Hello! This was my fifth week at Frazier Rehab and it was a great week! I have met so many great people here and all my coworkers are fabulous people who are all absolutely brilliant. I feel like a sponge here, i’m learning so much knowledge and it blows my mind how much more is out there for me to learn. The environment in the work place is so fantastic, the people are so intelligent but also so welcoming and open for questions.
This was a very full week. It has been the norm for the majority of my internship to be there by 7;30, I typically have time to get a coffee in the cafeteria then head up stairs to start a training session. I have written about these before, but they are an important piece of what specifically do at Frazier that I would like to touch on them again. The goal of a standing session is to have an individual with a SCI stand for one hour per session. Sessions can be once a day, maybe twice a day, but they are typically 5 days a week for several weeks. These sessions are part of a study in which participants have consented to have 80 standing sessions with assessments at 40 and & 80 sessions. I’ll be taking about these assessments again later also. In the sessions the participant is receiving assistance at the knees, hips, and usually trunk. Two physical therapists are on supporting the knees, one more is sporing the hips along with a bungee, and one pt supports the trunk either is the participant has a high level of injury thus poor trunk control or to avoid having a participant fatigue their arms. Sessions can be either with or with out STEM. If the session is with out stem the session only need the four positions I descried earlier in addition to the person needed to run the computer tracking program. If a session has STEM the staff for the session increases as more people are required to activate the stimulation on time.
I also spent time with the engineering team this week. The engineering core is housed on the 4th floor. Fun fact: its actually the 13th floor but is not labeled so because most buildings exclude the 13th floor. My mentor in the engineering core is a fantastic person and on Monday we went to her favorite food truck and then over to a separate building to watch an experiment. The experiments run later than in clinical settings and when I left at 6:30 there was sill some clean up left.
Data analysis for experiment
Also this week I spent a lot of time on computer work. I worked on the videos I described in my last blog, and in addition I got a new task! I’m super excited for this one! For this one, my mentor on the 15th floor has set me up reading the protocols and consent form assessment explanations to create brief summaries of each assessment for each of the Frazier cores. These summaries are going to be used on the website for the public access. The purpose of having me to it is because I am the perfect medium to understand the scientific language and protocols but distant enough to make explanations clear and concise enough to be fully understood by the general public unfamiliar with the background.
Also while I’ve been were I have gone to several journal club meetings to hear a presentation about the weekly article. This weeks article was about the inter-limb relation and its effects on recovery after SCI. The article was an analysis of a composition of studies involving rehab after SCI and methods of training. In particular it dealt with the benefits and reasoning behind using arm positioning inline with leg swing.
This internship has been so informative, and a lot of that information has come from my readings. This week was no different, on Wednesday day I read 5 articles on studies done involving the H-reflex, F-wave and Trans-cranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS). I love when I get new readings because not only does it mean I get to learn more but also it usually means I get to observe something new the next day. In this case I got to see on Thursday a pilot experiment lasting several hours where a participant receives stimulation at the C6 level and the startle responses are measured by electrodes on the upper extremities. The participant also receives TMS with the responses measured my the same electrodes.
Stormy weather
This was a week at work an the weekend was just as
walking bridge
good. On Friday, Ellie and I were planing on going to the carnival near by, but it was rained out by a massive storm that took the power out for several days in a near by area. We did get some awesome photos of the sky but ended up doing a lot of running in the rain on our way back home. Since we have been here people have recommended the walking bridge to Indiana, and on Saturday we finally ended up doing it. We got popsicles right before and ice cream right after, but in that heat who can blame us. And today was our last Sunday here and we first went to the mall and then to Lakeside. Lakeside was awesome it was probably the last time we can go there. It was a fantastic time and Brigid from our last host family had a concert there with wonderful music! This was a great last weekend here in Louisville!
-Noah Marie 
There are no comments published yet.