, to sequence and to make sense of their environment. Often, the person uses their basic senses such as touch, smell and sight to make sense of what is going on around them. I guess I could go on and on about how what is meaningful to us can be torture to another person. A good example of this was to give a person a fidget item like a Tangle or a Flexiball. For me, I could spend hours and hours just going about it, fiddling with it and just sitting there, left to my own devices with these things. On the other end of the spectrum, it can drive someone up the wall just cause of its endless possibilities. I don’t have much time tonight to write about the sensory needs of a person with dementia tonight but after today’s course I’m riled up to write something from what I’ve gained from this placement.
If you had asked me 6 months earlier, I would have said I was not a people person. I would have preferred an office environment, set me up in front of the computer with statistics and Excel worksheets to write and I’d occupy myself for hours. After 2 weeks at this placement, I realised I really crave the human contact and the need to interact with people, to feel like I’m making myself useful to them. I feel like when I do assessments with them I’m making an impact on their lives, an impact that I can see with my own eyes and feels ‘real’ in a sense. I’m not saying what I’m doing at this placement is useless, but I don’t really feel comfortable with providing strategies to people and expecting them to carry it out. Sometimes it doesn’t happen due to many barriers such as funding or lack of staff. Sometimes I just want to take all these people from the nursing homes and start up my own nursing home to provide the optimal care that they need. I sure as hell don’t want to be put in some of the facilities I visit, when I grow older and am unable to care for myself. Most places I see have not many staff and leave most of the residents that are not independent in mobility, to watch TV for hours on end. I would definitely not want that. Heck, I think if you did that to me, I’d go crazy after a while.
Like I once told my supervisor, to drive me mad all you need to do is put me in a barren room, take away my sunshine, take away activity and I’d be crawling mad. I need to be occupied with things, same with any other person. Speaking of which, after that course I spent some time over at aunty’s place again, just playing with the baby and attempting to feed him. I tell you, it ain’t easy but we now know that I can feed a baby even if I can’t cook to save my life Dinner was vege pie, meatballs and roasted veges. Was superb food! I was craving meatballs for a while and those were the best chicken meatballs I’ve ever tasted! *drools*
Anyhow, I think I’ve ranted enough for tonight. My bed is a-calling since I have a long day again tomorrow.
Yesterday night I was partially incapacitated due to the fact that I was working on 3 hours of sleep. I had went to bed at 2am and woke up at 5am to finish my assignment which was due yesterday. And I didn’t sleep till 12am this morning. So that would mean that I was for 18 hours, part of which I drove to uni, drove from uni to work, drove from work to home, drove from home to my other work place, drove home from that, drove to IGA from home and then off to Amanda’s house for cell. I can tell you I nearly had a few accidents between all those drives, the most serious one was where I nearly hit a car trying to reverse park. Ironically I find reverse parking much more easier than forward parking but I misjudged the distance due to my sleep induced haziness.
I came home after cell and promptly fell asleep from 1200 hours to 1030 hours today. That was the best 10.5 hours sleep I’ve had in a while. I’ve been working on lack of sleep for the best month or so and its the accumulation of this sleep debt really is bad. I had a course that I had to attend yesterday from 9.30am till 4pm and I had 2 coffees by 11am and I was feeling horribly sick. Just so you know, I’m generally a coffee person, but downing so much caffeine in such a sort period of time really got me really nauseous and I don’t think I’ll be doing that anytime soon. Drinking bottles of cold water and eating some food and having the air conditioning turned right up helped with the sleepiness. Never again shall I binge on caffeine.
Speaking of working, I’m off to get to work now to earn my keep!
My assignment has run into more hiccups along the way. I’m so unmotivated to do it now. I’ve written about half a page worth of stuff, here’s to writing 6 and a half more pages by Friday morning.
Then there is the problem of actually handing it in. I am not able to take time off work so I’ll just e-mail it to someone to hand in for me. I seriously hope it works.
I must say there is never a dull moment in the delirium unit at the hospital. First we had a patient who was usually drowsy but suddenly came to today and was a potty mouth cause we’d ask him to move his leg to put on the footstool. Next we have 2 pleasantly confused ladies walking around and wanting to go home, which presents a huge falls risk to us as we have to watch where they are while we’re busy doing our things as well.
Then we have another patient throwing cups of water at her room mate, attempting to throw a jug of water but was stopped. Next she threw fruit at everyone. While we were swapping chairs, she tried to reach into the HSA’s bag but was stopped, and next she tried to reach into the dustbin and that was when we made our way out of her room ASAP. I think I was partially amused but also I was a bit panicky cause we were quite near her and we were carrying a heavy chair. My supervisor got me to hurry along and got out of there.
Next we had a lady do a kitchen assessment with us and she was progressing along until we brought her back to the unit and that was when she went ballistic and wanted to go back home. At this point, I was actually holding her hand and she got a bit anxious and my supervisor got me to let go of her and get out of there. I think we spent a good amount of time trying to avoid her and get out of there before she dragged us by our hands and demanded that we let her out.
I’m tired from running away from the patients today, I’ve got more documents to type up and things to read before I go to bed. That’s all from me today!
So far while on prac, all the nurses and staff have been really nice to me, showing me how to do leg bags, tape down IDCs and things like that. But today there was this one nurse who was so rude, not just to me but to the doctor as well. Or rather she just butt into our conversation while discharge planning for a patient. And then she had the cheek to tell me to do my shower assessments in the bathroom outside the DASU cause I “took up an hour and she couldn’t shower anyone else”. I was just so ticked off by that cause I had asked the other nurse who was looking after the patient I was assessing and she said it was fine to shower in the bathroom I took it in. So I retorted back to her that I did ask the other nurse and she said it was fine and she had the cheek to say back to me well don’t do it next time.
I was honestly so ticked off as she had told me off in front of the doctor, the social worker and the other nurse. She could have approached me in private to tell me and the only reason why I took so long was cause the other nurse was drying off the patient’s IDC bag’s velcro and checking that the IDC was still in place. I still remember that lady and I tell you I don’t want to deal with her much anymore. She’s not the usual nurse on staff, she’s from the agency and basically I think they get paid a lot more than the normal nurses cause of them having to cover for normal nurses. Today we were short staffed in the DASU as there were quite a few people sick so everyone was trying to do extra stuff around.
I think I was so angry for about 15 minutes I couldn’t quite think straight and I had forgot about time and that I had the case study tute with Sally at 3pm. Today we got the dog from Animal Companions and he was soooo cute! He even can ’say hello’ by barking to how many fingers are on the volunteers hand. Say if she sticks out 3 fingers, he’ll bark 3 times. So smart he is.
Recently on the DASU, the pressure mattresses for a lot of patients were not set at the right weight and therefore I’ve sort of made it my mission to check and true enough I found 1 today that was turned up to 110kgs for a person weighing about 60kgs. Poor person’s mattress was as hard as a rock. We’ve let the team know and basically continue monitoring people’s mattresses.
Well, I’ve got 2 home visits tomorrow. 1 to do by myself since I first interviewed the person yesterday and I’m going to go check up on his home setup. I’m off to write outline for cell, since I’ll be leading cell and I haven’t prepared anything at all. I’ve been taught not to do it the night before but oh well, things crop up so I have no choice really. Off a writing I shall go!
I was told today by my patient at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital that I have a nice complexion. I guess I didn’t know what to feel: happy that I have good complexion or shocked because that came out of the mouth of a elderly gentleman. I guess I was stunned that after the hour long interview and standardised assessments that I had to do with him that he actually noticed my face. I guess I take what compliments I can get, after all I did wear make up today
As I work on the ward where most of them are older people, I sometimes see an older couple on the ward, where one of them is an inpatient and the other is visiting them. It breaks my heart sometimes to also see people who don’t get visitors at all and spend the whole day staring at walls and doing nothing. What amazes me to see sometimes is that the old couple have been married for so long and yet still support each other so well. Sometimes I wonder if I’m going to have a husband to look after me when I’m old, a person to spend days with and to look after each other.
Today is one of those days where I spend time on the bus and I think lots of random thoughts to myself. I had interviews with 3 clients and 1 team meeting back to back and now I’m feeling rather exhausted from everything. I have yet to write the reports for the clients. I’ve got a meeting in the morning tomorrow and have to look through files for patient notes and I’ve got that case study presentation things happening tomorrow as well. I’ve just finished the case study and I’m going to get that printed out and I should be done for the day. I took over today for my supervisor at the Falls Clinic at the Day Hospital and I’ve pretty much took over half of the role of a senior OT for the day. I can tell you that it is no joke what she does. She’s in charge of the DASU which is the delirium unit and as well as the Day Hospital OT stuff and home visiting for both places. It’s a jolly lot happening all at once, but I’m glad I took this prac. Its pretty much opened my eyes to a lot of things and I’m loving the experience, though I’m just flat out by the end of the day. Productive nonetheless.
Speaking of being exhausted, it is now 9pm and I’m off to print my case study and off to bed I go. I’m just way to pooped to do anything else but read in my nice warm bed.
I just finished my first week of prac at the sub acute medical unit, more fondly know as SAMU, at Charlies. The verdict? I’m loving it! With it being my 1st prac and things, I was excited but apprehensive like what if I injured a patient or things like that. Getting my bearings around the ward and getting a hang of what OTs do on this ward has been great! When I stepped into G block on the first day, I was so scared and things but now I’m loving it.
The fact that we had like 2 afternoon teas was great too LOL
I got to look at the DASU (Delirium Assessment & Surveillance Unit) and watch in on a kitchen assessment with a patient. It was very interesting to watch.
I must say, I never thought I wanted to work in a hospital but now I do. I walked in on day 1, with everything looking a bit old and slightly dinky, but its not that bad. I was quite scared on Monday I nearly puked my breakfast out hahaha but I’m all good now.
Anyways, I’m off to go shower. Update soon! Possibly with a picture of me in our ‘glamorous’ plastic aprons LOL
It has been a rather busy week for me. In between sorting out my prac preparations, attending tutorials, reading up on rehab and assessment techniques I managed to have a breather down at Amanda’s place in North Dandalup over the weekend. I tell you, that was definitely a weekend well spent. We went down on Friday night and came back on Sunday arvo and I’m feeling a little less stressed with prac prep and a little more on the ball. We all went down for the Leaders’ Retreat for church and it was a wonderful time of relaxing and seeking God. I think I feel a bit more ready to start cell in semester 2 with more to give.
I’m currently reading up on my Trombly & Radomski book, which my supervisor has given me prep readings to do. And I’m supposed to be skimming through half the book in a matter of a few days. I’ve prepared most of my paperwork so it isn’t going to be so bad on the 1st day of prac. I guess I have to say, expect less updates cause I’ll be away from home at 7am till 6pm 5 days a week and I have reading to do after work and sleep to catch up on.
Here’s to an exciting prac!