OT Blog

Although I had heard a lot about the children’s movie Inside Out , I had never seen it, and never considered that it would be a movie that I could write a neuro note about. I was interested in how this would connect with neuro, so I set out to watch it. The movie is about an 11-year-old girl named Riley that is going through a life-changing move from the mid-west to San Francisco. The movie depicts the ups and downs of Riley’s emotions, and how this event is being processed through each of her emotions inside her brain. The movie personifies the emotions Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust, and Sadness and tells of their everyday adventures in an 11-year-old, and even occasionally reveals the thoughts/emotions of her parents. I think this movie is great for children to watch so that they understand their emotions, and as the movie shows, that each emotion has a place in their life and they all have important jobs (even sadness) in order to make up a person’s personality. I...

1.  I feel that I performed maybe average/good for a first SIM lab experience. I think that the fact that I was being recorded/watched made me more nervous than I thought it would when I walked in. Because of that I think that I stuck directly to the assessment instead of allowing time for conversation with the client, which is probably one of my bigger regrets from the experience. We have learned that getting to know the client is extremely important in intervention, and the client mentioned having cats and a daughter, and I wish I had her elaborate a little more on that to get to know her and her interests better. I also had sort of prepared for how the skit was going to go in my head, I should have known better. Because when Francis asked me what OT was, it threw of my skit and I did not answer that well (which stuck out to me in my video), that is obviously extremely important. Additionally, in the debrief  in class I realized that I should have checked her bracelet rathe...

I recently watch the movie The Accountant because it had been suggested to me by a friend that knows I have an interest in working with individuals with autism. I decided to write a neuro note on the movie because I think it provides a unique representation of a neurological disorder, as an action movie. The movie starts out in Christian’s childhood, as his parents take him to a specialist seeking help with this autism (ASD). Then flash forward to adulthood, Christian, is a savant with numbers and has used that to become a successful accountant, along with working as an ‘accountant’ for criminal organizations. The movie depicts how Christian goes through his life and his work with ASD. At one point in the movie Christian talks about how he doesn’t have relationships because he does not do well talking to others. He has a very specific schedule and  will panic if he cannot finish a task, shown to impact his life significantly. At the end of the day he applies sensory input (ove...

Rachel presented her case study on Allie Calhoun from The Notebook, who has Alzheimer's. I saw the movie a long time ago and didn't really remember it, so I thought it was interesting to hear about the movie from an OT perspective. I liked how she talked about an OT encouraging a client that was recently diagnosed with dementia to journal. In the movie, Allie wrote her story out and told her husband that when she forgets that she wants him to read it to her. While this was just from a movie, our group talked about how this would actually be a great thing for not only the client, but also for the family members to have that to look back on. We also had a good conversation about what Sundowner's Syndrome is, and I thought it was interesting that it seemed like most of us had an experience with an individual with dementia that experienced Sundowner's. We also talked about how it is important for an OT to help the individual and their loved ones to fully understand the dis...

Today I presented my case study on Trevor Conklin from the movie The Fundamentals of Caring. Trevor has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Before the case study I didn't know much about MD, so doing the case study was very educational. I learned that DMD is just one of 9 types of muscular dystrophy, which surprised me because I don't really hear a lot about MD. While all types are different, all affect males more than females. My group was very attentive while I was presenting the case study and had questions/comments to add. Cameron had even done a big project in undergrad on DMD, so we were able to talk a lot about the disease. Overall, I think the presentation went well, and I would recommend everyone to watch this great movie!

Huntington's is interesting because of its genetic cause, meaning that people who have a parent with the disease has a 50% chance of also having the gene expansion that causes the disease. Even if a younger person does not have symptoms, they can be tested to determine if they have gene expansion that causes the disease. I think this would be a very difficult decision, to get tested for a disease that little-nothing can be done for, or to not get tested and live life until the symptoms start (or don't). Heather (from Tim's case study) made the choice to get tested early and knows at the age of 19 that she has the disease. Tim mentioned taking preventative measures before the symptoms really kick in, like labeling things in the house and writing out step-by-step processes of things that she normally does for when the memory decline begins. After hearing the intervention measures, I can definitely see the benefits to getting tested early just out of preparation for symptoms.

After hearing about this movie for some classmates, I decided to do some research on Me Before You . This movie is about a young adult, Will Traynor, who was in an accident resulting in a Spinal Cord Injury (level not disclosed, but presumably a cervical level and complete). Before his accident, he was a world traveler and very athletic. The movie begins after his injury when a girl, Lou, is hired to be his caregiver. Because of his injury, Will has become depressed and angry, refusing to leave his house or partake in any activity that he 'used to' be able to do. Picture retrieved from https://www.amazon.com/Me-Before-You-Emilia-Clarke/dp/B01GIIVF6K Before deciding to find this movie and watch it for this assignment, I did some research, because I remember there being a controversy about it. I found out that although his caregiver does all she can to make Will want to live, he choses to end his life through assisted suicide. I learned that the controversy was about t...