I'm a Sickie :(

I returned home from Cincinnati late Sunday night. Although I was exhausted, I was excited for the week. Monday came and went quickly. At around 9pm, I was more than ready to catch up on my sleep, so I headed to bed and fell asleep. 10pm came and I woke up to horrible stomach pains. I won't go into gross details, but my stomach was not happy with me and therefore I didn't get much of any sleep. I haven't been "this kind of sick" in a longgg time. Yucky.

I stayed home on Tuesday and today. There goes my making 85 client-hours this week. I planned on getting in 20 client-hours this week to make my 85 goal...but I missed about 6 yesterday at 7.5 today. There is an event on the weekend that I will go to and it is approximately 4 hours. I worked on my Senior Project today for about 3 hours (those hours will count, too!) and I have been sleeping a lot. You can never plan for sickness...and I definitely didn't plan this...but, not much you can do about it. The hours will get made up (eventually) and everything will be OKAY.

I am already feeling much better than yesterday. I have a headache which is probably from not eating more than a handful of crackers yesterday, but my stomach is slowly recovering.

Cincinnati!

So...I made it to Cincinnati! After driving up to Redondo Beach on Wednesday night, making it there around 10pm, showering, and sleeping approximately 4 hours...waking up at 3:30, getting to the airport at 4:30 and being at my gate at 4:35am for a 6:10am flight...I made it! It's beautiful...about 10 inches of snow on the ground..cold, but not too cold. Probably in the 30's.

Teren is at school for the day. I slept in (yay!), ate breakfast, am checking emails, and will probably go see "Young Victoria" at 2pm at the Esquire Theater (on Ludlow). I have been receiving so many emails from Barbara. Let me explain. I, well we (Barbara and I) finally came up with my senior project idea. Remember that I have to do a case study and a senior project for this internship. My senior project will focus on Social Networking for both of Barbara's companies: MusicWorx, Inc. and Resounding Joy. In today's society, it's all about social networking, right? With facebook, Myspace, blogs, flickr, twitter, etc. etc....social networking can really get a company going and more widespread. That being said, Barbara has been sending me links of other companies to see what kind of networking they are doing. The first step of my project is to make a spreadsheet of what every competing company does. Fun. Eventually, I have to figure out how to put my own twist on this project...in time.

My hubby looks great...for those of you wondering. We celebrated Valentine's last night by cooking Indian food together. It has become one of our favorite meals--Chicken Masala, brown rice, raita (the yogurt dip, mmm), and naan (we use whole wheat pita haha). We opened a bottle of wine and I gave T my card :0 He already sent me flowers last Friday that were beautiful!

I'll keep you posted on our weekend. Tonight we will be going out to din din with Chris and Lauren, Sat we will make a stop at CAN YOU GUESS?? COSTCO, probably go out for another dinner, and Sun T already said we have to make pancakes.

xoxo

Happy Valentine's Day!

Feb 14th! Half way done with the month...4 days until I see my Valentine! Yay!! T sent me beautiful bouquet of daisies and roses on Friday :) I brought them home with me and they are on the dining room table. Tonight our family is having...wait for it....lobster! Adie and Rande are coming over and my Grandma is here.

So..I'm sure you are wondering how Tuesday went, when Barbara came to observe me in the hospital. It went well...once she was with me I wasn't nervous; however, she was about 35 minutes late and that meant I had already seen my 2 referrals. Bummer. I need to work on my presentation once I walk into the room. It's more of the business stuff I need to work on, not necessarily the therapy or music part.

Tuesday night I went to the Ronald McDonald House. The cutest little girl was there. She was into EVERYTHING and definitely liked to collect instruments and make piles. Just imagine a 1 year old with tight little ringlets collecting boom whackers and trying to walk with them...boom whackers can be up to 4 feet long (although we had ones that were only up to 2 feet...but still hilarious nonetheless).

The rest of the week went by smoothly. This week was the most tiring, mainly because I worked 3 long days/nights on M, T, W...I worked until 8 or 8:30. I'm ready for my mini-vaca on Thursday!!

xoxox

Eeeek!

Barbara is coming to observe us at Scripps! Eeeek! I'm nervous...There is so much "unknown" when going into a session, and with Barbara watching I just want to do everything right. Think good thoughts tomorrow at 2pm! :)

I really like Barbara, look up to her and all, but am still a little star struck I guess. In the MT world, she is wayyyy up there in terms of 'famous' people. I mean, I read her books for goodness sakes. I will be fine...I know I will, but this whole thing is a bit new and eeek!

Today was long. Woke up at 6am, got to work at 7:45 am, and got home at 8:45pm. Tonight we had supervision at Resounding Joy, the non-profit. If I wasn't so busy, I would love to volunteer at Resounding Joy...haha...it sounds funny, but the stories I heard tonight were so beautiful...but then I realized I do this for a career and get paid (well, eventually will get paid). Cool, huh?

Another late night tomorrow. We have Ronald McDonald House (Rady's children's hospital...the house is a place for families to stay who could otherwise not afford to be with their children while in the hospital...there is also one at CHOC) tomorrow night from 6-7:30pm...so I am going with a Senior intern. Should be fun, I am looking forward to it!

Off to bed!

Find Ants, Finance

Friday was fantastic. I went to see a patient on 5E, had an hour long session with her...we did song analysis of Chris Daughtry's song, Home. She is/was a big fan of American Idol, Chris Daughtry and David Cook. C has been in the hospital since 12/27/09...a long time and has been waiting to go "Home" so the song I selected was perfect. I only knew the chorus of the song..so my handy dandy Ipod (30 GB from Mom and Dad..Thanks!) was perfect to play the song with portable speakers we have in the office for our use. Technology is great. C was also a substitute teacher and a k-6 grade music teacher.

I then went to Parkinson's group and had a blast. I love the guys and gals in the group! We talked about the super bowl, sang God Bless America and Take Me Out to the Ballgame...although they did point out that that song was for baseball...I knew that (duh) but then we tried to figure out if there was a football song...and we couldn't come up with anything. Do you know of any songs sung at football games? My favorite client in the group is W. W wasn't in class today because he fell and was admitted to the hospital on Tuesday. I actually got a referral from his nurse on Thursday and saw him in his room. He said he would see me Friday, but I suppose he wasn't discharged yet. He's such a character and kind of reminds me of my Grandpa Bill. It's the sense of humor.

I met the gang (trips and Erica) at Temple at 7:30pm. Kambria was singing in the choir. E's friend was there and talking about finance because that's what he does for a living...money. Jason replied, "Whenever I find ants, I never find any money!!" He thought we were saying "find ants" instead of "finance". Made my night. Kids really do say the funniest things!

Today is the Triplet's birthday party. EXTREME BOWLING. Wish us luck! I hope to take some pictures.... :)

Here's a pick from Monday night I've been meaning to post. Zachary got a bit creative with his chicken noodle soup.

I Just Called to Say "I Love You"

I'm surprised every Thursday night at how fast the week has gone. It's Friday already and only 2 more weeks until I will be in Cincinnati to visit T. I guess the whole "keeping busy" thing really works.

I have had a relatively uneventful week. Teri, Inc. yesterday was tons of fun. I am getting to know the kids' personalities, behaviors, and musical preferences. Music truly does amazing things. One client, S, was singing the entire time (the past two weeks she wouldn't participate and would just do self-stimming behaviors); however, yesterday she tried everything...strummed my guitar, picked an instrument, played it, danced, and really benefited from music. I always wonder what is going on in their heads??? S's favorite song is Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called to Say 'I Love You'"..her face lights up when we sing it! :)

We had Polster last night-week 3 out of 6. I led 2 interventions! It was great...we did music making (drumming with djembes, dumbeks, shakers, paddle drums, buffalo drum, agogo, and lots of other toys..we also did 3 chants). Even though I started leading things this week, I definitely benefit from making music.

Today we went to Glenbrook (Hospice) and then my co-intern and I went back to Scripps for hospital floors. We saw three patients, and got in 3.5 hours on the floors. Tomorrow I will follow up with the patients we didn't get to...My favorite floor so far is 6West. This is because I have a favorite nurse there. She is great! N gives GREAT referrals, knows what the patient will benefit from, and is just very easy-going. One of her referrals we saw was C. She was referred because she was angry and agitated. My co-intern and I thought it would be appropriate to do relaxation and deep breathing exercises. Nurse N thought that would be a great idea...so in we went. C talked about all her pain, told us everything she could to complain, but said she liked her nurse..haha. We introduced the idea of relaxation and she said "sure". Her pain was at an 8 (on a scale of 1-10) and after our 15 minute relaxation exercise, her pain lessened and she rated it at a 6. Amazing. Our pre and post tests are very important...we definitely put that data into the patient's chart and keep it for our own MusicWorx records.


Hope you enjoyed my stories for the time being. I'm off to bed. I'm on my own tomorrow at the office. My co-intern will be at Teri, Inc, 1 senior is in Seattle doing concerts (she is a Tar player!!! amazing!!), and my other senior intern is taking the day off because her long distance boyfriend came into town!! Fun stuff.

xoxo

I'm On My Own!

I got signed off on documentation! Yay! That means I can now go on rounds in the hospital by myself, without a senior intern! Woot. That was the highlight of my day :)

Tuesday's are consumed purely by Scripps floors. The days go by quickly, but being inside all day, in a dark-ish hospital is a bit tiring and it really wears you out. I'm exhausted after every Tuesday.

Kambria is selling Girl Scout Cookies...so if ya are interested, I'm sure she'd love to sell you a box, or two, maybe ten. Her goal is...wait for it...to sell 350 boxes! haha...gotta love kids. There is some prize at that number sold that she wants..I'm not even sure what the prize is but it must be goooood. As of right now, Thin Mints and Samoas are by far the most popular.

I am leading more and more everyday. Tomorrow night at our Polster group (Music as Medicine cancer support group) we are doing Music Making and I am leading about a 3rd of the session, sharing it with 2 other interns. I'm quite stoked.

That's all for now.

Mom, WELCOME HOME!