It rained on Tuesday and when it rains it pours
Hello! I just finished my third week as an intern at Frazier Rehab Institute. The heat here was astonishing and always a topic for conversation. But other than that the week flew by very quickly.
Adult Standing treadmill
I spent the mornings running the tracking program for the standing sessions for two participants, one of whom receives STEM. STEM is the more common way a researcher at Frazier will say NeuroMuscular Electrical Stimulation (NMES) which is widely used through the institute in many trainings and assessments. For the studies I track the amplitude for the stem has a max at 140 mA, a frequency of 33.3 Hz and a typical ramp up/down time of either 0.5 seconds or 2 seconds depending on the activity for the current Bout. As a control for the current study half of the participants are randomized to complete the 80 training sessions without STEM and the other half are randomized to receive NMES during training. Although it is much easier to track for a session when the participant is not receiving STEM, NMES is a key part of the study to see if it is effective in triggering muscle activation in muscle below level of injury.
Working on the 14th floor with the Engineering team
My rotations with the Engineering Core for Frazier Rehab are always interesting. This past week the team had to replace a piece of the standing treadmill for adults in the 6th floor lab. This equipment allowed the technicians and therapists running the sessions to register and track the amount of force the participants were placing on each part of their foot. The engineering core had also just built a device to lay over the floor sensors to measure how much force a participant places on an assisted walking device when walking over ground.
Beautiful glass sculpture
Thursday and Friday I spent the afternoons editing videos the partisant can watch during their training sessions that specify what exercise for what amount of time and at what part of the NMES. Although somewhat simple the task is very time consuming because for each of the four exercises there must be a video for every possible number of reps (10-20), for each of the possible IBRs (InterBoutRest-the rest time between each activity or bout). And for several of the exercises it must be done twice, once for each side.
This was my first-and most likely only-4 day week since Ellie and I had Wednesday off for the fourth. We spent most the day inside the
Concert at the outside amphitheater
house because the heat was almost unbearable but we went and saw the fireworks out on the waterfront park by the walking bridge to Indiana. They didn’t start till around ten and they were beautiful, way worth the 38$ lift ride home
Cuz baby you’re a firework
even. The weekends here have been awesome, last sunday we went to see a Picasso exhibit in a museum near here and saw many awesome things including beautiful sculptures made entirely of glass. And this weekend we went with the family to an outside amphitheater to see the louisville orchestra.
I loved it so much they preformed wonderful pieces of music including compositions from the first Harry Potter! As I mentioned before my host family is wonderful
Out host family 🙂 <3
and I absolutely adore them!
Until next week, Noah Marie
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