My Internship

I'm finally doing my first internship for my program. I am going to Life Care Centers of America at Bountiful fulltime for 8 weeks. It is a nursing home, and I work a lot with residents on practicing swallowing exercises, and strategies to make swallowing stronger. Many of them have had pneumonia a number of times when their food and drink enter their airway, rather than the esophogus. It's a serious problem, and it's nice to see some progress over time. I also work some with individuals with dementia, and try to help their cognition a little bit. It's interesting to learn how much Medicare limits what you can and cannot do with residents.

It is quite a commute to and from Bountiful, but it's worth it to be earning my clinical hours and to finally be working towards graduation in that sense. It has been difficult to get up and out of the apartment by 6 every morning, but it's helped that I drop Benjamin off at BYU before I head out. At least we're both dragging by 8:00 pm, and ready for early bedtime. We can do anything for just 8 weeks, right?

To help it go by more visually, I made a paper chain so that I can tear a link every day, and SEE how the appointed time is getting shorter all the time. It really helps. This is a picture of the chain closer to the beginning. It's looking superlong, isn't it?