Physical Therapist...for a day

Because my life simply must be full up to every minute, I have decided to spend every Monday of this summer following a Physical Therapist around. This PT is my boss which makes it easy because we already know each other and have a good working relationship. I see her work all the time, no big deal. Following her around all day is another matter entirely.
In order to even apply to Physical Therapy School you must have between 100 and 200 hours of observation/experience in various physical therapy settings. Great logic; how bout ya'll see what you are looking to get into, eh? I respect that. Many of the PT's I have spoken with say that they got into their career partly because they did not want to sit at a desk all day. Prayer's answered. We hardly sat down all day. PT's seem to spend 30-45min with each patient they have. Divide 7-10 hour days by that and that equals a lot of folks. There are no breaks between these people either. Watching my boss walk out of one room after asking her patient how their god-child is doing and into another room to ask how her new patients knee is doing, without stopping to breath is pretty freaking amazing. People skills people skills people skills. PT's may see 10-16 people a day and it is imperative they be able to remember each person's treatment plan and the names of their four dogs. If they are good, they will also know the breeds.
Do not get me wrong, a good grasp on anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, kinesiology, and psychology comes in handy. A PT seems to integrate all of these Ologies at the drop of a knee brace. To start the day, charts are reviewed and coffee is had. We then spent the next 5.5 hours moving from patient to patient. This is made possible by the aids who greet patients and warm them up so that all the PT does is stream into the room once they are prepped. Following that we took an hour lunch. This is a great time to catch up on charts. As a massage therapist, I book myself enough time to do my charts between clients. I may have to let go of this luxury, it seems. The afternoon looked much like the morning, except I cut out early so that I could study for a Genome exam.
This is what my Monday's will look like for the next two months. Updates sure to follow.

Physical Therapy Training Requires Spanish

My break from school has officially ended. It was a whole week long, and trust me, that can be a lot when you do school and work year round. My sister flew into town for a visit and managed to use up most of my time. She is the next youngest of my sisters and the one I am the closest to. We grew up to be two incredibly different women. She embraces that whole feminine persona much better than I do and grilled me about whether or not I have lotion, shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste, and a blow dryer in the house; otherwise, she was not coming! Toothpaste? Seriously? If my sister wonders these things about me I fear what my family twice that far away may think of me. Once assured I did have all of life's necessities in my bathroom she jumped on a plane and we spent the week laughing the way sisters do when they are together and remembering each others childhoods.

For the summer I am taking both Spanish and Genome Sciences. Neither of these classes is directly required to gain entrance to PT (physical therapy) school, however an undergraduate degree is. Most universities like to demand that one year of a foreign language* during their undergraduate programs.

[*Which, in my opinion, is entirely for show. Not a single person gets off taking one year of a foreign language in college and leaves knowing how to use it. Unless you have already studied a language, chances are you will begin and end a monolingual individual. If they want us to leave the higher educations knowing more than one language, they should start teaching us in elementary school. Oy.]


Thus, here I am. I actually like Spanish and do not mind spending my summer polishing it up. Because I did not know what I wanted to do with myself when I left high school, I did not see the point in going all the way through college with no goal. It has been a while since I took Spanish. Once I figured out I wanted to go to Physical Therapy School I knew I was looking at a long road. I still needed to finish my undergraduate degree. Sometimes I kick myself for not just finishing college the first time. Then I realize that if I had I would be very good at stage lighting and know absolutely nothing you need to know to get into PT school. I would still be here--but I would have even less money. See, it all works out.

Touching is Too Close

As a massage therapist, you get to experience all kinds of quirks in human nature. Today I experienced one of my favorites. Favorite Human Quirk #11 occurs when you have a person on the massage table (face up, face down, doesn't matter) and you touch their arm with your arm/side of your leg/any body part belonging to you and they apologize and move their arm. ?! If I have my elbow in your gluts whats your hand against my forearm? This is a massage. The entire point is that we make physical contact. In fact, you are paying for it. People seem to be very uncomfortable with any amount of contact that goes beyond what was laid out in the massage plan.
I understand that many folks are probably just trying to avoid the situation wherein I think I am being violated, and I totally appreciate that! But it still makes me laugh. I spend at least an hour treading circles around that table in order to my job and if I run into your hand along the way, that's what it is. I will use my legs to bolster an arm if need be, but as my leg is not my hand it is as though some rule has been broken. It makes me smile every time.
While we are at it....Favorite Human Quirk # 9: The Adult Grasp Reflex. I have found that quite a few adults seem to have retained the infant grasp reflex. The one where a baby will close its hand if its palm is touched. Technically, this reflex is supposed to subside after a few months. But I have found people who will close their hands around mine, just for a second, if I begin massaging their hands while they are chatting about something else. They will be explaining some injury to me, or what their kid did last night, all the while gently clasping my fingers. It is easy enough to work free of this, but it too always makes me smile because I truly do not believe they know they have done it. So many possible explanations for this but apparently we respond favorably to touch at all ages. Who knew?

A Day

Ok, finals are over! Everybody stand up, spin around, do a dance, then sit back down. Tonight there will be the traditional post-final-hot-chocolate-with-stuff-in, to be had by all who suffer through this with me. Go Team. So, the most exciting aspect of this end of final examination week is not what I am going to do with myself for the whole week I have off of school, but what I am not going to do. Have you any idea what the day of a working student looks like? I shall tell you.

Good Day. Wake to alarm at 5:45am. Ignore, go back to sleep. Wake to second alarm (oh yes, plural. what if one alarm fails!?!) at 6:15. Snooze til 6:40, at which point we are very late. Do the shower thing and catch the bus by 7:21. 8:30am physics lecture. 9:30am Physiology lecture. 10:30 study, surf internet, study, surf internet*. 12:30pm Physiology lecture. Two in one day? Physiology major does not play. (anyone notice the rhyming, what, why?) 1:30pm go home! Study, Study, Vacuum. Days like this also hold prolonged periods in campus coffee shops. Every department seems to have its own coffee bar which is, supposedly, distinct to the demands of those students. Physics has the h-bar, named beautifully after a form of Planks Constant, which is one of the few shops that puts soy milk on its bar. Chemistry has the Think Tank, which is a TINY hole in the wall that will only give you cookies or bagels. Its as though they try to be just as frustrating as chemistry itself. There will also be walks around the city and excessive amounts of time spent in grocery stores.

*I absolutely refuse to capitalize the word "internet". I have no good reason for this, what-so-ever, aside from the gut twisting feeling that fills me when the internet tells me that internet should be capitalized.

Bad Day. Sleep through alarm one. Snooze though alarm two. 7am, wake up very very late. 7:37am, catch bus. Then it goes like this: one hour lecture, followed by one hour lecture, followed by two hour lab, followed by one hour quiz section, followed by running across campus to catch the bus, followed by 6.5 hours of work. 8:30pm go home, make dinner with the girlfriend, do homework. Depending on amount and extent of homework sleep may be omitted for the good of the GPA.

The stress of this is all eased by the packing of lunches, the preemptive assignment completion, and the occasional 7 hour Battlestar Galactica binge. Your brain needs a vacation, too. For example, I plan to do none of the activities mentioned in prior paragraphs for the next 9 days.
Plan: Nothing.

Prep for Life

So, it is finals week. I began studying at 1pm today and now, as it reaches 8:40, I find myself a pile of not so well contained bones on my couch. My head hurts. The upside to this round of finals is that it is one with circumstances that rarely occur. Both of my exams will be covering Physiology. All I have to do is program my brain to think like a physiologist for the next four days. I will find determining factors, and gradients, and catalysts, and resistance in all things! I will find myself dreaming about the hormone pathway of ovulation and cellular mechanism of the respiratory Po2 sensor. And I am not kidding. It is, however, a step up from physics exams which would induce whole evenings of dreams consisting almost entirely of equations. Two years ago, during an intense study period for my biological anthropology course, I dreamed up Homor Habilis! It was awesome because he looked just like a Habilis Homor Simpson in full animation. Your brain has some interesting ways of processing what you put it through in a single day. If you are considering going back to college, I suggest you do so, if only for the nocturnal experience.

Tomorrow will be almost a full day of study. The only good thing about all of this is that I get to sleep in. The sheer joy of not having to get up at 6:27am is enough to please this woman. I am off to summarize an endocrine system.

Informed Choice - Finding a Massage School

So, I went to massage school 6 years ago. This is not an awfully long time ago, but it is enough time to observe a huge change in the education industry. The three major massage schools in my state have all changed ownership, been sold, or been eaten by a monster company. I have people who ask me where they should go for massage school. Well, I have no idea! When I went to massage school, I looked at massage schools all over the country. Since I was moving, and was not exactly set on where, this was no problem for me. Luckily for normal people, most states have more than one choice of school. Even with many of the schools being owned by the same company, every school is different. The schools philosophy and the individual people who teach there will have the greatest impact on the education you walk away with.
When I started school, I knew I wanted to do something that looked more like treatment/medical massage. Thus, I considered the curriculum of each school, the internships available, AND the cost. I am far from provided for, and some schools require you provide a lot of your own equipment early on. This can get pricey since you have no idea if bamboo fiber sheets are really that much better than flannel, or if you will really use that extra low table feature....ever. Some schools are farther left in the world of natural healing than others. What matters is finding the school that is marching to your own little beat.
This worked out for me.
I picked the school that seemed to focus the most on the treatment of injuries and maintenance of the body. I went through a full year of anatomy, physiology, and knesiology (instead of the 6mo some schools provide). Also, I got to intern at a hospital. These extra learning experiences made all the difference when it came to my confidence in treating clients and my eventual move into training and managing other therapists.
Another thought to consider beyond what I wanted to do in my practice, was where I wanted to do my practice in ten years. Since massage is not regulated at the national level, every state has its own set of requirements. My way around this was to attend school in a state that had some of the highest standards, that way when I moved again (nomadic much?) I would not be finding myself back in school. Thankfully, there is the National Board Certification which also covers folks who find themselves less rooted.
The truth is, you can find a school almost anywhere. The key is to find YOUR school. Mine, unfortunately, is gone. Sold, then sold again, I can no longer herd seekers that way with confidence. Ah well, in the words of Tori, "all will find its way in time". She probably means us, too.