Therapy

As you know if you read my introduction, I am a therapist (occupational therapist). We specialize in restoration of functional use of the body following illness or injury. I just finished a wonderful course on administration of the Fugl-Meyer Assessment. Developed in 1975 to test motor function/recovery following stroke. Did you know that stroke affects ~795,000 a year and 70-80% of survivors are affected by hemiparesis (paralysis of 1/2 the body). Shout out to Lisa Juckett, MOT, OTR/L, CHT who put this course together for occupationaltherapy.com, I recommend it. She did an excellent job of explaining the assessment. She said this test is the "GOLD standard" outcome measure due to excellent interrater reliability and construct validity. Strangely enough, I have been a therapist for 21 years and never learned this assessment until today. As you may or may not know stroke recovery follows a predictable pattern for the most part. First ones reflexes return, then muscle tone and spasticity develop, after that flexor (bending) and extensor (straightening) synergy emerge with voluntary movement (movement no longer influenced by synergy) next and then hopefully normal movement may return. What I really like is the ease and functionality of the test along with the ease in scoring. Just some interesting info. for you. But got me to thinking.......
I would like to meet and discuss therapy methods with other steemit users. In my years as a therapist I fell in love with doing neurological rehabilitation, but I have also treated mental health, orthopedic, geriatric, LTC, acute care, intermediate care clients. I would love to share stories about therapy, I actually think it could be a great TV sitcom at times with the funny stories of what goes on in therapy from both the therapist and patient perspective. One that comes to mind is the mentally ill patient we had who we were working on ADLs (Activities of Daily Living) with. My colleague had finally talked him into working on his hygiene, or at least she thought she did. He had gotten all of his clothes off and she turned to explain how to turn the shower on and adjust for warm water. When she turned around he took off running out of the clinic bathroom and then the building stark naked, yelling for help. She yelled to me "we have a runner" and tore off after him. Poor guy made it 1/2 way down the w/c ramp before falling and scraping his naked body up on the concrete ramp. There is my colleague out there trying to get this naked guy up and so many wide eyed people gathered around in surprise to see this occur. I came running out with a sheet (thankfully it was hot out) and we were able to get him back in the building. We took care of the patient as any professional would do, but it is still a story we laugh about when we bring up funny stories in our career. Hope this put a little smile on your face. Just another crazy day in therapy for us.