AngelillOT: A Blog

I just finished the book Inside the O'briens by Lisa Genova.  Overall, the book was phenomenal.  However, it has left me with a heavy heart for all of those that suffer from the monster that is Huntington's Disease.  There were times when I caught myself thinking "This is the absolute worst disease,"  as I put my book down for the night.  I felt compelled to share this story with my friends and family to both voice my enjoyment for the book, and voice awareness of this terrible disease.  Genova does a wonderful job of incorporating powerful characters into an addicting storyline about a family thats life was suddenly turned upside down by HD.  There were times when I laughed and there were times when I cried.  Even though this book is not based on a true story, my heart breaks for the O'Brien family.  As an occupational therapy student, I know I will at least witness an HD intervention.  For me, it is hard to think that I can not provide the cure for these clients

For my neuro note, I watched the movie  Rain Man,  starring Tom Cruise as Charlie and Dustin Hoffman as Raymond, Charlie's older brother.  I watched this movie several years ago, but I chose to focus on it because it is a heartwarming story of a brother that learns to love his brother despite his disability.  The movie opens up in California showing Charlie facing serious and sudden debt with his job of reselling Lamborghinis.  Shortly after, he receives a phone call where he is informed his father has passed away. He anxiously returns back to Cincinnati to receive his share of his fathers will, only to find out he was left his father’s rose bushes and his car, and 3 million dollars is being directed towards a mental institution.   Charlie travels to the institution with hopes to find reasoning to why all of the money was directed here.  Instead, he discovers that he has a brother, Raymond, who is a patient at the institution. Raymond has savant autism and was put in treatment ear

With many theories to choose from, I focused on Dunn's Model of Sensory Processing.  This is a conceptual model that proposes four basic patterns of sensory processing which are emerged from the interaction of the neurological threshold and self-regulation.  These four patterns are: sensation seeking, sensory avoiding, sensory sensitivity, and low registration, which can be measured by the therapist through observation of reactions to the stimuli involved in the intervention.  This model provides assessment and intervention strategies for therapists in promoting peoples participation in important domains.  Neurological threshold is a personal range of threshold for noticing and responding to different sensory events in everyday life.  "Functional" behavior for neurological threshold is associated with p eople who have low sensory threshold.  These individuals will notice and respond to stimuli more often because their neurological system activates easier and more readily

For my first neuro note, I chose to watch a Ted Talk.  By only limiting my searching to the topic of "health" I was able to immediately find a talk by Chris Nowinski titled, Can I have your brain?  The quest for truth on concussions and CTE .  Nowinski opened the talk by sharing his past with us.  He played football at Harvard University and then joined the WWE after graduation.  His wrestling era ended when he was kicked in the head and suffered a severe concussion.  Following this incident, Nowinski exhibited permanent post-concussion symptoms, such as depression, headaches, and inability to sleep.  He wanted to make this physical and emotional pain go away, so he decided to start researching.  Upon his research, he came across a diagnosis called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, where he then discovered that two late NFL players had recently been diagnosed with this post-mortem.  At this point, Nowinski was committed to finding the prevalence and prognosis of CTE.  He had

Today our class was informed on the importance of health promotion and public health.  The definition of health promotion is "the use of discipline-specific techniques to assist people in achieving their health related goals.   The phrase "health related goals" is a very broad term that will differ on a case-by-case basis depending on the client's physical, emotional, social, or any other context that the client engages in.  As a future healthcare professional, I find it very important to not just treat, but inform others on how to care for themselves in any situation a client may face.  I also learned that there are 3 levels of interventions that aim to reduce health threats.  A primary intervention includes the prevention of diseases or injuries before they occur.  A secondary intervention is used to reduce the impact of a disease or injury that has already occurred.  And a tertiary intervention is used to limit the impact of an ongoing illness or injury that has l