So, for those of you who have known me for any length of time, you probably know that I hate hospitals. Maybe it is because I have spent too much time in them as a patient, maybe my fear is just irrational. Whatever the case, I have always disliked hospitals. They are creepy and dirty and full of germs that are just waiting to make me sick! (I told you I didn't like them!) In college my friends worked on helping me eat at the creepy "hospital McDonalds" (the McDonalds located inside of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center). I did not want to eat with people who were sick, ew! But eventually I did, and I lived to blog about it (I probably should have been more worried about the fat and calories at McDonalds than the people there). For those of you who work in a hospital, I applaud you. Thank you for helping make people well- you are awesome! I have actually worked for a hospital myself, not IN a hospital mind you, just FOR the Vanderbilt Children's Hospital. My office was never located where the sick people were, which I qualify as "hospital". Anyway, by this point you probably think I am weird or uncaring or in need of a psychologist.
I have a point, though, I promise. So, in the Speech Language Pathology graduate program we are required to have experience with both children (yay!) and adults (scary!). This semester I am doing an internship at the Tuskegee VA, which is hospital-like, especially the nursing home. BUT,
I love it! The people I get to do therapy with there are amazing and I hope I have half their enthusiasm for life should I ever go through what they have been through. I decided that to celebrate conquering my hospital-phobia (surely that is a real condition with a real name) I would make a list of all the things I love about working at the VA, in the most HIPPA friendly way possible (if you don't know about HIPPA, be glad).
1. I get to work with Veterans; people who have served our country selflessly and fought for our country, even when no one supported them (i.e. Vietnam)
2. My patients are some of the happiest people I have ever met, but they are my patients because they have had strokes, TBIs, or some other horrible medical incident. Still, they smile and always ask how I have been.
3. All of my patients think I am REALLY young. I mean
really young, like 18. Sweet!
4. The elderly say the darnedest things. Such as "I know I am older than all you people" (patient looks around the room then motions to the guy on either side of him) "well...maybe not you or you!"
5. I get to observe (and one day participate in) a cool medical procedure called a Modified Barium Swallow. Ask me if you really want to know what that is.
6. I get to see people get well, however slow and laborious that may be, I get to see progress in people, knowing that I just might have had something to do with that! Helping people communicate again is pretty amazing!
