arggggggggggggggggggh

[ninevirtues]

Today, I had to do an electro demonstration. My partner and I had to demonstrate the case of a 12 year old girl with a grade-1 (e.g. "mild") ankle sprain, where she'd developed reflex sympathetic dystrophy. In other words, it was a mild sprain, but now the sympathetic nervous system in her ankle was on high alert, and the ankle was red, swollen, shiny, hypersensitive, and occasionally jerked spasmodically on its own.

Yeah, that sometimes does happen. Typically the patient won't let you look at it, much less touch it. The way to fix it is to get the patient to actually use the injured part. The trick is to convince them to do that.

So.... when you make me demonstrate something in front of 20 people, I take that seriously. My partner was mellow; she reviewed the case with me, decided what she was going to do, noted the parameters she had to memorize, and went away for the three-day weekend.

I went home after practicing with her and produced the Almighty High Document Of Everything Having To Do With This Case, including the case, the game plan (reduce the patient's pain so she can begin to put weight on her foot), the exact parameters to use, the range of parameters you could possibly use, alternative ways you could use the same treatment technique, a definitions section for all the terms we don't know, and a list of answers for questions the professor might ask us.

And I reviewed the case about a dozen times over the weekend, mentally practicing it.

So, when it came time to draw roles out of a hat... one partner is the therapist, and the other is the patient... and I got... patient. Yeah, that's right, my sole contribution to the resulting good grade was to say "Ow, my ankle hurts."

Sigh....

Comments

[catagon3.livejournal.com]

Glad I didn't have to deal with this with my mild sprain last August! Although I "typically" didn't let any trained professionals look at it, either. ;) After all, they might have told me not to try to skate on it...

I'm glad you're getting something out of all of this school stuff!