DPT Family

• About two weeks ago was one heck of a week for our class of 18 PT students, but a very good one! We:
• had our last class...ever.
• took our last final exam...ever.
• took our comprehensive exam (a recall of 3 years of info, basically) and 100% passed!
• celebrated that twice in one day...lunch at Pawley's Front Porch (the most amazing burger you've ever had) and dinner at Mellow Mushroom and
• took a Board Review class to get an idea of how to prepare for studying for boards

• So all in all, we finished the academic portion of our 3.5 year program!!! We are all thrilled to have the rest of the summer off to relax and finish research until we begin our final clinical rotations July 30 in various places and settings. Some are doing a second/specialized orthopedic rotation, some are doing pediatrics, and 3 or 4 of us are doing home health. Clinical ends mid-October and we graduate December 13! The end is in sight!!! 
• Here's a pic of our class (minus Aaron & Christina, Jess, and Forest) after comps at Pawley's :)
 
• Honestly, I'm a little sad our time together is almost at an end! I've lived life next to these 17 other people for the last 3 years! We've seen the good, bad, and ugly of each other! We've 
• celebrated 4 weddings (and 3 more to come)
• mourned the loss of loved ones
• studied God's Word & prayed together
• welcomed a baby girl into the world
• laughed at stupid YouTube videos
• presented I don't even know how many case studies
• and celebrated the end of nearly every semester like champs! Oh that reminds me! 
• Two intramural sports championships (with some help from other classes)! 
• And all 18 of us have made it through with no hold-ups!
• It's been a real honor and privilege to work with these 17 people who I call DPT family! :)

Moving Forward into Summer!

Couple new things happening around the Hassell Castle as we move forward into summer:

• Frisbee-We are playing ultimate frisbee in the Columbia Ultimate Disc Association Summer League! This is the third summer Aaron's played and he convinced me to sign up this year. Our 2nd game is tonight and I'm pumped. Typically when I'm playing with a new group of people, I am very self-conscious about my playing and get real focused on myself and how bad I suck. Bad move. I'm learning to focus more on just having fun and improving my game and not getting offended when someone gives me a tip. That kinda leads into the next thing...
• Humility-We started a new series at Midtown last night on humility. The biggest and hardest thing I learned from the first sermon was that there are two kinds of pride. The first is what I normally think of as pride...the "I'm so excellent, I don't need God" kinda attitude. But the second is the polar opposite...having the constant mindset of "I am not excellent in any way" and staying focused on how "not excellent" we are. We may think we need special treatment because of how "not excellent" we are. I have a harder time explaining and recognizing this type of pride, but I know that it lives in my heart. The solution to killing pride isn't "just be more humble," but being humbled by the fact that Jesus humbled Himself and died for my pride. I genuinely desire to grow in humility and am looking forward to the rest of this series :) From the video below, Aaron will benefit from it too, lol. This is from an "interview" I did with him on a road trip about 2 years ago. Sorry it's sideways!

• Reunion-I traveled down to Charleston last Friday to meet up for dinner with my best friends from college. April will be moving overseas soon, so we took advantage of the opportunity to meet up so we could send her off! Since we were all together, Mer's sister threw her a baby shower the same weekend; I was so thrilled so many of us were able to make it, but we missed 3 of our girls. So much is changing with all of us so quickly between jobs, grad school, family, marriage, babies, and overseas missions, it's hard to keep up, but we try to plan as far in advance as we can to make time to visit at least once a year. 
• If you know me and are reading this blog, you probably know these girls, or  ARE one of them, but here's the roster: back (L-R): Peg, Madeline, Meredyth, Amber M. (doing a Slovak "2" bc she, hubby Patrick, and baby Samuel (exp. 7/14/12) will be moving to Bratislava soon!), front: me, Amber W., April, Jenna
• April's moving to Asia so that's what the pose is about ;-P

  
More to come on PT school!

Harbison State Forest

Last Saturday Aaron and I ventured out to Harbison State Forest for a little hiking. We saw 2 deer, some cool plant life, and a little baby birdie with a lot to say. Enjoy the pics below!

 This one was much less skiddish and let us take a few pics.

 The one in the back heard or saw us and was hopping around trying to warn the other. Finally got a good shot of both of em. They were so close to us!!!

 so green!!

 cool hollowed out tree

 I heard this bird when we were on the trail and took a few minutes to find him; don't let him fool ya, even though he's so little, he is LOUD!!

 Camelbak to scale the size of the bird...he was soooo tiny!

It took a lot for Aaron to convince me the black ones were okay to eat, but they were good and we didn't get sick, thankfully :)

 Pretty yellow flowers that were scattered all along the way.

 Some baby pine trees we saw...they look so funny to me. I guess it's the alfalfa type bunch of needles on the top that's weird.

 Mushroom

Whole trail took about 2 hours (3.5 miles) and was beautiful. We'll definitely be heading out there again soon!

Porch Updates

Updated pics of the porch below...

The finished porch table/firewood stand. The glass jar the flowers (fake white hydrangea..my fave) in fell over during a storm last week :/ but luckily glass jars are easy to come by!

"Total view" of the porch/candle holder and our hanging porch lights (loooove these). The table at the end is my "desk" when I work/study from home :) And at the end, the (dead) hanging plant that I'm attempting to revive after a few weeks of neglect. thank goodness for miracle grow!

oooh, obligatory artsy pic.

Tree right in front of our porch.

And a panoramic view of our very long porch. To the left there is a bridge that leads toward the clubhouse and a small dock that's on the lake. Good place to go chill.

Spare time

So, now that clinical is over (OK, it was over a month ago...) I've had this new thing, a foreign concept known as "spare time." To quickly update you on what's been going on with us in the last month since the commute to Clinton officially ended:

• I proposed my research! This is the first half in the research project for our program, and in my opinion (thus far), the hardest. It's basically, "Here is what I want to do and my plan for doing it. Can I do it?" I was offered a lot of very helpful suggestions at the proposal and my committee has been instrumental in helping carry out the second half of the project. The best part is, the data has already been collected so I don't have to get IRB approval and recruit subjects or anything. If you are interested, I'm looking at the relationship between measures of standing balance and certain characteristics of walking, mainly walking speed. 1 step closer to graduation!
• I got a job! I'll be working in the rehab lab working with traumatic brain injured patients helping perform their rehab that is part of the research for several different professors. This was such a huge blessing because I didn't get to see much neuro on my rotation (though it was still a great rotation). I emailed to ask if I could volunteer, thinking I had "missed the boat" so to speak for working and I was offered the job! 
• Aaron started a new and difficult project at work. I am not the best at explaining these projects, so I'll leave it there; it is challenging, and he is learning a lot about the information he is working with; he is handling it well, and is ready to kick some booty when the deadline rolls around. He got a $25 award for his hard work a few weeks ago :) 
• I started my Pediatrics class; this has been a lot of fun getting to learn about and work with babies and children. I never had any younger siblings and haven't spent much time with children around Columbia, so this has been a good experience getting to interact with little ones a bit.
• Aaron and I went to Charleston last weekend to see "Wicked" as an early birthday present to me; it was awesome and the 2nd of 3 musicals we will have seen by next Thursday night. We saw "The Music Man" at Ridge View HS last week and will see a friend in "Beauty and the Beast" at Spring Valley HS this week. 
• We've met some new friends in our neighborhood, Sandeep, Shipra, and their baby Arshi. We were out running (ok, Aaron ran, I got tired and walked back while he finished up), and as I was walking, got to stop and say hello to this couple who I'd seen several times. We learned the following week was Arshi's birthday so we brought cupcakes and they returned the favor by bringing us dessert after our vegetarian lasagna dinner last night. My friend from school, Milan, also joined us and is from the same city in India, Noida. Sandeep is one of several guys who work for CSC's India branch who come to the US for a several month stint of time.We are looking forward to getting to know more of the families from CSC in our neighborhood!

 

• In Charleston, we stopped at my mom's for an hour or two and I managed to take some spare furniture off her hands that I've had my eye on for a while. We came home with 2 Japanese wicker chairs from c. 1956 (my grandparents' when they were overseas), a night stand and some serious need of TLC and a paint job, and an old hanging plant holder that I saw some "potential" in. I've never really done any serious fixing up of furniture because I've never had that...what's it called again....spare time! I'm loving this and soaking it up while I have it left. Summer classes start M-F next week, so this week is my last with only 1 class.
 

Some pics of the furniture flipping:

One of the wicker chairs that has been calling my name from my parents attic since I turned 18.

The night stand minus the drawer. You can see the drawer in other pics.

The plant hanger stand just before a new fresh coat of orange paint...you know I wasn't going to change that!

An idea of how we may set things up. I bought that lantern for the porch when I got the hanging lights...I think it looks cool with the plant hanger! Stay tuned for the finished product (sneak preview from the seat cushion!)

Patients say the darndest things!

Ok, I haven't written on here in forever (anyone surprised??) because I've been super busy with my clinical (which is now in it's 10th out of 11 weeks and is going very well. Thank you for your prayers!) Being in a nursing home I hear and experience a lot of different kinds of stories, many of which are captivating, some are sad, and others that are just plain unbelievably hilarious! So I hope to entertain you with what has been entertaining me the last 10 weeks. :)

• A resident who is a centenarian (at least 100 yrs old--there are 3 that I know of in our facility) expressing discontent following speech therapy: "That girl was trying to teach me how to eat...well, I've been eating for over 100 years, I think I know how!"
• A female resident walks up to a nurse with one boob in each hand and with a concerned look on her face informs her "I just found these...now what do I do with them?" (to which the nurse responds..."tuck em in your britches!")
• A conversation I had with a patient who was pleasantly confused...while her answers did not make any sense, it did not seem to bother her one bit:
• Me: Where are you from?
• Pt: I know! We just had a fabulous time and my brother, you knew him too, didn't you?
• Me: ahh, yeh...I sure did. Would you like to walk today?
• Pt: It's my favorite color, isn't it yours? I just can't believe he would do that though.

• While we are working with one patient in a common sitting area, I look up to see that another has her blouse half-way off. I run over there to tell her "Sweetie, we're in public, we have to keep our blouse on," to which she responds "Oh I don't care!" and proceeds to remove it and put on someone else's that she found!
• A confused pt who within 5 minutes time cussed me out and then turned around to tell me he loved me and gave me a kiss on the cheek.
• A pt who was practicing weight shifting was told to move her booty to one side and then to the other and stated "she knew all along, all she needed was some booty shaking...it's all about the booty!"
• A pt whose motivation for walking involves looking for "good-looking men" was asked what she looked for in a man: "They have to be tall, dark, handsome, and they have to have one more thing....MONEY!!"
• A male patient who I was practicing a stand-pivot transfer with (this requires stabilizing one knee by putting each of my knees around his one so that our knees are interlocking) was concerned that he was going to have an angry husband after him. I told him that it was okay and that Aaron knew to which he responded "No, no, I had another one say that before and it wasn't true!" 
• A female patient was married very young and her young husband was soon after sent off to and was at Pearl Harbor. She didn't hear from him for 2 years! "Boy, if I'd a had a fryin' pan I woulda killed him!" 
• A patient went into others rooms carefully collecting all their dentures and presented them to the nurses to show with pride how many she had found!
• A patient who loved to proclaim at least 3 times per session "Ya know...getting old is all hell!"

We have a blog!

Hey there friends and random blog readers alike,
Aaron and I decided to get a blog finally, not necessarily because we think our day-to-day is that interesting, or that we have much to say, but more because our friends are spread throughout the world and we wanted to be able to share with people the kind of things we might share on a phone or skype date. And lets face it...peer pressure. Everyone else has a blog so, naturally, I wanted to get one too. :-P

Aaron suggested writing about what this season of life looks like for our first post. From now until the end of March, I'm traveling to Clinton, Greenwood, and/or Mauldin everyday for a clinical internship in physical therapy school. I'm in three different places because my clinical instructor (CI) works at the latter two when they need extra help. It's a lot of driving, and I feel, oftentimes, that I don't have a clue what I'm doing, so this has been a trying season thus far. However, I am encouraged by the fact that God is faithful and His Word says to:

"Count it as pure joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing...Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him."--James 1:2-4, 12.

I can count this trying time in my clinical as joy because I know God is growing me through it, not only as a physical therapist developing skills, but as a follower of Him. Also, God's timing is so perfect because we are studying James at church and Aaron and I have decided to try to memorize the book!