I can see clearly now...

I woke up this morning, only to realize about 10 minutes after I was up and stumbling about downstairs that I could see everything clearly. Oops. I did get several nice compliments on my "specs" at work. They're very fashionable apparently.

I actually had a very busy day at work today...falls education group in the morning. I felt very at home with this week's topic, which was exercise group. Although I must say I was at a loss without Steve's CD mix...and without Rhonda and our Tina routine ;) With my senior OT out today, I had plenty to do with assessments that the doctors wanted and one patient who needed an entire initial OT workup. As it turned out that patient had had everything set up via OTs out in the community, through social services, but it still had to be done. And then I had somewhat of a scary session with a patient where I was asked to administer a screen for depression. It normally takes about 15 minutes to complete. But I spent over an hour with this patient, because she became very tearful, and started to tell me a very convoluted story about a very troublesome family life. And it came in bits and pieces, with some sort of spooky bits about how she'd wake up with marks on her and not know where they'd come from. I did have a bit of training when I started on vulnerable older adults, and how we are supposed to be vigilant if we suspect anything. Specifically, OTs and PTs are generally the first to pick up on something being/feeling not right. So this woman went on and on about how horrible her son was, and how she hated him, and how even though he adored his children, he was hurting them. And she is doing everything she can to protect them, but it leads to horrible conversations with her son, etc. She would almost say something, but stop herself, and I wouldn't be able to get her to finish her sentence, and then she would take things back, and at the end, she was admanant that while it was fine to talk to other staff at the day hospital about what she'd said to me, there should be no social services involvement. "My son is a social worker, you see, and you can just imagine..." No, I can't, because you're not finishing your sentences, I'm only getting half the picture here! In the end, between myself and the SHO (senior house officer, I believe the equivalent of a doctor in their residency), we decided there may have been emotional abuse in the past from her son before she moved out to her own flat, and that there is an ongoing unhealthy relationship between them. But we decided the best course of action was a referral to a community mental health team, where they will follow up on her depression, and the familial situation if need be.

I'd agreed to meet Kristy's sister at 5pm, and of course, given my first busy day in a month, I was late. We had a wonderful time getting to know each other, it was very easy conversation. Sweet thing that she is, she offered for me to come to her flat in Twyford, I think it is, to get away from London on the weekends, and cook if I wanted to...I was complaining a bit about missing cooking, given what limited hardware and space I have to work with in my house. She told me her kitchen is pretty big and fully "kitted" out, and she'd be happy to have me borrow it any time. I'm quite excited actually! It's very funny, she's developed something of a half British accent in the time she's been living here. She also travels within the UK quite a bit for her job, and has offered to take me along whenever I can get the time off. So, Kristy, your sister thinks very highly of you, misses you terribly, and we both agreed you light up any room you walk into! (I, of course, miss you terribly as well.) I think we hit it off, we'll probably do some traveling together, and if you can get your fool self over here, the three of us can have a mess of adventures together! I like the idea of Spain, it is very appealing to me right now.

I did have one large glass of wine with dinner, and a regular size one at the bar after, which I think works out to almost three regular size glasses of wine. So on the way back on the tube, I got on the wrong northern tube train because it splits into two branches and I didn't pay attention to which one I got on...normally it wouldn't matter, but tonight there was no transfer to the central line at tottenham court. Ah well. I'm home in the end. And only two days left of work this week! Well, technically 1 and a half I suppose, since all afternoon tomorrow I have a basic grades continuing development meeting after our pub lunch. This has been a bit long, sorry about that...Love to all, allison.