Blog #4

Today marks the halfway point of this internship, and I have already learned more than I could have ever expected. I have worked with over 30 different patients both in PT and OT, and every patient is always different. A majority of the patients we see are either on the Autism spectrum or have some type of developmental delay or behavioral issues. Though we do different things with every patient, there is not usually a significant difference. This being said, there are two patients who specifically stood out to me today. We saw these patients back to back which is what made them stand out so prevalently to me. The first patient was a 21-month-old boy who presented with little to no muscle tone. At that age, children are typically walking, playing, and beginning to talk. This patient has a rare genetic mutation that causes decreased muscle tone, and he wears a SPIO vest. A SPIO vest provides deep pressure input and increased stability in the shoulder, hip, and trunk to help improve functional head and trunk control. He struggled with simply keeping his head up or showing facial expressions. Even muscles you wouldn't necessarily think of such as the facial muscles are weak, and moving his face to simply smile is difficult. Most of the session was spent helping him sit up and work on head control. He doesn't have the muscle tone to sit up without help, so we started with lots of support and gradually gave him less and less until he reached his max. That also worked on his head control, but tummy time helped with it as well. It was a little hard watching this patient do his exercises because it was clear how difficult the exercises were for him, and you could see his little body working extremely hard. With him, we were just working on getting stronger and some more muscle tone, and giving him some quality of life rather than just laying on his back or being carried all of the time. The next patient we saw was an 18-month-old boy with Down Syndrome. Kids with Down Syndrome are known to have developmental delays of about a year. So technically this patient would be at the 9-month mark for a typical baby. This being said, he took his first steps a couple days ago, which is right on track for the average baby! This was an incredible milestone for him, and it was heart-warming to see him take steps with us at the clinic. He was hands-down one of the sweetest and happiest kids I have ever met, and I never saw him without a smile on his face for the entire session. As I mentioned, we saw these kids back to back which was incredibly eye-opening. It was incredible to go from a child who is behind on milestones to a child who is ahead of them. It was also amazing to see the differences between different conditions and how they truly affect the patients. Our patient with Down's is 3 months younger than our patient with the genetic condition, but the different abilities the kids have due to their conditions was an experience I will never forget.