Where shall we start?

Home Program

I think I’ve been posting a lot about my firsts as an SP student but oh well, here’s another one: first home program dissemination! :D

The sleepless nights of writing, editing, printing, cutting, etc. paid off when my client’s father thanked me for all my hard work :”>

And my client remembered my name even after a month of not seeing each other. Super motivated now!

Finals, I’ll take you straight on! :D 

First individual case presentation

From the title itself, I just had my first individual case presentation with my mentor and my study group as audience. 

The amount of, let’s just say, deeply upsetting feelings were so high I didn’t know what I was meant to do anymore. Though maybe I’m overreacting again.

The whole process was fairly good though. The light atmosphere of being with friends and being with a fun mentor made all those upsetting feelings die down a bit. The integration process was a learning process and the feedback was eye opening. There were old, hazy concepts that were made slightly clearer to me. 

Though I wish I were more alert. We just had an exam before the case presentation hence my neurons (what’s left of them) weren’t functioning optimally. 

Also, listening to and commenting on other people’s cases was a great way to look at things from different perspective (for example, the debate whether my client’s errors were phonetic or phonemic in nature given the very limited speech sample).

The give and take of this process made me both fear and look forward to internship year. The many possibilities. The sleepless nights. The stroke-causing papers. 

This case presentation is a teeny step, a tiny taste of what my life would be like for the next year come internship.

And I say, bring it on!

One of those days

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CHDP Visit (Batangas Observation)

• What is the difference between CHDP and the other clinical sites?

One big difference is the fact that the therapist goes to the clients and not the other way around. There is also a limit to how many times a therapist can/will visit a client hence you need to make every visit as productive as possible. Because most clients cannot afford for example, AAC devices or wheelchairs, you need to be very resourceful and use what the client can offer. 

• What could CHDP offer to further your growth as an SP? Would it focus on clinical, advocacy or admin tasks?

As much as I want to say clinical and admin, I want to focus on advocacy. From what I’ve observed, there are still a lot of people (especially PWDs/KMKs) who are not empowered. I want to help raise awareness, understanding, and acceptance. Very idealist of me but it wouldn’t hurt to try.

• What did you like best and least? Why?

What I liked the best was seeing therapists serve people who cannot afford their services if they were in normal private clinics. It gives people chances to regain their functionality without the worry of financial barriers. 

It also gave me a chance to actually observe an interdisciplinary approach meeting. How the SPs, OTs, PTs, nutritionists, and med interns merged their minds to come up with an effective intervention for the clients was very amazing. 

An event hosted by my block-mates.

If you’re from UP-Manila, feel free to come and learn about aphasia. :D

Aphasia Advocacy Update No. 2

I’m currently writing the first draft of chapter 2 for the biography/novel.

I started with this little line, “It was around two in the afternoon, the weather was, as usual of Manila, bright and sunny with a splash of heat stroke.” 

Ok, I’m kidding. My committee groupmates really needs to proofread whatever I make tonight :)