Straight Cash, Homey

It’s Wednesday at 7:00 AM, and I’m getting ready to potentially call in sick. The flu is going around again at work, as a couple more therapists have called out the past couple of days. And what do you know, yesterday afternoon my throat starts swelling and I wake up with a bad headache and a bad sore throat. I haven’t completely decided on calling in sick, because if I feel better later on, I’ll go in at lunch time, see a couple of Medicare A patients (apparently those are more important than Medicare B patients), and come back home. At least that way I won’t have to take a sick day and I’ll be able to get some patients seen. I’ve said it before but one of the disadvantages to being the only SLP at my facility means that if I don’t go in, the patients don’t get seen. If a PT or OT calls out, there are others to see their patients. I feel pressure to go in no matter what.

Work has by-and-large been pretty good. My caseload is back up to where it needs to be, I’m getting over 6 hours of treatment in a day (I’m in the 80%-85% productivity range), and my time management keeps getting better. However, I didn’t particularly care for yesterday. I did a 10:30-7:00 shift and got off to a great start by seeing patients non-stop through lunch, but once I took my break I had absolutely no desire to go back out on the floor and finish the job. Every day I do one of those later shifts my body just hits the wall around 1 or 2 PM and I want to get the hell out of there. I feel like I’ve been there all day even though it’s only been a couple of hours. I’ll look at my watch at think “Shit, I’m here for another 5 hours?!” The positives are I’m getting my important Me Time in the morning, going to the gym, reading several books, eating better, then at work I’m meeting my productivity, seeing all my patients, and getting all my paperwork done more efficiently while at the same time being far more thorough. Those are big areas to be developing, seeing as how those areas plus my future marriage and family are basically going to be my life from now on. The big negative is I’m more miserable towards the end of the day and once I take a break, I don’t want to do anything. I’ve always been a person who puts things off, and it still causes me pain to confront and change that. I’m into my third month of professional work and it’s only gotten a little easier, though I continue to force myself to do it.

My stuttering has been pretty good lately, both at work and with friends. I can’t remember anything specific with friends, either positive or negative, so I don’t know how to feel about that. At work it’s been a lot better with patients, families, and co-workers. After a bad stretch a couple weeks ago, I practiced in the car for a couple of days on the way to work with the fluency tapes I have on my iPod, and that practicing got me out of some bad habits. My secondary characteristics (particularly the puffs of air from my nose) have reduced, and I can’t remember any significant head-shaking recently, at least not anything that scored high on the Richter scale. Usually if I have any big moments like that, I remember them. Some difficulty ordering at a restaurants, but otherwise nothing devastating (though I don’t remember the last time I felt devastated by my stuttering).

My new favorite meal is a turkey-and-blue-cheese omelet. I wanted to put some feta in my omelet last week only to discover that we only had crumbled blue cheese. I tossed some in on a whim and it was one of the greatest things I’ve ever eaten. I am so happy I discovered this. I’m also down to two eggs per omelet instead of 3-4, which is good. The two-egg omelets were an Abs Diet staple, though I’ve been good about TNT. I’m in the 196-197 range.

The Celtics game last Friday was awesome. Our seats were so good, 6th row behind the basket, great for seeing just how big Kevin Garnett is. Nobody looked particularly huge except him. He completely fired up the crowd. One thing I was disappointed about was the lack of “GINO” footage during the fourth quarter. Anyone who has been to a C’s game this year knows the GINO phenomenon and I was bummed that it didn’t play. Fortunately, I was able to find it on YouTube. Look how excited the crowd gets for this guy (watch for the “GINO for MVP” sign).

There’s a great website I just discovered called StraightCashHomey.net that is dedicated to people spotted wearing ridiculous, dated, or just plain bad sports jerseys. The Sports Guy linked to it in his weekly links page, and as a person who once owned Bryant “Big Country” Reeves, Damon Stoudamire, and Marcus Camby jerseys, I’m as big of an offender as any. Here’s a pretty sweet Tyrone Wheatley sighting.

Learning to Not Be Liked

Wrapped up Week 5 at Bourne yesterday, and it was definitely the best week I’ve had yet. I made it a point to see all my patients back-to-back-to-back in the mornings so I could have the afternoons to do paperwork and leave (close to) on time. I’m learning to hate Fridays because of all the new admissions but we only had a couple yesterday. I expect next week to be even smoother if I stay disciplined. I still have a lot to work on with procrastination.

One of the biggest challenges I have right now is working with the first patient who really hates my guts. For most patients it’s far easier to get motivated for something like physical therapy where they go down to the gym and do standing and walking exercises than it is for me to walk into their room with thickened apple juice, tell them to tuck their chin when they swallow, and have them name pictures in a book (I’d rather go to the gym, too). Speech-language pathology is definitely the least sexy of all the rehab disciplines. Sometimes listening to Jaylynn talk about physical therapy (she’s a genius, by the way), I wish I was a PT. Muscles and ligaments and all that anatomy shit is pretty cool. I can’t imagine how frustrating that can be for this patient to work hard in the gym, make progress and then have me saunter into his room to do completely un-fun things and make no progress with them (my stuttering isn’t really comparable to expressive aphasia so I really can’t pretend to know what he’s going through) but in a way it’s a good thing he’s so obstinate because I have to learn to be hated every once and a while and still work the hardest I can to improve this patient’s quality of life.

For the most part, my patients like me. I’m very laid back and try to have relaxed conversation mixed in with all of my therapy. I also think one of the advantages of being a guy is that with all the female nurses and PT/OTs poking and prodding them all day, they can use a guy to talk to for a few minutes a day. I can talk to the men about the Patriots and Red Sox and can tell the 95-year-old women that they look half their age. In terms of building rapport with patients, I’m very good. However, once and a while (or maybe more often than that) I’m going to have somebody who does not want to work with me for one reason or another. In this case, the previously-independent man who now cannot speak or swallow is very frustrated and is being faced with that every time I come into the room. I think I’m handling it pretty well as far as not taking it personally, though it’s making it somewhat less exciting to go work with this guy. It’s a lesson that’s good to learn so early in my career.

The diet has been great. The only semblance of a cheat meal was Thursday night when I had a couple servings of that chicken-stuffing-sour-cream thing my mom throws together, but that was it. Friday night, usually a night reserved for a pizza and wine, was a couple of meatballs and a low-carb bread (really, that’s all we had in the house). My mom never has any idea of what to do for me because I send so many mixed messages about what I want to eat. I tell her I don’t want anything bad, so when Friday is typically Pizza Night and I tell her not to bring me anything, then end up being disappointed when she doesn’t, I’m sure that’s frustrating (especially on my birthday when I said I didn’t want a cake, then came home after a bad day and was pissed that I didn’t have a cake). Today at work I was secretly upset when I found out they threw out the rest of my cake that was in the fridge for the past week. In the end I know I’m better off for not having it because Super Bowl Sunday is going to be one hell of an eating day. Jaylynn is making boneless buffalo wings, stuffed shells, and meatballs.

Speaking of the Super Bowl, I cannot relax with these Patriots. My father and I never have any confidence in this team or any other Boston team, despite the fact that they always win. We’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Never the less, the team is too good to lose this game. This is what they’ve been waiting for all year. I find it hard to believe that Eli has really taken it to the next level and there is no way the Patriots will wait as long to blitz poor Elijah as they did last time. I’m really happy for Eli, he has done a great job of getting his team to this game after taking so much shit in New York for so long, but I’m not sold on him (if he keeps this up until Week 8 of next season, I’ll bump him up a category). For the Giants to win this game he is going to have to play flawlessly and Brady is going to have to have another San Diego game. Neither of those is likely to happen, and if Brady is off, Maroney has been running like a bull and they always have the dump passes to Faulk and Welker. I’m still nervous because the Patriots always have close games during this part of of the season but in the end, they are just too great of a team. Patriots 35, Giants 27. 19-0. Greatest Team in NFL History. Greatest Quarterback in NFL History. Greatest Coach in NFL History.

Only the two workouts this week on Monday and Wednesday. I should/could have gone last night but wanted to relax on a Friday. My weight is down to 198 pounds. I think 185 will put me in “good” shape, so that’s the next major goal. 13 pounds to go!
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Now playing: Billy Bragg & Wilco – California Stars
via FoxyTunes

Weekend

A couple of better days at work, but since my caseload is going up so much (it’s now 8 patients), I have much more to do.  I had better get used to it, because it’s only going to get busier. After all, I’m not being paid to dick around, right?  After a week and a half of doing 1.5-2.0 hours of live treatment in an 8-hour day, I did 5.75 yesterday.  I believe I’m supposed to be 70% productive, so that’s about the minimum that I can expect from here on out.  After meeting my would-be CF supervisor Ann on Thursday, she said Bourne will probably open up another full-time SLP position to help me out.  I’m going to be staying pretty late hours in order to get all my paperwork done every night and while that isn’t fun, it’s necessary.

My stuttering has been awful the past few days.  Treating and talking with nursing has been uncomfortable, though Friday was better than Thursday.   When speaking with Ann I could barely get a word out.  I just need to slow down.

I didn’t make it to the gym last two days.  Not feeling great about that but it’s been so hard to get up.  I barely made it to work for 8:30 yesterday.  I bet I’m going to be go Mondays and Tuesdays and then crap out the rest of the week, at least for a little while.  What can I say, I’m not mentally focused on working out right now.  A lot is going on and I haven’t totally adjusted.

My diet has still been pretty good.  It’s not really worth listing anything right now because it’s more or less the same stuff as the start of the week (plus some ice cream last night), but it’s going to be more important because my motivation to workout is not there.

Jaylynn had her knee operation the other day and she is doing well.  Instead of the anticipated microfracture, she just had some bone fraying her ACL removed and smoothed out.  I say “just” even though it was still major knee surgery.  Compared to what it could have been, she’s in good shape.  She’s currently passed out from pain medication in the recliner as I type this.

Killing time before the Patriots tonight.

Today’s Diet 1/8 and Work Happenings

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Now playing: The New York Times – NYT: Front Page for 01/09/2008
via FoxyTunes    Pretty much the same as yesterday, with a slight cheat at the end…

AM Workout: 20g chocolate protein before, 20g chocolate protein after
Late-Morning Snack: 2 cheese sticks, 3/4 c. broccoli
Lunch: Shake (20g protein, 1/2 c. cottage cheese, 3/4 c. frozen spinach, 2 tbsp. peanut butter, 1/2 tsp. cinnamon)
Afternoon Snack: 1 cheese stick, 3/4 c. broccoli
Dinner: 4-egg omelet with 1/4 c. cheddar cheese
Bedtime Snack: Shake (30g chocolate protein, 3 thin mint girl scout cookies, peanut butter)

Molly had a box of girl scout cookies staring at me, so I gave into their power by throwing a couple in a pre-bed shake. Not the greatest thing to do as that shake probably had about 500 calories, but it tasted pretty good. The cookies didn’t really blend up too well so I had to dig them out with a spoon. Good day diet-wise overall. Taking an off-day from the gym in the morning to rest and sleep in a little bit. I’m really sore already. Tomorrow I need to up the vegetables by a serving or two and hope Molly eats the rest of the cookies before I get home.

Another good day at work. A couple evals, a couple screens, a couple treats, some paperwork, some orientation stuff. I finally gave a couple of quick in-service presentations to CNAs on the units about a couple of patients which I was dreading. From what I hear, nursing and rehab have a frosty relationship no matter where you go, and this place doesn’t do much to change that perception, but my presentations were met with cooperation. I was very fluent and spoke with confidence, despite the fact that I was afraid to stutter in front of them before I started. My fluency at work when dealing with people has been very good from what I can tell (it’s hard to see it from an outside perspective, obviously). When working with patients I am almost flawless and when I’ve had to deal with nursing and families I can get my points across while being pretty articulate. It’s amazing how much I just let go and don’t try as much when I’m with my friends as opposed to this type of setting. Sometimes I wish that people could see me more in that environment just to judge the differences in fluency and see that it’s often just a choice of how much I choose to control it.

Anyway, tomorrow will be my busiest day yet as I’ll see everybody on my caseload for the first time in one day. Really shouldn’t be too hard to manage but still a test of my time-management skills. It is well past my bed time, off to catch some sleep.

UPDATE: Actually, it turns out 3 thin mints (a serving is 4) only have 120 calories and 8 grams of sugar.  That’s not too bad, I won’t even consider that a cheat.

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StutterTalk

I hope everyone enjoyed the few days during the holiday, I know I did.  Jaylynn and I did the tour of Massachusetts, opening presents with both the Griffin/Berard sides of my family on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning (Plymouth/Swansea), and later to the Laverdure family party in the afternoon and with her family Christmas night (Lancaster/Berlin). A lot of miles were put on my car but it was well worth it.  We’re lucky in that our family gatherings don’t conflict with each other, therefore allowing us to see everyone.  I love my new Michael Kors watch and 6th-row Celtics tickets, as well as everything else I received and hope everyone liked what I gave them as well.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything about stuttering, but I came across a great podcast called StutterTalk where two SLPs who stutter and an SLP grad student talk about different issues (search “StutterTalk” on iTunes).  They seem to have great rapport with each other and are very knowledgeable about stuttering.  If you can remember back a couple years ago I had an idea for a stuttering podcast but never really got it off the ground.  I’m sort of jealous because these guys have followed through on something I wasn’t able to create myself, but they have put together a pretty great show and maybe I’ll contact them to try and get involved somehow.  I think it would be a great listen for people who stutter, speech-language pathologists, or anyone interested in learning about stuttering in general. I’m in the process of going through all of the back episodes to try and get caught up, so my next few days will be spent doing that and prepping for work starting New Year’s Eve.

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Now playing: StutterTalk – StutterTalk.com – Stuttering and Breathing (and StutterTalk Gets Crack-a-Lackin!)
via FoxyTunes