First Occupational Therapy Visit
 

Today was my first visit to the occupational therapist. I will be seeing her 2x a week for an hour each time. I will also be seeing a speech therapist 2x a week.

The appointment was wonderful but exhausting. I have homework, including keeping a pain journal (for my headaches), getting and using a pill box for my meds (sleep aid + allergy meds). I am allergic to most pain meds, so those are in a separate category. I also have to bring and use a daily planner from now on. There is something else, but I can't remember (written down in a special OT folder). We are going to develop a monthly plan of action.

She explained to me the issues that I have with speech versus written language and ASL (my best friend of 30 years is deaf). Written language and ASL are visual languages, which use different pathways than the oral language. This helps explain some of my word-finding, stuttering, speaking with starts, stops, weird phrases, backwards speaking and such. I just struggle to get the words from brain to mouth, although brain to paper (with slow time and editing) is easier. How terribly reassuring! I seem to speak in ASL style (verbally) i.e. "shirt red beautiful" (stuttering through each word) instead of "that's a beautiful red shirt."

It was explained that I have road blocks and have to find ways to work around. Thank goodness my wife was there to remember and explain things to me. :) Saw my doctor afterwards.

today was a huge brain drain day, especially when it followed a sugared hyper kid day yesterday. At least the doc and therapist could see me at my lowest functioning and can now see how bad it can get.

Thanks for sharing your experience with us. "Wonderful but exhausting" is a good place to be in recovery. It's only two months since the accident and it sounds like you are making great progress.

:hug:

Hi emme
 

Glad you got this kind of therapy. My son is an occupationa PTA. He loves helping people, and has been in this field for 7 years now. As a mother, I am glad he works in this medical field. Hope you get all the good help you can. ginnie

Sounds very similar to my first OT appointment. I also did the light board to gauge my visual perception and reaction time. It sounds like you were able to get past the insurance gatekeepers.

I spent most of last night with a spinning head and hugging porcelain. Was all of the activity too much?

Probably.

Don't forget that over-stimulation can cause a delayed response.

Hi Emme
 

Sorry you had a rough night with the bowl. Not fun at all. Maybe you did over do it a bit. That kind of therapy is hard to judge when you first start. You don't know your limits yet, and the OPT is trying to find out what you can and cannot do and go from there. Hope tonight is better, rest, sleep. I hope you next appt. doesn't upset your stomach so much. ginnie

Thanks for the information.

I am an occupational therapist, though I work in mental health not neuro. Now that I am becoming employable again I am looking to change my career to work in head injury - I wish I had had an OT early on in my injury, I think it would have been a great help. The care I got was not, I feel, very helpful or evidence-based and I want to change things for the better.

If you have the time and energy I would be very interested to hear more about what the OT does with you and what you feel works or doesn't work, either on a thread or a pm.

If you don't have the time or the energy for that then that's absolutely fine - it sounds like they're working you pretty hard! Concentrate on getting better.

All the best!

I will start a new thread for this :)