Bugaboo

I found a 5-pound note on my walk home from work today- not too shabby!!

Today I was literally begging for work. Ok, so the idea of having no work to do and getting paid for it sounds great. So does the idea of going home early every day, as I have done for, well, most of this rotation I think. But believe me, it's not great. The random day you take off from work might feel great. Vacation always feels great. But just take my word for it, this is not great. I've been afraid that I've been being de-skilled. Everyone keeps telling me it's not that I'm being de-skilled, I just haven't gained any skills, and the skills I do have will come back to me. I hope so, I really do. I think I should be counting down the days to the end of this rotation, rather than to Turkey.

I had a falls education group this morning, although the physio is going to be reducing the groups from two mornings a week to one, due to lack of patients. Crappy-do, as Viv would say. Otherwise, I spent the morning chatting away to the physio, and Annette who was back from a 5-day weekend. Catching up, making plans, etc. I had lunch, and called Jodie to find out what was happening on the acute wards. She said "well, there's one woman on Birch- she lives alone on a second floor flat, is mobile with a stick, and they're sending her home tomorrow. Oh, okay, well, I guess you don't need to see her. But that's all there really is." At which point I think I was actually pleading, and asking her not to tell me she didn't have any work for me. So she took pity on me and asked me to meet her at Chestnut, a ward she's been covering for a therapist on holiday. The first two men she asked me to see were unwell, so I couldn't do anything. So she finally handed me the paperwork on a guy she kept missing, she always happened to try to see him when he was out for dialysis. And I ran into my old bugaboo, "cuz you a bugaboo, you buggin' what, you buggin'who, you buggin' me, and don't you see it ain't cool"- sorry, I'm breaking into song a lot these days. Anyway, my old bugaboo, that of feeling like it's rude to interrupt your elders. I was trying to interview this guy about his home setup, and at first I thought he might be a bit deaf, because he'd launch into something completely unrelated to what I had asked about, and just go on and on and on. But eventually I figured out he's not deaf, he just wanted to tell all his life stories and I was a captive audience. I let this struggle go on for an hour, trying to redirect him to my questions whenever he paused even slightly, which believe me wasn't very often....until Jodie poked her head around the door to see how I was doing. At that point, I gave up on the interview, and moved to having him perform various tasks for me, a functional assessment, which went a bit better. I felt more assertive about continually redirecting him to physical tasks than I had during the interview part. I wish I had more time for the social needs of patients, especially with the older adult population. This guy had great stories about growing up, was apparently working from the time he was 11 for pennies, and I was just fascinated, but of course, had an OT agenda to accomplish. It's a tightrope act with some patients, assessing them, but really listening to them as well, and if I'd had any other patients this afternoon, I would have fallen off that tightrope.