Cans for K!

This week at FCRT one of the mums of a young girl in the group I help out with started a campaign. Its called Cans for "K" (I'm going to call her K here as I can't use full names due to confidentiality arrangements!) Anyway, K has Cerebal Pasly which is a group of disorders which affect the body in a number of ways.

It can affect the brain and nervous system functions such as hearing, learning, movement, seeing and thinking, so as you can imagine, it can have devastating effects for the person with the disorder and the people close to them too. There are over four different types of Cerebal Palsy and they all have a range of symptoms, but the most notable past of the whole group of disorders is that there is no cure for them. Therefore a whole group of people are involved in just keeping the patient comfortable and giving them as much independence as possible. A primary care doctor, dentist, social worker, physio, SLT, OT and other specialists, including a neurologist, rehabilitation physician, pulmonologist, and gastroenterologist can be involved in a single case of Cerebal Palsy.

 But in regard to making life easy for an individual and the people around them, Occupational Therapists play a huge roll. In "K"'s case they have provided her with a special square walking frame, as well as tripod walking sticks for short distance posture improving walking. Their next step is to create "K" a specially modified trike to improve her mobility and build leg muscle tone. This is where the campaign comes in! The trike is going to cost over £1500 (I think) to design and build with the seal of approval from professionals that it will be suitable and beneficial for her, so this money is going to be raised by donations of cans for mass recycling.   

For any further info on Cerebal palsy have a look at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001734/ , its a medical encyclopedia that gives an overview of the disorder.

I hope you found this interesting!

Charlie

Swallowed pen recoverd 25 years later!!

I was reading the headline news a few days ago and came across a really strange case! A 76 year lady had swallowed her pen 25 years earlier and has just had an operation to have it removed from her abdomen after she developed sudden weight loss and diarrhoea.

The news told that years earlier she had been examining a white dot on her tonsils with it, slipped and swallowed it accidently, both her husband and GP dismissed her claims after an abdominal exam and after it didn't show up on X-ray.

The pen didn't appear to have any effect on her health atall, and it wasn't until she suffered some weight loss and diarrhoea that doctors discovered it after a CT scan and removed it to prevent the risk of perforation of her intestines should the pen begin to pass further through her.

Anyway, turns out this isn't an usual case, and that people swallow unusual things all the time for example a man swallowed a USB stick! 

I just thought this was rather interesting because of the extraordinary length of time that the pen was inside the woman for (apparently the felt tip came out working too 25 years later!) so thought I'd share it. So, to all of you out there that have ever been dared to swallow something just for a laugh... You might end up being stuck with it for quite a while - best not to find out really!

Charlie

Back to FCRT!

FCRT stands for the Fortune Centre of Riding Therapy and is a charity organisation that works with children and young adults with mental and physical disabilities. For the past year I have been volunteering every Saturday morning helping with children aged between three and eight who have mental disabilities such as Downs Syndrome, Autism and general Learning disabilities; and physical disabilities such as problems with leg alignment and similar problems (I can't give much detail due to confidentiality contracts). Therapy through horses is offered to students. We find that students identify well with the horses, speaking to them through the horses boosts communication with children who have linguistic difficulties, while the motion of horse riding only on a pad (instead of a saddle) helps improve balance skills and improve muscle tone in weak children.

I find my volunteering so rewarding because I have been involved for quite a time and have seen the children improve so much. We have had children who would scream upon seeing the horses and refuse to go anywhere near them, patience and determination are needed to keep going. It is so amazing to see progress in these children, and know that you helped to make that possible. Also, it is lovely to see the children really develop relationships with the volunteers and see the anxious learn to trust helpers and the weak grow stronger both outside and inside. Parents seem to really value the work we do with their children, it gives them a break as well as a chance to witness first hand the progress their children are making.

Anyway,  the first week since Christmas has gone well, and its lovely to see that all the children remember all of the names of the volunteers and the names of the ponies, their weekly riding sessions must make an impact on them too!

Have a look at what goes on! http://www.fortunecentre.org/

Charlie

Jan '12 exams done and dusted!

Well, I can definitely say the last few weeks have been stressful ones! One of the things about knowing where you want to get to in life is that you know what you need to achieve to get there... and for medicine, thats alot!! Biology seemed to go well, the paper was pretty straight forward, though I spent ages revising protein synthesis amongst other things and quite a few of my main revision topics didn't even make an appearance in the exam! Chemistry seemed like a reasonable paper and C2 seemed ok too, the last question was quite abstract but I managed to handle it (this suprised me!) and came up with an answer which I later disovered was the same as the total maths geniuses in my class *chuffed*!!  

Oh well, its all over for now and this has been the most relaxing (and cold!) weekend I've had in quite a while... Although, Mum is still revising for her January exams next week (she's retraining in Occupational Therapy at Southampton University and loving it) but that does still mean that the house is littered with revision notes and files of all shapes and sizes!

Well, I'm going to get back to enjoying not having the feeling of looming homework for a while!

Charlie