the joint commission

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

~Semisonic

I am loooong overdue for an entry, especially considering so much has happened over the past two weeks. First, an overview, then some details.  

Bowling in dresses :)

Overview: Celebrated Amy's 25th birthday at Bryant Lake Bowl (awesome and old-school). Did a heck of a lot of driving. (i.e. 300 miles last weekend. Why do all the cool kids have to live so far away?...I'm talking to you, Sawatzkes.) Went to the Wild vs. Blackhawks (and sadly realized I can no longer cheer for Chicago when they're going to be in our division next year). Survived my last two weeks at Children's. Ordered much too strong of a drink at happy hour with my instructors on the last day. (I would not recommend the French 75 at 3 Squares in Maple Grove- 10% champagne, 10% sour, 80% gin.) Lunch with Jess, Kristy and Alina at Stir Crazy (build your own stir fry for $8 at MOA, hours before Jess left for her honeymoon). Honed my photography skills covering the Roseau-North Wright County girls hockey game Friday night with Clay (it's possible my best shot will make tomorrow's issue of the Monticello Times, nbd). Christmas-party-hopped (from Paige/Dave's to Taylor/Bridget's) on Saturday night. Lost more brain cells than I can afford on Sunday... 

Gettin' festive with Paige and Kristy

Now, some details:

Every three years, Children's has to undergo re-accreditation, AKA re-licensing, and re-making sure that all of its hospitals and clinics live up to the government's standards. It's impossible to underestimate the importance of this process-- without a passing score, the entire Children's network in MN would be shut down. The certification crew comes from The Joint Commission (yes, they're so important that they even capitalize the "T" in "The"), and consists of several intimidating people in fancy suits and heavy briefcases who tour the facilities and ask questions about when toys were last disinfected, where the shredder is located, who's responsible for maintaining the exit sign light, how PT collaborates with OT and SLP, and how we determine if a kiddo is a falls risk. Fortunately, TJC rarely visits smaller outpatient clinics like ours throughout the week they spend critiquing the Children's system. Unfortunately, rarely didn't cut it this year, and word spread like wildfire that they were planning on swinging by our clinic-- on the first day of the re-accreditation last Monday, no less.

Happy b-day Amy!

That day, my final Monday at Children's, I was slotted to give my in-service. I'm not a big fan of giving presentations, especially as a student presenting to the entire staff, plus the clinic manager. So just in case I wasn't quite nervous enough, I found out that TJC was supposed to arrive at lunchtime, right in the middle of my talk. No pressure. I spent the entire morning when I wasn't with patients memorizing Childrens' mission statement and vision instead of practicing my presentation. I'm not entirely joking when I say that I felt like the future of Children's rested on my shoulders for the stressful 20-minute stretch that I talked. I realize this is a slight exaggeration, but everyone was so dang tense that it made me way too nervous. Thankfully, though, only the regional director of Children's arrived in the middle of my presentation, while the rest of the TJC arrived 40 minutes after I'd finished. After the presentation, I proceeded to sanitize my hands four times, make sure there were no fire hazards in my gym, hide my not-so-spillproof coffee that I had by my laptop (thanks for the Caribou, Clay :), and hide under my desk while they interrogated the manager and fellow PTs with ridiculous questions. 90 minutes later, we were TJC-free, and I could breathe again knowing they wouldn't drag me out of my hiding space and make me recite the policy on hazardous waste in the clinic.

So now, as I look back upon my 9 weeks in pediatric PT, I have to admit that I learned more than I had ever hoped. Regardless of whether I go into pediatric PT (I'm leaning towards no...), I love the fact that I now feel comfortable (and fairly competent) treating tiny 8-week old babies, rambunctious toddlers, emotional teenagers, and everyone in between. At the very least, I'll be well-versed in typical child developmental milestones for when I have my own kids (which, this internship reinforced quite well, won't be anytime in my immediate future). But now that it's over, I'm looking forward to life's simple pleasures, like sleeping past 5:45 am and being able to wear nail polish again. 

A few last noteworthy points from internship #2:

1) I know so many Wheels on the Bus verses that it would make your head spin.

2) My last patient ever, at 5 pm last Thursday, was ready for discharge, so I did some standardized testing with him. Turns out, in the time he'd been at Children's (1 month before I got there, then 2 months with me), he jumped from the 5th percentile to the 81st percentile in gross motor skills. Ahhh that made me smile, and realize that perhaps I had changed a life or two.

3) I made it through 9 weeks without having to do a single diaper change. Score.

4) My last Tuesday in the clinic, I evaluated a baby who was the same age as how long I'd been at Children's, 9 weeks. Say what?! Kind of mind-blowing.

5) Best present from a patient's mom: The Breakfast of Champions. "When working with kids, you have to eat your Wheaties." 110% true. 

I have oh so much to do/look forward to over break. First on my list: rehabbing my body. I haven't run in almost a month (which has been very difficult for me and my stress relief mechanisms), for which I have bilateral peroneal tendonitis to thank. I'm also on day 3 of a pretty nasty concussion sustained in my hockey game on Sunday. Lesson learned: it's not worth sprinting at full-speed to keep the puck in the zone when in direct line of a teammate when it's just women's league. I think my tweet summed yesterday up my day pretty well: I love head injuries. Especially the part about no bright noises or loud lights. (True statement: I wrote that as is. I wasn't even trying to be funny.)

Ole hockey for life.

Next on my list: Lots of fun plans with friends and fam. Shopping in Albertville with mom and grandma, then Sawatzke Christmas party tomorrow, Chino with my Ole hockey girls on Thursday, and of course Christmas with the fam and Clay this weekend. Then--back to the grind, as I start to make my Powerpoint for Africa, apply for sports PT residencies, and think about starting to study for boards. I'll take a little break in there sometime, too, for what is sure to be a night to remember-- NYE at Whisky Park (our group is 18 people and counting!). Then-- the start of internship #3 on January 2nd, at United. I can only hope that my winter break doesn't fly by as quickly as these past few weeks have. Merry Christmas (& Happy Hanukkah), everyone! 

May your days be merry and bright, and may all your Christmases be white. LET IT SNOW.

no. 

i'll make you banana pancakes

Here's how I've spent the past 8 days:  

1) Battling sleep deprivation: Nothing new here. Slept 3 hours last Monday (late hockey + 5 am workout), and not many more than that on Tuesday night. There is a plus side, though-- I proved that the claims about there being a maximum amount of caffeine one can safely consume in one day are bogus. 

2) Savoring every moment that the Wild cling to 1st place in the NHL: No arguing with the fact that I'm a diehard Wild fan, but to be totally honest, I didn't think we'd last at the top quite this long. (It's been over 2 weeks!) Mike Yeo for MVP. 

3) Admitting that maaaybe peds isn't so bad after all: I had a breakthrough last week. All of a sudden, I realized I finally felt comfortable treating the wide variety of patients we see, babies included! You have to be active and engaged and creative and willing to fly by the seat of your pants when working with kids, and now that I'm so much more involved in treatment sessions, I have to admit that I might be having fun once in a while. 

Lake Mtka--gorgeous

4) Getting festive on Lake Minnetonka: Girls' night last Friday, hosted by Amy's friends with the awesome(ly huge) house in Tonka Bay (who happened to be out of town). We baked cookies (I attempted gingerbread cookies for the first time!), put together a tasty salad bar for dinner, consumed some vino, and watched Love Actually (or varying amounts of it, depending on how late we all managed to stay up). 

5) Making banana pancakes, then dancing them off: Ingenious Kristy concocted a yummy breakfast, inspired by the classic Jack Johnson tune. We didn't even have to pretend like it was the weekend. I was then introduced to Just Dance 3 on the Wii, and it was love at first move busted. 

6) Pawning off cookies: Between my well-dressed gingerbread men, Mac's pumpkin cookies, and Kristy's dark chocolate with M&M cookies, we had an abundance of sugary creations. We hauled 'em down to Northfield (after a stop at Caribou, my previous stomping ground/study hole) for Kristy's bros' bball game at Carleton. Pro: they won. Con: we didn't get rid of many cookies. 

7) Falling under the spell Northfield casts during a snow storm: That city is beautiful with a fresh coat of snow, and 10x more beautiful when the snow is falling, especially by the river and on a college campus. That didn't make for a pretty-- or fast-- drive back to the Cities, though. 

8) Jamming out to the latest and greatest Kristy & Anna CD: Music is life. And music you can sing to while driving with friends is as good as it gets. R. Kelly and Nelly and Kelly (Clarkson), oh my!

9) Exploring a hidden gem of a pizza joint with Kristy & Rachel: Because no one in their right mind would want to caravan during a snowstorm in which traffic was averaging 3-5mph on I-35, Rachel joined the dance party in the car. Starving, we found a cute little Italian restaurant in Plymouth to grab a bite to eat before braving the snow once more to spend the rest of the night in Uptown. 

10) Extending the Eagles' undefeated record: I feel like I should be knocking on wood right now, but my WHAM team is undefeated! 6-0-2, I believe. Big W on Sunday against a team that no one likes playing. Oh, and Katie Bennett is pretty good at putting the puck in the net. 

11) Decorating the tree: Paused the Wild game Sunday night to put up our 3.5 million ornaments. Ben was especially helpful when he decided to secretly hang my iPhone up on a branch, which would've worked if I hadn't gotten a text as he was in the process of stringing it up. He also tried his best to identify an odd ornament no one could account for...but gave up (and stapled his confusion to it). 

                 

12) Surviving the busiest day of my peds internship yet, and efficiently at that: Today I had a full 8 hours of patients, ran 90% of the treatment sessions, and did 100% of the documentation (including 2 evaluations, 1 discharge note and one progress note addendum)-- and still managed to get out of there at 5:30. Productivity was sky high aujourd'hui. 

baby Jack = best ornament on the tree

13) Trying to figure out how it's possible that Jack is turning TWENTY tomorrow...I mean really, when did this happen? Guess I should have picked up on the fact that he was approaching this milestone when he came home from college with a beard for the first time, but still, I feel blindsided. HAPPY B-DAY BRO <3

strawberry shortcake

Looks like my motivation to update this regularly is decreasing in proportion to my interest in pediatric PT. But, in reality, it's been a busy week. Ahhh, where to start-- 

Last week was a short one at work-- Monday and Tuesday were full of cancellations, thanks to the holiday week mindset. I spent Wednesday at Children's Hospital in downtown Mpls, where I observed inpatient PT in the morning (sometimes I wonder if I should have gone into diagnostics because I LOVE learning about all the bizarre diagnoses-- Cornelia de Lange syndrome, Duret hemorrhage, osteogenesis imperfecta), then hopped in the pool to observe aquatic therapy in the afternoon. 

As for the holiday weekend-- I spent Wednesday night in Monticello for Kristy and Clay's 25th bday, and had a blast. I especially liked Kristy's strawberry shortcake drinks, the fact that the bar was called Chatters, entertaining tweets, and when Kristy lost her phone... (ok, that one's a lie). Thanksgiving was fantastic-- the whole fam (sadly, minus Grandma L) came over, and we enjoyed yet another delish meal, as well as a great photo op outside thanks to the unseasonably warm weather. We also took advantage of the warmth when we cut our tree down at the farm in Scandia on Friday morning. 

Friday afternoon, Ben and I scalped tickets to the Wild game, though it was a miserable one. Another Buffalo Dog and 10 seconds of fame on the fan cam partially made up for the loss. This weekend, I also caught up with Kaitlin, and it didn't take me very long to realize that I need more Kaitlin in my life (hurry up and move back to MN, woman!). We had a great time talking about how excited we both are to start studying our boards review book (I'm 100% serious). Sunday, I took my first step towards deciding what I want to do with my life after I graduate in June by looking into sports medicine residencies! I think I'll just stay in school forev.  That afternoon, I went to my 3rd Wild game in 8 days (ahh, what a life) with Kayla, which was loads of fun, despite the depressing outcome. We even met four guys from Thunder Bay on the Hilton shuttle that picked us up on the walk (random, but we didn't turn down a free ride), one of whom knew the one Thunder Bay resident I happened to name. The hockey world is a small one, eh? 

Less than three weeks of peds left, which also means less than three weeks until Christmas break! Today was a long day at the clinic, though I was fairly excited to do my first full eval on a baby, until I realized that 1) this baby only understands Russian (SEE, mom, my one semester of Russian at Bowdoin might finally come in handy), and 2) this baby doesn't. stop. crying. Thankfully, both factors made the eval fairly short, but still, screaming babies sure don't leave me feeling rested and energized. As for now-- I'm killing time at Panera before hockey at 9:40, illegitimately streaming the Wild game on my computer and attempting to learn Swedish in the process (it's a feed from a Swedish tv station, apparently). I'm also trying to figure out how I have over 3000 hits (never saw that coming!)-- so thanks for reading, all.

my week in vocab

Badness Heights: I mean, I love Siri, but she sometimes she doesn't understand me. Usually, it drives me crazy, but occasionally, I'm okay with it. For example, I told her to navigate to Vadnais Heights the other day, and she thought I said Badness Heights. I had to laugh. Because that's so much cooler than the real thing. (FYI: Badness Heights native Ben Mess won this surprisingly heavy swing dancing trophy on Friday. Ow ow!)

Buffalo Dog: the latest, greatest savory treat at the Xcel, which I devoured while watching the Wild climb to 1st in the NW Division, 1st in the Western Conference and 1st in the NHL with a rockin' come-from-behind shootout victory over the Blues last night. Hot sauce, blue cheese and cole slaw. Delish. 

Crazy, Stupid, Love: the latest Steve Carell/Ryan Gosling/Julianne Moore flick that Kristy and I laughed at while sippin' Moscato (hands down, my fav wine) in sweats on Friday night. Probably not Oscar-worthy, but highly entertaining. 

Movember: The worldwide fundraising trend for prostate cancer research that takes over the NHL during the 11th month of every year. {here's the official site} It's pretty hard to take professional athletes seriously with some of these ridiculous staches (the top 10, so far), but it's for a good cause. Last year, Ben was a part of the world record-setting group of guys with 'staches at the X.  

NPTE: The program I have to thank for the 7-pound book I just picked up to prepare me for my boards exam in July. Yes, I actually weighed it, because I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to cram that many pounds of knowledge in my brain. (I realize that I'm already supposed to know most, if not all, of it, but I think some of it has faded away since I started grad school...) [It stands for the National Physical Therapy Examination, btw.]

Pimp Limp: Hockey can be brutal...just ask the girl I cross-checked in my game yesterday. (To my credit, I scored within 10 seconds of getting out of the penalty box off of a picture-perfect pass from Bennett.) But then I got a taste of my own medicine, when I went down hard and destroyed my knee, so I'm icing a pretty gnarly contusion as I type. Kristy coined the term pimp limp yesterday, and I'd like to think that it describes my current gait pattern pretty well.

Pracna: The oldest restaurant on the oldest street in Mpls, where I met up with Kristy and a few of her scribe co-workers for a late happy hour on Thursday (after I had dinner with my CIs at Granite City for my MIDTERM eval-- woah, halfway done already?!). Right on St. Anthony Main, this place has so much character, and some pretty cool drinks. Why bother cutting lemons into wedges, when you can wedge an entire lemon onto a glass? (Our drinks came with an entire lemon, stuck with this pin--)

Syncope: The fancy medical term for fainting, which is what I wanted to do at pick-up hockey in South St. Paul on Friday. Woah, apparently my WHAM games haven't gotten me in as great of hockey shape as I thought. (In all honesty, my lungs just hurt. Unfortunately, there's no medical term for lung pain-- pneumalgia, perhaps?) But I realize this is my 3rd hockey-related vocab word, so I'll stop here.

TRX: Monday morning was probably the most fun I've had since starting at Children's. I shadowed the pediatric sports medicine specialty clinic, which involves an MD and a PT tag-teaming two mornings a week to treat the kinds of cases I totally looove seeing-- knee sprains, Osgood-Schlatter's, broken wrists. Just my thing. I even got to experiment with TRX, which is this awesome total-body suspension training system developed by Navy Seals, which I have since decided to do my in-service on at the Maple Grove clinic. 

So, ya'll probably just boosted your mental vocab bank by 0.0001%. As for this week-- only TWO days in the clinic! I also plan to listen to This Is Tha Carter on repeat during every commute (yes, it's been 7 years since it was released, but so. obsessed.), eat at Five Guys with Jack (who arrived in MN last night, but I have yet to see. #priorities) and his roomie London Will tomorrow, and head up to Monticello for Kristy/Clay's 25th b-day cele on Weds. And it goes without saying that Thursday is one of my favorite holidays. CAN'T WAIT. 

cheers to the black rhino

it was one big dog party-- Harv was a hit.

Spending the weekend with vet med students, I sure learned some crazy things about animals. For example, how many toes does an elephant have on each foot? This question was the topic of debate with Alina and Carl during the car ride down to Ames to visit Jess and Matt, who moved south when Jess started vet school at Iowa State this fall. (If you answered 2, you're right. But if you answered 3, you're also right--they have 2 on each of the front feet, and 3 on each of the back feet. Who knew?!) We arrived Friday night, and spent the night catching up, playing with the dogs (people to dog ratio = 1.5:1) and devouring Orange Leaf fro yo (just like Red Mango. LOVE.). 

On Saturday, Jess, Alina and I ventured to West Des Moines to go shopping at one of the nicest malls I've been to (ok, Iowa, I'm impressed). Even though (to our dismay) Cheesecake Factory had an unbearable lunch wait at 2pm (not worth it), the trip was a success-- rocked out in the car, bought new shoes, found Kristy's birthday present ;) That night, we rounded up the boys (Tyler got in late Friday night), and checked out Hickory Park, a local fav, for dinner. The delish BBQ--pulled pork, rotisserie chicken, ribs, sausage, sweet potato fries, mashed potatoes-- was absolutely worth the long wait. Plus, we played a lot of I Spy, were thoroughly entertained by the games on the kids' menus, experienced the fastest service ever, and the boys (who planned ahead and wore plaid shirts, by the way) all managed to finish their ridiculously large meals. 

110,000 calories and 23 pounds of consumed meat later (not as much of an exaggeration as you'd think), we headed home to play games and meet up with some of Jess's school friends before hitting the town. A handy dandy bus took us downtown, and with the exception of a mild left ankle sprain I sustained on the way home (which I didn't care about, btw, because we were done dancing at that point), it was a totally awesome night. A few highlights: we made sure to drink to the recently-extinct black rhino, Carl kicked me out of his wedding four times, Goph hockey beat the Badgers, the bus smelled like maraschino cherries, and of course, the dancin' was awesome.

pure. love. 

Truck fire in Albert Lea on the
way home

I couldn't have asked for a better Sunday, either. Slept till 11, got Jimmy Johns for brunch, and lazily laid around watching football all afternoon. SO much fun to see Jess, Matt and Ty, who I hadn't seen in months! The drive home was long, though, as I felt yet another weekend slipping away... At least I have some great pics and a sexy limp to show for it.

fa la latte

4 weeks down, and I'm officially 112% sure I don't want to do pediatrics one bit. I mean, the people I work with are awesome, the clinic is very well-run and babies are cute, but it's not quite my style. Then again, I'm glad I'm figuring this out during a 9-week internship, and not as I'm accepting my first job. But that's not to say that I'm not having any fun. Here are a few highlights of the week (in and out of the clinic): 

Just a random fav. Completely irrelevant to anything written here, but I love it.

1) Incorporating Jenga, Guess Who, soccer and bubbles into treatment sessions. (I'm undefeated in Guess Who. Swag.) 2) Caribou came out with holiday drinks today. Not an huge eggnog fan, but I can't pass up a Fa La Latte. 3) I discovered that I can wear yoga pants to work as long as they look like dress pants. A fantastic excuse to go shopping...hellooo new Nike sweats. (Trying to use my Dick's coupon at Sports Authority...not so much a highlight. #embarrassing #buttheyacceptedit) 

4) It's actually light out in the morning when I drive to work. Much more uplifting than the last few weeks of darkness when I got to work and darkness when I left work. 5) Managed to work Wii Fit and the agility ladder to 3 treatment sessions today. (Ahh, brings me back to the good ol' days of Acceleration MN and Ole women's hockey dryland!) (And no one has managed to beat my Wii Fit Hula Hoop record...hidden talent?!) 6) Took a break from the Maple Grove clinic on Tuesday to shadow PTs in the hematology-oncology (cancer) and serial casting Children's specialty clinics in downtown Mpls. Hem-onc was fun and fast-paced (just my style), while serial casting was a bit slower-paced (I did like the cup of items collected from inside casts, i.e. leaves, gravel, candy).


7) I'm getting so much faster with my documentation. Today, I only stayed two hours after my last patient to finish writing...seriously, that's faster than it used to be. So. much. paperwork. 8) I've been working on balance and lower extremity strengthening with one of my favorite little patients, and today he told me he just rode his bike without training wheels for the first time. Success. (Try telling me that doesn't warm your heart just a little.) 


9) I've found the perfect place to let loose after my 12-hour days: the treadmill. My workouts have never been better. 10) It would hardly be appropriate to go an entire blog entry without talking a little bit of hockey. So, here goes: the Wild are really pretty awesome. Especially our goalies. I guess I shouldn't talk too soon, though, because we're currently losing big to Brent Burns & Co, but I have faith. 11) 14 days till Thanksgiving. I'm hungry just thinking about it. 

Ahhh can't wait to see my fav future vet this wknd <3 

Tomorrow-- off to Iowa with Carl, Alina and the dogs to visit Matt and Jess. (Rumor has it she has two thumbs and likes to party ;) WEEKEND!!

P.S. A few of my favorite songs from my loooong commutes:

Astronautalis ~ Dimitri Mendeleev

Andy Grammer~Keep Your Head Up

Mike Doughty~ Na Na Nothing