Look at that, I survived another week! This week was filled with tons of experience inside and out side of work. I also realized that I am growing up. There are millions of things in this world that I have not experienced yet and this week opened my eyes to a few of those things.
Since the Forth of July was this week I had a short work week; only working Monday through Wednesday. On Monday I helped set up and sat in on a patient assement. This patient had come to the end of a 6 month program in which results of spinal cord stimulation and PT were studied. The goal of this study is to see if patients with spinal cord injuries improve over 6 months with weekly training. In addition to that, the researchers and physcial therapists see if the patients condition stays the same, improves, or worsens over the following 4 months after the study is complete. We set up an ECG machine to monitor the electrical activity throught the body with and without spinal cord stimulation. With that data my team will compare the results of the most recent test to the test given to the patient at the biging of their trial.
On Tuesday, I sat in on a differnt test. This particular assement tested the patients ability to complete certain physical tasks. Dr. Ovechkin, the head doctor of this study, hopes to see patients motor skills improve over the course of this study. For example one part of this test was to see if the patient could pick up and insert a key into a locked door. What may seem like a simple task can be extremely difficult or impossible for someone with a spinal cord injury. The overhanging goal of this entire study is to improve patients day to day life.
Collected data from ECG machine
To round off my work week, on Wednesday, I learned how to process the data we collected from Mondays test. With that data we will compare the patients results over the past six months.
I also took a test on spinal cord annotemy and different levels of spinal cord injuries. I have yet to get my results back but I am pretty confident that I smashed it out of the park.
Out side of work this week I had a ton of free time. Thursday I woke up with the intentions of competing and winning Lakesides biggest splash contest. Sadly, 30 mintutes before the contest a huge thunder storm rolled into Louisville, closing the pool and post poning the contest. For the next four hours Louisville was on tornado watch. thankfully the rain stopped and the clouds lifted just in time for fire works. Ouray, the town I live in, is notoriously good at firework shows. So I was disappointed in Louisville lack of gigantic firework show. Thankfully around the neighbor hood families put on their own firework shows, giving me a little taste of home.
Friday I had the wonderful opportunity of attending Shakespeare in the park and watching The Tempest. Which my lovely host mom Brigid amazingly created all the music for. Saturday was spent lazily floating around lakeside. Yes that is all I did on Saturday.
Thank you yet again for reading my weekly blog. I can not wait to share this upcoming weeks adventures with you. Catch you here same time next week, peace!
Catcher
GO CATCHER!!!
This is all amazing! Glad you are doing well!