Black and White

As you might know, the world is not black and white and while I would like it to be sometimes, I have found that "living in the grey" is often a profound experience.  I recently started my second to last internship at Craig Hospital in Denver and will be an intern here for the next sixteen weeks.  I am working on the brain injury team and I can already say this will be one of the most challenging things I take on (academically, emotionally, and professionally).  But, I am so excited to be at Craig and feel very blessed to an intern at one of the top 10 Nationally Ranked rehab hospitals (Craig was #7 this year).

All that is to say, at Craig, nothing is black and white.  Especially working with patients with brain injuries.  In school, we learn techniques a certain way to establish a baseline and "master"a skill.  However as I learned today, the way we were taught in school is just that, a baseline.  For example, we learned how to transfer patients from one surface to another in situations where they cannot do it themselves (be it weakness on one side of their body, impaired muscle function, etc).  Today, I had to brainstorm through ways to transfer a patient who has no control over one side of his body, complete lack of cognition, clonus and spasticity in lower extremity muscles and decreased range of motion in his ankle. Frick! I was not taught how to do that in school.  And thus, we begin the journey of living in the grey, where nothing is simple and concrete.  No one patient will present like another and all patients will progress in very different ways and on different timelines.

Though I have only been at Craig for three days, I am excited for what is to come.  I am going to try and figure out a way to consistently blog about my time there.  Whether that be funny stories, success stories, life lessons learned, etc.  I havent decided the format yet and it might take me a little while to get my feet under me, but you can look forward to something :)  Maybe a short blog every Wednesday?  We will see!

A complete side note, I have five or so blogs that are all half written and I am going to work on getting those published in the next few days.  Some are stories about recent adventures, a blog about the 10th Anniversary of Sept 11th and various other things... So be looking forward to those as well!