Physical Therapy (Last Tuesday)

This was one of the most engaging days in the program. In the morning, I shadowed one of the PTs in the clinic and was exposed to the Neurocom machine, a $100,000+ machine originally designed by NASA for its astronauts to gauge visual and vestibular functioning. Essentially, this was like a simplified virtual reality game. The afternoon was spent driving around the area with Jeff, the PT who does the home care visits. We visited three patients and each was pretty memorable. Among these patients we essentially hit three spheres of society--the wealthy upper/middle class, the mid-lower blue-collar working class, and the farm. Between homes, I enjoyed some delighful conversation with Jeff ranging from his "Magic" cruise (he plays the card game), how he ended up from Dixon after growing up in Wicker Park near the city, and many other random topics. Below are some photos from a farm in Harmon, IL that boasts a population of 300 or so.


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One thing that stuck with me was Jeff''s reason for coming to Dixon after spending much of his life in the city. What he had realized was that after spending time in both settings as a student, he realized that he would be doing the same exact thing in both settings and that the only striking difference between Chicago and Dixon was the people. People were "nicer" in Dixon. In Chicago, most people were "just civil" at best and he didn't want that. The home visits were also pretty memorable because, as Jeff put it, we were entering an intimate setting and helping people in the environment where they felt most comfortable and could be the most vulnerable, in contrast to the sterility of a doctor's office. What more, home visits enabled the health care worker to see the environment in which an individual lives and understand even the simplest obstacles that a person must overcome on a day to day basis when dealing with a medical issue