Day 16: Babies, Engagements, and Futures, Oh My!

The more time I spend at the clinic, the less I know what I want to do for the rest of my life. It's always been so clearly Occupational therapy, but this summer physical therapy has been making a comeback! I have all my tech times with physical therapy kids and most of my favorite kids to hang out with are also in physical therapy. Compared to the other disciplines, PT kids are most likely to be able to talk and carry on a conversation, have a sense of humor and actually show a lot of progress. Also, everyone actually knows what physical therapy is. OT... not always the case. It's also even more confusing when it's the physical therapists at my work that always welcome me into their therapy sessions, offer to explain what they're doing and who really seem to appreciate what I do as a tech... aah! Needless to say I will definitely need to do some soul searching in the near future.

Today was a big day in many regards. First, one of my super duper old patients, J, was back at the clinic again for another evaluation after time off from therapy. He had previously suffered a stroke and one side of his body is mostly unusable. He was totally miserable last time I saw him, always screaming in pain and frustration. Now he's talking! And not just talking, but using perfectly complete sentences like "I want to play basketball"... wow! Although his arm and leg are still not quite cooperating, his is much better able to compensate and moves around pretty well! I was so happy for him and it was a great surprise to see him again today.

In other news, yet another one of my coworkers has joined the ranks of pregnant women at my job, bringing the grand total to four! It's been such an ongoing joke about who is next in line for a baby that I almost didn't even believe her, but I'm so incredibly happy for her. Then, later in the afternoon, one of the physical therapists got engaged! We all saw it coming and a few of us were included in the set-up, but needless to say she was shocked and it went over very well. Her fiance was very brave to venture into our building of only females to propose -- haha. There was definitely a lot of screaming and hugs and pictures!

Anyways today's pic is of me and M, an awesome kiddo I only recently met but totally fell in love with. She was put up for adoption and now has the most precious family! M. has the cutest clothes and cracks me up with her ability to understand sarcasm and show this sassy attitude fit for a teenager. She has such a spunky personality that I've spent most of the last few weeks just trying to get her to like me... or at least smile in my presence. I got a glimpse of a smile once, but once I pointed it out and said how happy it made me, she quickly turned it back into the angry glare! Oh well. You win some, you lose some.



Trying so hard to look angry at me... but I know she loves me!