For The Birds

Lola, Tania, and I used this last week of mine to really get the most important things done. For Lola, it was arranging the corner of her apartment that was crammed with so much stuff that she couldn't get to her birds to feed them. And for Tania, it was painting her birdhouse.

Before Lola and I started, she wanted me to help put her pain patches on. She turned around, hunched over, and blurted, "Put it above my crackademia". Then she laughed, turned around, and said, "The crackademia. What's that mean? Phobia of the butt crack!" This was going to be fun.

This was the task at hand: Lola wanted to remove the big file cabinet sitting under her book shelf sitting under her two bird cages. She wanted to replace it with her chested drawers and bring the file cabinet out to the dumpster. The first thing to do was to figure out how to even start. There was no room in that little corner of hers or anywhere else for that matter. Lola's apartment was full of clutter and she was the first to admit it. We stood there, staring at everything, when Lola said, "I have a dream. As soon as we get our shit together, the dream will come true". We ended up piling things on top of more things and inching our way around the furniture -with me all the while demonstrating and teaching Lola about good body mechanics. With Lola's impulsive tendencies, I had to stop her many times because she would pull instead of push, or not bend her knees, or lift boxes away from her body, or not initiate rest breaks when she was clearly fatigued and out of breath. It took a good hour and a half to get the job done, to sweep all the bird seed away (until Lola knocked over the cup she swept the seed into and had to start all over again), find a dollie in the building, and wheel the file cabinet to the dumpster. Lola was so happy she gave me the biggest hug as she said, "Thank you, baby girl. You're my girl."


From the first day I met Tania, I couldn't help but notice her wooden birdhouse on top of her kitchen shelf. When I asked her about it, she told me she always wanted to paint it but couldn't open her paint bottles. So that's what we did on my last visit with her. She's been doing so well with her theraputty exercises -doing them at home twice a day when not even asked of her. I can tell because when I have her demo them to me, she knows exactly how to do them and it almost looks as if she's using a less resistant putty than she started out with. Tania was now able to open her paint bottles by herself.


Tania's stroke affected her fine motor coordination but not as severely as I have seen in past clients on fieldwork. The great thing is that, even though Tania stopped arts and crafts after her stroke, she still loves the thought of doing them and using her hands as much as possible, which gives her excellent rehab potential.  Tania was able to paint her birdhouse on our last visit in about fifty minutes. It was slow, but she got it done. She told me, "When I do crafts, I get lost. I can go on for hours." I told her I was the same way. We cleaned up together -Tania putting the caps back on the paint bottles, rinsing out the brushes, crumpling the newspaper to throw away, walking to and from the sink and trash can and table. It was all great therapy and she knew it. I was so proud of her. She listens and follows-through with everything asked of her -a therapist's perfect client. The past few days she's been walking by the gym using her walker instead of her powerchair. She's been walking faster and appears more stable. The PT assistant says she's been making so much progress. I told Tania I was so excited for her and that I can only do so much in outpatient therapy. Progress is seen when clients carry out and follow through at home. Tania does just that.