These Boots Were Made For Walking

I survived my first super long Wednesday. I was only at work for 14.5 hours today, but surprisingly wasn't dying at the end of it. Wednesday is the clinic day of the Department Chair. He is a very well respected surgeon, and very thorough with his patients. He will not leave the exam room until every question the patient asks has been answered. There are a couple of issues though. 1. He schedules patients from 8 in the morning until roughly 7:30 at night. 2. He will usually run 3-4 hours behind all day. You do the math and determine how long he will be there. Wednesday is also the day of morning conference, which starts at 6:30. So, that makes for quire a long Wednesday. Today was alright though because we didn't have any patients sent over past 5:00, so the other fellow and myself were able to practice our splinting skills. We are slowly being able to do more, but what is super scary is that we are going to be teaching first year OT students how to make 3 splints. I will be in charge of one lab and Jennifer is in charge of the other. I'm an actual instructor, like, on their syllabus. Scary!!! It wouldn't be so bad if I was teaching something I was well versed in. Of the three splints, I'm so-so comfortable with one, I HATE the second, and the third one I've only made, oh, maybe twice in my life. Class starts next week so I've got some work to do.

Today I had to write a 911 email to my mom for her to send me my comfy shoes. I love that I get to dress up for work and can wear heels everyday. But man! My feet hurt!!! Yesterday I wore a new pair of high heel boots and was standing all day. By the time I finally got to sit down around 3, my feet were ready to fall off. I think my low back is suffering too. It was killing me this morning. So, mom is sending my Danskos (my awesome clogs! I'll look so cool with my dress pants and clunky clogs) and my Birkenstocks. I love those and luckily have a few pairs of pants that I can wear with these. Too bad I can't wear my Uggs or flip flops. I'd been in much better shape. Hopefully she rushed that package to me!

5 Things I Learned on Day # 8:
1. With wrist extension exercises, if you give the patient a dowel/pen to hold in their hand, it will keep the EDC from influencing wrist extension.
2. With radial nerve injury at the wrist, you lose 40-60% of your grip strength.
3. Dimethyl Sulfoxide is not FDA approved but some use it for pain relief. Apparently it is used readily in equine medicine. Yep, horses.
4. Martinis were created by the wealthy. It used to be that if you drank straight liquor you were seen as a drunk. The wealthy did not want to be perceived as drunks. so they invented the martini which has vodka and a splash of vermouth. That makes it a "mixed drink" instead of straight liquor. Therefore, they weren't perceived as drunks when they had martinis.
5. The students I'll be teaching "don't know anything". So, it won't matter how bad my splint is because theirs will be worse.