Began the last day of the first half of the clinical placement with crappy clients... the first lady was too upset to talk to us... she started to cry when we started asking her questions, so all we could do was try to comfort her and go to plan B... which was another elderly male patient, who saw us coming and told us outright that he does not want to be interviewed, that he had enough interviews already... we were like oookay... so we left him alone and went to look for a plan C... fortunately this other OT was going to do a home visit today, and he said we could follow along... yay... my first home visit since i started...
we brought the elderly lady along with us and drove up to her home in the retirement village... it's quite a long drive up about 50min... and along the way... i saw horses, cows, lambs and sheeps... and vegetable farms... how cool is that??!! it was really nice drive and it was really cloudy today too... drizzling abit... after the home visit today... i realised many things... one, being old sucks... especially if u have illnesses or diseases... and also if u are living by yourself... it was obvious that the lady really was hoping to be able to go home but after we have been to her home and watched how she carried out her daily tasks like moving ard her home, going to the toilet, preparing a cup of tea... it was clear that she was not safe to be living by herself at this point... which the OT explained to her too... and it was just really sad... bcos it was obvious that she was trying really hard to show us that she could cope by herself... but she even have difficulties going into her house bcos of the ledge of her front door... and bcos she has an amputation and is currently in a wheelchair... and her home was just too small for the wheelchair... and doing a home visit was not as easy as i thought... there are many things to consider... the person, the environment and the supports available to the person... like today i was observing the OT discussing with the lady and her daughter about the barriers that were in her home and the reasons why they thought she would not be able to live by herself at home... it really opened my eyes to what OTs do on a home visit... we have to consider stuff like how the patient is going to get from one place to another, how she is going to get into her home, any steps, how is she going to move ard her home, how is she going to the toilet, prepare her own meals and stuff... and then from there, think of solutions to make their home environment safer for them... like building ramps, movinig the furniture ard so that she has space to move ard... installing rails in the shower...
and then also found out today that we only will learn home modifications once in the entire 4 year course, like there would not be any more subjects on home mods... i was like shit... are u serious?? we did home mods in first year and they expect us to remember after we graduate? and last year i was not the one doing the home mods at all... i have no idea how to draw the diagrams and stuff... and my supervisor was like saying that's what the clinical placements are for... oh man... i cannot even draw straight lines...
and these past few days, i have been having lunch with my new found friend Kat... it's just weird like i realised that i have never sat down and eat lunch or spoke more than hi bye with any aussie pple since i came here... she's like the first aussie person whom i have eaten lunch with and we talked abt stuff... although sometimes i couldn't understand what she said but she also admitted that sometimes she also dun understand what i was saying... but it's fine cos we got along quite well... my only concern is if we would still be on such good terms once we are back in uni... like u noe how some pple act differently when they are in different environments and she also has her own friends whom she has known for a year already at uni... or if we would just be hi bye friends when we go back to uni... sometimes i wonder why pple are so complicated... it gets harder when we grow older, does it not??
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