Only in the Music Therapy World....

And so, I've survived another week! *overwhelming cheers and applause*

So today... today today today... I guess I should start from the very beginning... a very good place to start...

I got to the office around 8:30am and tried to quickly finish typing my blog for the day before (oops!) After re-doing my travel logs with all my mileage on them and getting my TB test read (no TB again! -- hooray!), the MT and I left to go see three pts who lived at the same assisted living community. Our first two pts lived on the memory care unit. Our older gentleman was sleeping in his chair amongst a group of older folks learning how to make some sort of Mexican dish from one of the staff members. She allowed us to play music for the group, so the MT grabbed her guitar and went to the front of the group. I stayed back and tried to engage our hospice pt one-on-one. It took a good four or five songs for him to wake up, but when he did, he made sure everyone in the room knew! I've never heard anyone hack and cough with as much flem and fervor as this poor man did this morning. He took a BIIIGGG breath in, as if he was trying to blow out 100 candles on a birthday cake, and then out came the cough and up came the gargle of flem. Who knew one little old man could produce so much mucus...

Fortunately though, he managed to keep his eyes open the rest of the session. I'm not sure if he was hard of hearing, or what thoughts were going through his mind, but he just slowly looked around the room, fixating on one thing, and then another, and then another, but not really reacting to any of them. It's hard to describe his face in any way other than expressionless, but it was just that - expressionless. He didn't look happy, or sad, or content, or upset, angry, confused, in pain, uncomfortable... I still don't really know what to make of it... even when he attempted vocalizing, it was still expressionless jargon with his gurgley voice. Sometimes I think negative emotion is better than no emotion -- at least you're feeling something...

The staff informed us that our second pt on the memory care side was experiencing a lot of pain this morning, so she went back to her room to lie down. When we got there, she was sleeping, so the MT let her continue to sleep since she didn't appear to still be in pain.

The third pt we saw at this facility was one I saw last week. She is one of our younger pts and is no longer eligible for hospice. When this happens, we discharge the pt, but call it "graduating". But, with her goods news, came bad news. Her mother developed an infection in her lone kidney, and was given about a week left to live. She is now actively dying, and may be taken on as one of our pts. (What a unique situation -- a daughter is d/c'ed and her mother is admitted, all at the same time!)

During our visit, the pt told us that we were going to switch things up today, and she would sing, and the MT would try and follow her. She had a pretty voice, and sang a handful of Christian worship songs for us. She even suggested we use them with our other pts. Despite my experience with praise and worship music, I didn't recognize any of the songs she sang, nor did she recognize mine. We enjoyed listening to each other's though. The MT attempted to follow along by strumming chords as the pt sang, but sometimes it was difficult since the pt tended to change keys in between different parts of the song. The MT left to document on the other two pts while the pt we were with made a phone call. I stayed in the room and tried to wait patiently for her to phone her friend. I was getting a bit antsy to be honest... after the pt hung up the phone, the MT and pt sang their favorite song, which was surprisingly a Christmas carol (which happened to be one of my brother's favorite Christmas songs growing up, so it must be a good one!)

Even though she begged us to stay, at the end, she said, "Ok fine now get out of here." I think she knew she was keeping us there and that we needed to move on, but I'm certain she would've liked to have had us stay the whole day. I'm glad she is graduating though -- she was far too young to be on hospice and has a teenage daughter to take care of.

At 1:00, the MT provided me with the experience of my first national Music Therapy conference call. On the 3rd Friday of every month, all the music therapists across the country from our company call in and talk for an hour about any issues they're having, any updates, things they want to discuss or brainstorm, etc. It was quite an interesting experience... Only in the music therapy world will you hear such an eclectic conversation... we're a unique bunch to say the least. It was neat I must admit to be on a call with a bunch of other MTs who do the same thing we do here in California.

After the conference call, I received a gift -- my Blackberry and laptop mini arrived!!!! So... now I have a company phone, computer, ID badge, jacket with a logo, and matching laptop bag. I'm gonna be stylin' and profilin' with my high tech gear and my company threads :-P

On to our last patient of the day. This woman was the cutest little Japanese lady I've ever seen. AND her family was sooo nice as well. It was such an enjoyable visit. They wheeled her over to the middle of the room facing the MT and I. She stared at the MT innocently. Sometimes she'd look over at me and smile. She even winked at the MT. The cutest part about her was her laugh. She just randomly laughed throughout the whole session. Just cute little bursts of giggles. It was precious.

And now I realize I describe some of my patients the same way a person would describe a five-year-old. But I guess that's because they have a lot of similarities... it's the circle of life. You enter the world, learn to talk, smile and giggle, make others happy just by being there and looking cute... and there's this innocence about children that makes them so endearing; so easy to love... and then you become an adult, and mature, and go through life... and then when you reach the end of your life, everything goes in reverse... the innocence returns... you might lose the ability to speak... and then you exit... and, depending on your beliefs, go off to somewhere new...

When I first decided to do this internship, I thought about how all my patients would be the same... I'd just be working with a bunch of old people, and every day is going to be the same thing over and over... but it's not like that at all. Even though most of our patients are close in age, they are all so incredibly unique. Their life stories, family dynamics, personalities, abilities, likes, dislikes... everything about them is special and different... it's much better than I could have ever hoped for :)