Hi everybody! This is the sixth and final week of my internship at the Frazier Rehab Institute. This experience has been so amazing. Not only did I gain new information about the spinal cord, I also grew as a person. I feel much more prepared to go to college next year, and I obtained a sense of independence I don’t think I could have gotten without this experience. I have more of an awareness of the world, and what I want to study when I get to college. I am so grateful for the Pinhead Institute, my amazing mentor, Dr. Behrmam, and to everyone who made this internship possible. Thank you!
If you haven’t had a chance to read my past blogs, here is a little summery. Over the course of these past six weeks, I have had the opportunity to observe therapy sessions of patients who have a spinal cord injury. Frazier specializes in recovery-based therapy for spinal cord injuries. They use methods like locomotor training, this is walking a patient on a treadmill. They also use a gravity neutral device, a standing machine and many other tactics that focus on the recovery of the patient’s ability to move and have sensation in the area below the injury. Frazier is very research oriented as well. They strive to figure out the best possible way to help SCI patients recover. This is also where I spent the majority of my time. Each day I observed a specific patient’s therapy sessions. This patient, has been coming to Frazier for a very long time and my task was to track their progress over the years. In the research department I dug up all of the patient’s old medical records and put the progression of things like scoliosis, kyphosis, hip dysplasia, and SATCo scores into a timeline. I presented my timeline and a background paragraph I wrote on the patient, to my mentors and the other interns on Monday. This went very well.
For the rest of the week, I observed a trunk control assessment and many gravity neutral therapy sessions of other patients. During these sessions, we usually play games with the patients (since I am working in the pediatrics area) to entertain the kids while they are supposed to be passively stepping, and then cheer them on when they need to be actively stepping (using their brain). Then after the session is done, I assist in sanitizing the matt table and anything else that was used during this time. On Friday, the research team had me participate in the GND to help train some technicians on how to move the legs while in the device. It was a very relaxed but very fun last week. I am so sad that it has come time for me to leave.
On Saturday, my flight back home left very early in the morning and I made it back to Montrose in the early afternoon. I am excited to be home, and look forward to presenting my experience to future interns in the fall.
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