different strokes for different folks

I am going to touch very briefly on a topic one of my fellow MT interns did, which is Music Therapy is not for everyone. While I have not met anyone who fits this subject yet, I have met some who.... usual MT techniques don't necessarily work for. This kid is going to require us to be very creative.

Every patient we see is different, and they all have different needs. Sometimes a pt. is very active and wants to get up and run around, sometimes the pt. is sleepy, or confined to his or her bed. And sometimes.... they just want to sing! I've said it before and I will say it again, the key to this internship and Music Therapy in general is being flexible! If you want to intern in a hospital and you lack this trait, brush up on it fast, cause MT is not the profession for you if you don't have it, and an internship will drive you crazy!! Anyways... back to my original story, my very first week of my internship I saw a pt. and last week I saw her again. We did some instrument stuff, like with the Q-chord (love that thing), but mostly she just wanted to sing along with me, so we did some of that. Okay, we did a lot of that! I have never before learned a song on the spot with a pt, but I did in that session, because she really wanted to sing it. It was Rihanna's "Take a Bow", and I got her playing a drum along with the beat. And then we sang Justin Bieber's "Baby", and by that I mean the chorus and Ludacris's part, because that's all I could remember at the moment. It was epic. Point is, I had planned some other stuff to do, but singing was what she really needed, and I have never seen her so interactive and smiling so much! I was still able to focus on my goals for her, just with a different approach.

Speaking of being flexible... this week I am starting my second rotation, where I will be in the inpatient rehab unit and providing procedural support in the Botox clinic. So far the rehab pts. we will be seeing this week are all male, and 15,16,16,&17 years old. That's, um, VERY different from the babies-and-oldest-patient-being-12 thing I had going on in my last rotation. It's time to flex those working with teens muscles again!

flyin' solo

In the words of a former Sunshine camper, "What a great day, what a great life it's been..."

This week (and last week) I have been pretty much on my own leading sessions. Ashley is back this week, so she observed me in some of them, but a lot of times I have been seeing kiddos all on my lonesome! And it has been fantastic. This week I also got my very own pager. woot.

I had a pt. I have been following for about 2 weeks, so I got to put in an assessment for her AND get to address those goals in a session (which does not always happen). It was so cool to see her grow and change while in the hospital, and a lot of that had to do with Music Therapy.

Kids are all so funny and different. There are those who tend to give you a hard time to get a session. They really make you work for it, but once you get started they love it. Then you have those like my one friend from this week. Literally jumped out of his skin when he saw me coming he was so excited. This kid had one of the biggest smiles ever when doing music, and then that affect totally switched when a doctor came in. It's crazy.


Last week I got to lead an intervention in a different MT group, got to go to my first rehab rounds, and I got my orientation to the Botox unit, but more on that later. I have also been seeing a lot of babies lately! I love working with babies, from the itty bitties to the less itty bitty. I got a smile out of one today who never smiles. Ever. Tomorrow will be my last contact with babies for awhile because next week I start my second rotation. This rotation will be in the Botox unit and with Rehab kiddos. I'm excited to get some new experiences under my belt and to meet some awesome TBI kids.

So forever ago I made a list of goals for myself for this internship. One of them was about using the piano and getting more comfortable with it. I can say that yesterday I used piano in every one of my sessions with pts. Not so today, because I pretty much just saw wee ones. Another one of my goals was to make friends in time to see Harry Potter. Another check off my list! Bah I can't believe it's all over. It makes me a little sad, but I'm glad I got to see it all the way through and really be there when it all happened.

Well that's all for now!

Broadening Horizons...

This past week has been absolutely crazy. I have been leading all my own sessions, documenting the sessions, and starting an assessment of the patients I have seen... including an 11-year-old girl who is tired, sick, in pain, and doesn't want to do much of anything. Which brings me to today's topic: Broadening your Horizons.

By that, I mean your Musical Horizons. Unfortunately, I have not yet met a kid whose favorite artists are Mumford and Sons and Adele. Shocking, I know. When you are working with kids, you need to use music that they are going to be able to sing along to and recognize, and like the girl above, they are NOT going to play with you if it's a song they have never heard before, isn't ridiculously silly, or doesn't have some other goal with it (counting, relaxation, etc.) Example: I FINALLY got her to strum the Q chord with me after playing through a verse of Katy Perry's firework. Do you think she would have done that for Weezer's "Say it Ain't So"? Not likely.

So to be a good Music Therapist, you have to put your prejudices aside and be able to play and sing a variety of styles, or you won't connect with your pts. Thank GOODNESS for my little knowledge of some T Swift songs and Bieber (shout out to the CeeTLes!), but it's not enough when working with an adolescent girl. So I am currently learning some of the lovely Selena Gomez's stuff for my next session with the aforementioned pt. I'm definitely not going to listen to her all the time, but it's not awful.

Now, with 2 Selena songs under my belt, a handful of simple piano techniques, and a score of T Swift by my side, I am prepared for tomorrow's session!

Repeats and Retreats

There is so much learning going on in my internship it is absolutely ridiculous. I have already lead so many different sessions that were awesome and some pretty challenging ones.

To the challenging ones straight away. I had a session today with a kiddo and 2 siblings. 2 very young, excited, loud, and attention-demanding siblings. It is so hard to discipline them and yet still focus on the patient while making it a positive therapeutic experience for everyone. Needless to say, by the time I left I felt a little cross-eyed. I handled it, but it was TOUGH. I got a few handy tips from my current mentor that I will be trying out next time I pass by that room, though.

Today I learned that 2 patients I saw earlier in my internship are back, and they are not ones with CF or another chronic illness, and that happens sometime. It brings back the feelings when they left ("yay they are going home"/"i am gonna miss their cute faces!") and turn to, "Why are you back???" and, "darn it, if you are going to be here you are getting music therapy!" So hopefully I will be able to get in with them later this week.

Oh yeah, this week is me kinda on my own with the MT-BC I was shadowing now shadowing me to make sure I don't fall flat on my face/help if something crazy happens. But next week, I will be all alone. Me, all by myself, doing what I want to do for the rest of my life!

I did my very first bedside intervention with piano today. I was very nervous going into it; piano is not my forte. The two sessions I used keyboard in went well, but I am all for learning new ways to integrate that into my interventions, besides just accompanying myself on it (although that is probably something I could work on, too). Bottom line- piano makes me want to run away and forget it exists. If anyone knows any pointers, I can use all the help I can get! It is just something I have always found a little intimidating. I am much more comfortable with guitar, drums, ukulele, umm.... recorder. haha. Ah!

I may potentially be working on some guitar teaching with one of the cuties I got to see today! Yay guitar!

Ghost Hospital & the City

Happy 4th of July!! It's the day that America gave a well-written 'buzz off' to the Brits. It's also the first Independence Day that I have spent all professional like and not wearing an American Flag bandana in a few years; quite a switch.

Today I went into work at the hospital (Intern Day!!) It was lots of fun to see some more areas of the hospital, and see one of my own pts. And I got to sing in Spanish! But... there was hardly ANYONE there today. It really was like a ghost town. No people = no line at the Cafeteria, though, which was nice.

LAST week... I went to see The Band Perry live, and for free! Kansas City, like most cities, has a free concert series during the summertime, and every Thursday is a Country artist. I'm not a big fan of country, but I do like the Band Perry, and they were fantastic live. I actually wrote a blog post about them last year right after I bought their EP. The concert was great but crowded, so we didn't get a great view of them, but it was okay! Anyways, the show was tons of fun (it included a cover of 'Fat Bottomed Girls' by Queen, Free-Falling, American Pie, Love the Way You Lie, and a bunch of others) and they sound live just like they do on their CD. Kimberly (lead singer) has a great voice, and I love that the band is made up of siblings. If you do not already listen to them, you totally should.... Find out more about them at www.thebandperry.com

This Friday (the plan anyways) I am going down to the Plaza to check out possibilities for me to head down there and busk on Friday nights! We will see how it goes. One of my current projects is to find all the best Happy Hour deals around me. Tomfooleries on the Plaza has a TON of food for just $4, including spicy chicken soft tacos. Yum! I still have lots of places to go though. Stay tuned so you know where to go should you ever visit the lovely Kansas City, MO.

Activity of the Week!

This is my "activity of the week", although I cannot promise that this will become a trend. I came up with this activity because my toddler pt likes multi-step activities, and the end portion of it is an activity I knew that she liked. This little shin-dig works on motor skills, body part identification, color identification, and following directions.

Materials: 

• small egg shakers
• 2 boomwhackers
• bucket
• your lovely singing voice

My little ditty: (numbers are scale degrees)
1                 2   2       3    1     1  5     5      4        3  2   1
(Pt's name) has a (color) shaker to shake, shake all around.
 3       3   3   3       3                                 4     4  4   4      4                        
Shake it by your (head, toes, belly, etc), shake it by your (same as before),
5       5   4     3    2     1
now send that shaker home!

Procedure:

1. Put the eggs on the floor next to pt.
2. Sing song.
3. Right before, "send that shaker home", pick up bucket or drum upside down and hold boomwhacker so it is a tunnel from the pt to the bucket.
4. Motion for pt to send egg down the boomwhacker and into the bucket.
5. Jump a little when it the egg hits the bottom of the bucket.
6. Repeat until all eggs are in the bucket.

This little game did wonders for the pt I worked with. It got said pt to follow directions to shake the egg all around because the pt LOVED sending it down that tube and the sound it made when it hit the bucket. There are lots of ways to extend or adapt this activity. You can also get the pt to send two eggs down two different boomwhackers at the same time.

So... yeah! I hope you liked my activity and get a chance to use it at some point.

Holy Goodness it's July!

I have survived almost a month of my internship and half of my first rotation! Crazy!! 

So this week was full of fun, new, exciting, and nerve-wracking moments for me as I started doing more things on my own. Right off the bat I lead the weekly group session by myself. I got to plan for it, so I planned about a billion activities and ways to do them for all different age groups... and I ended up with a 2yr old and a 3yr old. Which was awesome, because they were great and I got to try out a bunch of things with the younger crowd. I got to see one of them the next day for an individual session which went fantastically. It was awesome. Because of that awesome session with my nonverbal little one, I have decided to share an activity with you all. But more on that later. I also ended up leading a whole session just sort of on the fly and made up some pretty good songs, but alas, as quick as they cam they went, and I have forgotten all. :( I have 2 kiddos to see on my own on this lovely 4th of July!

This week (and the coming week) was Camp Sunshine back in GA, and it's the first time I have missed it since I was 8 years old. Since 1997!! It has been pretty tough not being there, but the pain was softened a little because this week I had the chance to observe a session with one of my people! (kiddos with cancer) woohoo! He was a cutie, too. And he loves Music Therapy.

One of the things I learned this week was that sometimes, it's okay for a session to not really involve any music. Sometimes that kid needs someone to talk to, and you as a MT are that person. Music may get you in the door, but it's okay if every once in a while that's all it really does. And, sometimes it's okay to just jam with a kid who knows what they are doing, which brings me to the next thing I want to talk about: my new personal goals. They are:

1. Learn more about the bass guitar! Sometimes that is the instrument that really gets you working with adolescents, and I need to be able to at least look like I know something about it when working with them.
2. Brush up on my Spanish. There is a pretty decent Spanish speaking population here, and word got out that I took Spanish in college, so if we ever should meet someone who does, I better get it together. I wrote down a couple of helpful phrases that I will use when talking to a pt or caregiver who only speaks Spanish, because that translator is not always going to be there!

Those are just the latest additions to my goal list. Now the fun stuff, the activity I promised will be coming at a later time. I really feel it deserves its own post!