I was debating on what my next post should be about and a friend suggested blogging about my most memorable clients that have stood out to me on fieldwork. The first one that came to mind was an amazing little person I had the pleasure of working with during my pediatric rotation.
For privacy reasons, names have been changed.
The first is a young 8 y/o girl, we will call B. Her diagnoses include: cortical visual impairment, autism, cerebral palsy, stroke, and deafness. Imagine how challenging it would be to communicate with someone who is both visually and auditory impaired. Now imagine you are doing an intense program of 6 hours a day of therapy called Constraint-Induced Movement Therapy (CIMT). For those who might not know, the general description of CIMT is to restrain the "good" arm in order to re-train the brain to use the "bad" arm following a neurological impairment, such as stroke. Anyway, we did this treatment for 5 weeks, changing her cast each week for hygiene.
I was extremely intimidated by her at first because I just didnt know how I was going to be able to work with her, especially without one of my supervisors there. But, I dived in head first and made an effort. We split up the 6 hours/day schedule between my 2 supervisors and myself. I got put on dinner duty: met her every night at the cafeteria to work with her using her "good" arm to feed herself. Not going to lie, it was hard at first, as she threw tantrums, throwing herself on the ground, throwing her plate and utensils on the floor out of frustration from not being able to use the "good" arm and having a hard time with the "bad". It did get easier and my last few weeks there we developed a somewhat special relationship. Although it was difficult to communicate with her (she did understand some simple signs), I grew to love working with her and looking forward to it everyday. Saying goodbye was the hardest, since she cognitively could not understand the meaning of goodbye or realize that I was leaving.
Finally, here is a video of us that makes me smile every time I watch it.
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