In trying to be
responsible citizen of this planet I'm trying to comply with the
whole concept of social distancing. I'm seriously cutting back on the
amount of travel I'm doing especially as the weather turns absolutely
beautiful with the advent of true spring. Because I am not as mobile
as usual and the meetings are no longer there as are the bus trips
gone. I'm having to rely on being much more creative in my blog
entries. This means to some degree going back into my history. Some
like the “way back machine” for me anyway.
I think I mentioned once
or twice my new respect for occupational therapy in the life of a
person with a significant disability. By the time I got to the Elks
Rehabilitation Center in the late fall of 1966 I was beginning to
stabilize as far as a person of the disability. All my wounds it
pretty much healed, with the exception of my spinal cord injury which
basically never would, I was sitting up pretty well without passing
out of throwing up or anything like that. I was definitely ready to
begin my rehabilitation. Rehabilitation is kind of like being in
school the concept is to provide the individual with rehabilitation
classes as well as continued healing and adjustment to be a person
with some major paralysis. Since physical therapy is a professional
occupation professionals work eight hours a day so my rehab was a
hours a day more or less Monday through Friday. Had six or seven
classes throughout the day, that's what they call them classes, PT of
course, mat class, rickshaw, resistant pulleys, standing board, and
occupational therapy. Occupational therapy is a discipline of
vocational therapy I guess. I really wasn't sure what it was supposed
to do and because of that I never gotten a very good or healthy
respect for the discipline. All I knew was that at 2:30 PM I would
have the last class of my day which was OT (occupational therapy). I
would be shoveled off to the side section of the building. It could
not call OT a room it was a good-sized area even larger than physical
therapy. They had a number of work tables with all kinds of tools and
such. They had a room that look like an apartment with couch table
working stove sink etc. the unit had a mockup car that I suppose
people can actually learn driving skills (I never did) it seems part
of my time was spent with electric typewriter writing which I love to
do with as having to learn to do this with pegs (pencils attached to
my hands usually some sort of glove device) and then type on a
Selectric typewriter for 45 minutes. This is okay for day one day to
the got boring really quickly. The OT, and interesting young woman
reminded me in later years of Terry Gross, I couldn't really figure
out what she did except try to keep me busy. She was nothing like
OT's I would associate with later in my life. She finally settled
down to a leather project like something you would pick up a Tandy
craft. This was a session where I had a mallet and various tools for
working with leather. I assume similar to those projects were to get
this triple leather and end up making a belt out of it. In my
creative moments and an effort to keep the occupational therapist
happy and off my back I developed a monogram of my initials MLS which
I spent at least four months pounding down to a diamond shaped piece
of Leather about six or 8 inches long. I think I still have that
piece of work I've driven around for the last 50 years. It's like one
of things your kids give you for a gift on Father's Day You don't
know quite what it is but you don't know how to get rid of it without
hurting feelings so you hold onto it for eternity or until they carry
you away clean out your desk.
This last experience I had
with occupational therapy for my last neck operation has been totally
different from learning how to swallow the learning to get around.
Since I've pretty much learned to survive his past 50 or 60 years
there was the whole lot they could teach me except how to bond with
my therapists and that itself is worth all my time. I see now what OT
does it so much bigger than I thought or new…
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