Today I had the pleasure of presenting on a person, who I have had great respect for since I learned about her a few years ago. Her name is Joni Earekson Tada and she is a quadriplegic (now called tetraplegia). Joni was injured in a diving accident and severed her spinal cord at the C4/C5 vertebra. She was 17 years old at the time and in that moment her life changed forever. Because of her severe injury, http://www.joniandfriends.org/jonis-corner/jonis-bio/
Joni lost the use and feeling of her legs, arms, and hands and was left in a wheelchair. Obviously, this drastically changed her daily routine and occupational abilities. OT's began working with Joni during her rehabilitation and really focused in on helping her to re-discover meaningful activities to her life. One of these was learning how to paint with an adaptive tool called a mouth stick. Using this mouth stick Joni was able to learn how to write, paint and type, something that she described as "enormously satisfying and productive. Although Joni still is faced with many challenges on a daily basis, she has a support team made up of two assistants, her husband, and her friends that help and support her. Joni hasn't let quadriplegia slow her down in the least in enjoying her life. She is a well-known painter, the author of over 50 books, and also a grammy-nominated artist for her song "Alone, yet not Alone." She has inspired and impacted millions with her story of hope not because she simply overcame insurmountable odds, but because she still sees her life as full of blessings and opportunities. If you would like to learn more about Joni Eareckson Tada check out her website

Clinical reasoning is just one of those things that take time to develop (or so they tell us in OT school). It's not something that we are born with, or go into fieldwork automatically knowing what to do. Clinical reasoning takes hands-on practice and real-life scenarios to play out, and maybe even learning from a few mistakes that have been made along the way. It is defined as "the thought process used to evaluate clients and design/carry out intervention.  Involves thinking and feeling and is used to make decisions in every step of the OT process." This means that everything that I am learning right now, in my classes, assignments, and tests will impact my growing clinical reasoning. I can also begin working these clinical reasoning muscles by looking through our OT lens and begin to ask questions and formulate answers or reasoning. One day this will all come naturally but until then...Practice makes perfect. 

Today was a heavy day. Unexpected, but necessary for this journey through OT school. Today the realization that the people that we will work with are so much more than then problems really hit home. Maybe this was because we, as OT students, were able to share narratives from our lives in one class, and then that was connected to our Neuro class for the pre-class assignments. One thing is for sure,  I think we have all been impacted by the stories that we have heard. In a podcast called "Terrible, Thanks for Asking" - "Help Me Remember"  we as a class all experienced the discomfort of how a TBI can impact not only the person who has it but their immediate community, family, and friends. I caught myself wondering how I would feel if someone that I loved most acquired an injury and was forever changed from their old self to a new person who was only a shadow of who they had been in the past. This is the hard reality for many families and the reality of everyday work for the OT's who work with them. The weightiness of the fact that you are dealing with a WHOLE person (their hurts, their needs, their frustrations, their desires) AND their families (how are they coping, how they support, what support can be provided for them as they support their loved one) feels heavy. It feels real. Yet, there is also a sense of excitement in this as well. This class is already supporting each other, practicing things that we haven't even really learned about. The main excitement, however, is that we can be changemakers in our field, and impact our clients, impact OT. If you want to listen to this podcast click on >>> https://www.apmpodcasts.org/ttfa/2016/12/help-me-remember/