Busy being a PT

Turns out I haven't posted anything in probably over a month. I guess working 40 hours a week but not getting paid makes me tired or something at night? Who knows. Yeah, that's right, I am now working full time as a (student) Physical Therapist. I have been working at Orem Pediatric Physical Therapy and it has been amazing. I have learned so much, and it is crazy how different physical therapy is when you are working with kids vs adults.

Some of the things I have learned as a pediatric student PT
1. If adults have a weak trunk, they slouch and it is fixed by doing sit-ups, planks, etc. If kids have a weak trunk they w-sit (sit on their knees with their feet out wide, which looks very painful) and to fix it we bounce them up and down on a therapy ball pretending we are on a pirate ship and we can't fall on the hot lava.

2. If you have a baby that always have their head rotated one way or tilted one way when they are playing, sleeping, etc, go to the doctor! Their muscle on one side of their neck is probably tighter than the other and if you don't do anything about it they will stay tilted their whole life, have vision problems, probably have a flat spot on the side of their head, and their facial features might be uneven. Also if they have a flat spot go to the dr before they are close to a year old, because then it's basically to late to give them a helmet or anything.

3. I hope my children have great imaginations. It makes life so much fun. I was working with one girl who had a pet monkey we had to take through the jungle (running outside in the long grass) and a pet spider we had to build a tunnel for it to crawl through (her doing bridges on her back). It was so much fun

4. The parent's of children with disabilities are without a doubt the strongest people I will ever meet. Just to give you an idea, the kids I have worked with have diagnoses ranging from cerebral palsy to autism, muscular dystrophy to hydrocephalus, torticollis to hemophilia. The parents for these children never cease to amaze me. Whether the children are able to walk, only crawl, just stay in their wheelchair, have already passed away or will pass soon, the dedication and the tears that have gone in to making these children's lives the best they can be, are phenomenal.

5. As much as I love working as a physical therapist, I feel very lucky to be a woman instead of a man. Working part time as a physical therapist sounds so much more appealing than working full. time. for. the. rest. of. my. life.

6. I now notice that I have really had a lack of children in my life. Without any nieces or nephews, and being 6 when my youngest brother was born, I haven't really had the opportunity to interact with babies. Having this internship has been so good for me not only to learn important things about enhancing child development, but it has also been great for me to just be able to play with babies. Hopefully Jake will learn how to play with babies too. It's probably not a great sign when he says "Ages 2 and up, I am golden; but any younger than that are boring because they don't really do anything." Haha.


Here are a few things I have learned in the last month that aren't physical therapy related, but equally important:

1. It's not a great idea to go to sacrament meeting 1 minute late when you are in a small chapel and have 2 baby blessings that day. Because then you have to sit in the choir seats and on your way up there you might trip over one of the steps and fall on your face in front of the whole congregation. Good thing I didn't fall on my face, but it was way too close for comfort.

2. Pinterest is a great place to find awesome new recipes. Such as: homemade wingers sticky fingers, homemade cafe rio pork salad, homemade butterfingers (world's best and easiest treat), banana oatmeal smoothie, buffalo chicken grilled cheese, PF changs mongolian beef, salsa chicken, etc. All SOO good.

3. The new Draper Flow trail is a new favorite addition to our Northern Utah repertoire of mountain biking trails. But I guess any trail that you do after a one month break, when the leaves are changing, and with an awesome view of the Draper temple will easily be put on that list.

4. A fun and easy relief society activity (if you are the one that has to put it on), is a service auction. All you have to do is print out papers for each sister to fill out and get points (points are awarded for if you went to the temple in the past month, read your scriptures that day, did your visiting teaching for that month, bottled jam recently, showered before noon that day, etc). Then you bid on services people have brought or written down (homemade raisin bread, free hair cut, free interior design appointment, babysitting for a date night, desserts, etc). It was so fun!

5. Training for the Provo Halloween Half-Marathon with my friend Shauna has been a lot more fun and a lot less difficult than I would have thought. Hopefully the earlier and colder nights don't put a damper on things.

Well I think that is all I've learned in the last month, or at least all I want to write down right now.