Media Project Virtual Display

Client: Susan

Diagnosis: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)

About: 55 year old women that was diagnosed with ALS two years ago. She was recently admitted to acute care hospital with pneumonia and worsening mobility. She recently worked as a teachers aide in a public elementary school until last year. She was independent in ADL's but has been experiencing muscle weakness and fatigue and needs help opening food packages.

Interests: She enjoys watching tv/movies and playing cards with her family. She also enjoys scrapbooking and is currently working on a scrapbook that she will give to her daughter for her graduation present in a couple of months. She would also like to create a series of videos or cards to leave behind for her family.

Item: Index cards

Intervention: To address her interest of scrapbooking while working on fine motor skills and muscle strengthening I decided to have my client make "mini scrapbooks" or "personalized cards" out of index cards. Because she scrapbooks I knew she would have the materials at home to complete this intervention. My goals for her were to be able to trace a template from online (fine motor skills), draw and cut this template on multiple index cards with scissors (fine motor skills), hole punch them (muscle strengthening), and tie a ribbon through the hole (fine motor skills). In the end I would also like her to embrace her creativity through her scrapbooking and writing.

Below are pictures of the items I used in the intervention and what the final product could look like:

Items needed

Product before design/purpose


Finished product in multiple forms


Overall media project 

NN #4 - The Notebook

The Notebook - movie 

The Notebook is a movie about a present day elderly couple, in which the wife, Allie, lives in a nursing home with dementia. Noah, her husband, reads her stories written from her personal journal in hopes to get her memory back. The movie is mainly focused on their previous stories that are written in the journal. But in the end the movie focuses on the fact that Allie suffers from dementia and cannot recall who her husband is, how they met, or what they have been through. At the end of the movie, Allie regains her memory for a brief moment and reconciles with her husband. She quickly forgets and panics sending the medical personnel in to sedate her. Because of the panic attack that Allie experienced, it gives Noah a heart attack landing him in the hospital as well. In the middle of the night Noah sneaks into Allie's room and crawls into bed with her. Allie regains her memory once again long enough to tell Noah that she may forget him again at any moment. They both fall asleep in the same hospital bed and pass away together through the night. (What a tear jerker!!) The reason I chose to write over this movie was because a) it is one of my favorite movies (I'm a sucker for sappy love stories) and b) now that I have learned about dementia it is easier to understand the background and reason for the story. From watching it the first 100 times I thought that there were some semi-unrealistic assumptions around dementia portrayed in the movie. For example, Allie regains her memory twice within one day. It is very rare for this to occur especially with people in late stage dementia. It is more likely for them to remember childhood memories and be stuck in that time rather than mid-life memories. And now knowing more about dementia, I realized that there are also some realistic symptoms of dementia shown in the movie. For example, Noah mentions his and Allie's name over and over again, and Allie seems to not know who Noah is or that he is her husband and doesn't even realize that her own name is Allie. Another example would be when she loses her memory as fast as she regained it and finds herself in Noah's arm while he's calling her sweetheart. She becomes very confused, angry, and defensive. It is very common for people with dementia to show aggressiveness towards the ones they love without even knowing it. Because this is such popular movie and is known for its love story I think it is important for people, especially us in the health profession, to pay attention to the underlying plot and what common people assume about a neurological disorder. Next time you watch this movie, or if you haven't ever I suggest that you take the time to, pay attention to the assumptions and realistic features of a movie. Especially one that is centered on a disease or disorder. 

Caroline's case study - Dementia

This is the first case study presentation group that I have been apart of that included a personal story. Caroline's client, Ruby, was her biological grandmother who experienced dementia that was caused by Alzheimer's Disease. One thing I found interesting was that her grandmother was not actually diagnosed with Alzheimer's until 6 years AFTER her symptoms began. Her family, friends, and some doctors just assumed her forgetfulness was happening because of her age. Once she started forgetting who people were and started showing abnormal behavior towards them the doctors issued multiple tests to finally diagnose her. And at this point she was in the late stages of Alzheimer's. She eventually became very lethargic and stopped doing things she loved such as gardening and sewing. Because Caroline's grandmother passed away a few years ago, Caroline's intervention plan and goals for Ruby weren't personally given to her. But, with a little research from her mom she did find out that Ruby actually saw an occupational therapist when she was alive and one of her goals then was to work on self feeding. Caroline took this information and applied it to a intervention plan that would be fit for her today as if she was alive. I enjoyed hearing about Ruby and think Caroline would have met her grandmother's goals if she were her occupational therapist.

Audrey's Case Study: MD

Audrey took her case study topic and put a different prospective on it. Instead of having muscular dystrophy, Brandon Walker has congenital myopathy. Congenital myopathy has similar symptoms as muscular dystrophy (such as weakness in hands and feet and fatigue) except that in Brandon's case it is not progressive or leads to death. He was born with it and has lived with it his whole life. He is currently 39 years old but Audrey did her interventions as if he is 20 years old for OT purposes. His goals are to live by himself and learn how to drive. He wants to be fully independent by living by himself and since he is a country artist and performs different places all the time he wants to be able to drive himself around. Because he has been in a wheelchair his entire life as well, walking is something he doesn't know and does not want improved. He saw an OT when he was way younger but no further information was accessible about any other therapy. On that note, I think Audrey did an excellent job creating a fictional intervention out of a real life situation.

My Case Study - Trey Gray

Today I presented my case study over Huntington's Disease on Trey Gray, the drummer for country band Brooks and Dunn. I addressed the basics about Trey to my group members such as: he was diagnosed in 2003 at age 34, his mom and uncle both were diagnosed and died from HD, and his main priority was to drum as long as he can until the disease took over. I explained that little information was given about him on the internet past the year of 2008, for my assumption that he is in middle / late stages of HD and no longer wants his life centered around publicity. None of his interviews mentioned OT or PT, so based on what he said was important to him in some of his interviews is what I centered in on for intervention. And because it is a progressive disease, I focused on maintaining and managing skills rather than improvement. My group members seemed very interested in the topic because they asked a lot of questions pertaining to my client and to the disease in general.

LAST FOCP BLOG POST!!!

I had already wrote a blog post reflecting my learning from FOCP so read that one first :) So for this one I'll hit on our debriefing session today. I'm going to be completely honest, sometimes when I hear the word debrief I get a little anxious and irritated because I think in my head "oh he/she doesn't care for what I have to say" or "I have nothing to say at all". Today was different though. I appreciate that you take what we have to say to heart and actually use our suggestions to profess your course. I guess this is something I'm not used to from undergrad. I'm proud of my class for not tearing each other a part for the suggestions we made, instead we either backed each other up or we made other suggestions to improve the initial suggestion. Doing this before taking the FOCP eval will help me a lot because I've gathered my thoughts already! I've enjoyed our time together, even though its not over, and I hope to take with me everything that was learned in this course. Thank you!

Elvis has left the building
- Must touch on my era presentation that helped me loosen up around my classmates :)

NN #3 - How It Feels To Have A Stroke

Ted Talk - How It Feels To Have A Stroke 

Jill Taylor decided to study the brain after her brother suffered from a brain disorder, schizophrenia. She became a neuroanatomist and one morning she realized she was having a massive stroke. And like any brain scientist would, she studied what her body was doing and remembered every bit of it and lived to tell her story on a Ted Talk. She said it was a normal morning but instead woke up with a pounding headache behind her left eye. She ignored the headache and got on her cardioglider  (workout machine) to start her normal daily routine. While on the machine she began noticing something weird about her body. She said as if her state of consciousness has shifted away from her perception of reality. Instead of looking out away from her body, she was watching herself from an outside perspective. As her headache worsened, she got off the machine and began to walk to her bathroom where she says that she could no longer define the boundaries of her body because the atoms and molecules of her arm, blended with the atoms and molecules of the wall. She describes her left hemisphere of her brain being shut off by a tv remote, it became totally silent. As it turned off she says she entered "lala land" where she just felt one with energy and kept expanded. Then like another switch, the left hemisphere started working again reminding her that there was a problem. Another switch, another entrance to the external world. Another switch, another time, it switched back on and she quickly realized that she needed to seek help. Suddenly her right arm went limp, paralyzed to her side and she knew then she was having a stroke. Throughout the video she describes how cool it felt and was wondering how many times do brain scientists get to study their own brain from the inside out.

Jill goes on to tell how she sought help and brings humor into every bit of it. At one point in the ambulance she describes her spirit leaving her body, almost surrendering to what was happening in her brain. And she thought "this is it". The doctors were either going to save her or she was going to die. When she woke later that afternoon, she was shocked to still be alive. She describes that the noises were so loud that she couldn't depict a voice out in the room, and that the light was so bright that it burned her eyes. She was still enormous and out of her body but realized again that she was alive and that she needed to take advantage of it. The hemorrhage was the size of a golf-ball in the left hemisphere of her brain that was pushing on her language center.

She took her tragic incident and turned it into a "gift". She thought what if people could use this and take a step to the right of their left hemisphere? This motivated her to recover, which took 8 years. She now believes that we have the choice of being the one individual portrayed from our left hemisphere or the "me's inside of me" portrayed from our right hemisphere. And if we all chose the right hemisphere, we would live in a more peaceful world. She ultimately connected her stroke to how our brain defines us and connects us to different worlds. This was honestly one of the most interesting Ted Talks I have watched. It made me put a new prospective on encountering a neurological disorder and the potential research that could be continued because of remembrance. I highly recommend watching it and possibly showing it to future classes when stroke is the center of topic.

Reference: 

Psych: Documentary Films. (August 19, 2012). Ted Talks: How It Feels To Have A Stroke. Retrieved from: https://psychdocumentaryfilms.wordpress.com/2012/08/19/ted-talks-how-it-feels-to-have-a-stroke/