Crazy Life

Been going through some crazy busy times lately.

So, work kinda blew up recently (2 weeks ago? I don't know it's getting hard to keep up), going from a manageable, reasonable, daily activity to a "what the heck happened here" type experience. Earliest I left all week was 1 hour overtime. YIKES. Here's a little recap. Got my first Level 1 student, and I think we had a pretty good week. Tried to arrange for some interesting stuff everyday (hard to do when we started the week with 5/5 pts having severe dementia). Most amusing moment may have been the kitchen assessment with the man who required step by step instructions and multiple interventions for safety. He wanted to make oatmeal by pouring milk into the oats canister, then tried to fill the pot with water while the pot still had a lid on it, then had to burn it a bit... fun stuff. A good time to demonstrate how hard it is to remember all the details of your treatment.

It was also my first week with the pediatric outpatients, which went pretty well. But it was a little awkward getting to know them both, do a reassessment on the first day. I had prepared for the time that outpatients would take, but I hadn't counted in the other pediatric crew- the NICU. I've been moonlighting up there a bit, and the OT that normally covers left for vacation with a very large caseload left behind. Had to weasel out a few hours each day for babies, and also antepartums on Friday.

Now I'm looking at my outpatient peds caseload growing EXPONENTIALLY in the coming days. I'm turning into a morning inpatient / afternoon outpatient person again. I even got swept over to take a hand patient last week (definitely not my thing) which at least wasn't hard, but did prove that OP is starting to climb into my schedule a lot. It's odd, like reliving my old job... deja vu all over again. We're also switching floor teams again soon and I will be moved to surgery, which is ok for a switch but I worry about seeing all their priority patients (especially when they don't even end rounds until after 9, 930) and then making all my OP appts. There is also a limit to how much I can write in a day, as evidenced by me STILL working on an eval from Friday. I'm out of practice, and the templates for kids are very un-helpful. I will basically have to make my own peds template before Wednesday. I had just wanted to help out a little... I just forgot that with school ending the outpatient caseload would grow grow grow... oy.

In other OT news, I have been actively observing the continued RA-related debates on OTC, and hope that others are too. I'm disappointed to see that many people are choosing to abandon the discussion for one reason or another. I did start a group for Millennial-aged students/practitioners in support of the Participation Committee's suggestions, primarily as a way for newer members to voice their opinions on the matter. I've also been working on arranging an interview and podcast for the blog, I suspect it will be harder to schedule a time than to do the editing and whatnot. Kinda fun to branch out in that way.

Other demands on my time lately have been: trips to play with friends' babies (so big compared to my guys in the NICU); the NCAA basketball tournament; Healthcare reform; seeking out concerts for the summer; and planning a fun weekend getaway. I believe we're coming into a time where I will be traveling or at an event almost every weekend, which does make it hard to get other stuff done. Got to have that occupational balance though ;)