Job Notes

Well, I am home today and reviewing my day at work yesterday and trying to figure out how not to let myself get stuck at work for almost 12 hours ever again. Right now I am doing outpatient and inpatient at Health South in Henderson. The inpatient therapist quit a few weeks ago, and there is only one other therapist who works per diem as well, but she doesn't do any swallowing or language disorders, she only does general cognitive stuff (for those speech therapists reading this, I still don't understand why she thought she would want to work at HealthSouth). Anyhow, so I have to do all of those swallow and language patients in addition to my outpatients. My outpatients consist of a couple of people with strokes with language problems, a woman just 3 years older than me that has language and severe writing problems following her second surgery to remove brain cancer, one gentleman who has severe swallow problems and is on a feeding tube and I actually don't think he's going to get any better, a young girl with major cognitive problems from an HIV induced dementia (again, I really don't think she is going to get any better- MRI of her brain shows that it has considerable atrophy, aka it is shrinking), a really wonderful man who had a very small stroke that left him with a cut in his visual field- but he is doing really well, a young man who had bacterial meningitis that left him with severe physical coordiation and balance issues that also affect his speech (I always think of what a miracle it is that Amy Hughes recovered with no lasting effects), and an older lady that has problems with her voice after her stroke. However, the bummer yesterday was that I did two swallow x-rays, and determined that both the patients still couldn't eat safely and had to stay on their feeding tubes. That is not fun to tell people. So between my outpatients, inpatients, evaluations and xrays, making the next days schedule, writing my reports, writing updates for the doctor's conferences, and the whole time really aching to be at home with my boys, it was a long day and I didn't get home until after 7pm. Ugggh. Like I said, I am trying to figure out how not to let it happen again. I haven't come up with any solutions yet though, I'm thinking of some ideas and next time I do a job post, I will let you know how things are coming. I guess I can be greatful for job security!