a little PT

well, i've hit the six-week mark here in Big Stone, which means i have only two left. its gone by really fast, the weekdays are busy and the weekends full of adventures (as you have seen). i haven't written much about my clinical experience mostly because i know many of you are not really interested in the physical therapy part of my journey. and to be honest, i wasn't feeling too excited about it by the time i reached midterm. i felt like i wasn't being challenged and that i was having to direct my own learning experiences by asking for feedback and voicing what i was ready to take on independently. fortunately, feedback is forced during the midterm eval, and i found out that my CI thought i was doing a pretty good job.
since then though, in the last two weeks, reasons i chose to come to a rural hospital for my clinical began to blossom. i evaluated a patient with a hand/wrist injury requiring desensitization therapy. if you're not a PT, then you probably don't know that most referrals for patients with a hand issue are going to hand certified specialists. these are PTs who specialize in the therapy of the wrist and hand (and entire upper extremity) because it is such an intricate animal. however, there are no specialists in this area, so these patients come to us. i was even learning a few tools probably more used by occupational therapists. next came a string of patients after MVAs and multiple surgical stabilizations of fractures requiring them to be wheelchair bound. this gave me the opportunity to practice a part of PT that has become very important to me. if i choose to go into an outpatient practice, i have vowed to never become a PT that ignores the basics, such as bed mobility and transfers. i think it is possible that in a high level sports medicine clinic, a PT may rarely ever have to address how a patient transfers out of bed. but i think on average, one will always be faced with patients where this is a critical matter of safety and becoming independent with one's care. whenever i saw patient enter the clinic in a wheelchair, i made a little self-reminder that i would address their mobility and transfers in my eval. and i had plenty of opportunities to do this.
on top of all the above, a patient with paraplegia came for therapy at the clinic. this i was sure was unique to being the only clinic in town. i'm thrilled to have the opportunity to work with him and be exposed to the different factors at play when someone is paraplegic. so after a slow start, this clinical actually has provided me with some unique experiences and provided me an opportunity to practice skills that form the foundation of my physical therapy experience.

a weekend with mom

when i first decided that i would be living for eight weeks in Wise County, VA, my mom expressed a desire to come out and visit an area of her home state that she had never seen. i had been compiling ideas of things to do ever since i arrived, and when i spoke to her last week she had only one request: let's go to Kentucky. and so we did. Sunday morning we began our drive toward Lynch, Kentucky (a chosen destination for obvious reasons) via Black Mountain, the tallest peak in the state. i had read on the internet that there was a small turn off at the state line where we could climb to the peak of the mountain where an FAA tower was in place. we drove about 1.5 miles and there it was. i said, should we turn around? but my mom's GPS device was showing only .3 miles back to route 160 where we had just been. we started down a dirt road and after a slow drive, i noticed the GPS said 3.1 miles to 160. hmmm. we decided to keep going. it soon became a very rocky path, with signs of recent rains washing away the rocks into uneven patterns and carving gullies into the edges of the path. we bumped down and farther down, much like i used to bump down the stairs on my butt as a child, taking care not to bottom out (pun intended). mom did a little side seat driving, directing me toward optimum paths free of drop offs while she clinched her seat belt. soon, an ATV/golf cart hybrid carrying a middle-aged couple came up behind us. i let them pass and used them as my guide down the mountain. i wasn't really nervous until the Garman showed no signs of knowing where in the world we were. we were just a bright blue cartoon car floating around in the blank green, hearing "drive to highlighted path" on repeat. we hoped that continuing to descend was a good sign, and i secretly hoped i wasn't going to have to test my nearly 10-year-old car further by turning around and climbing what we had just done. thankfully after about an hour of driving through unknown territory, constantly wondering if this road would just end or narrow or become a river, a highlighted pink route appeared on the GPS and we seemed to be driving toward it. all of a sudden, we popped out of the trees and onto a paved road. a road lined with pastel colored houses and manicured lawns. we were in Lynch, Kentucky. we realized we were actually on a side road and back tracked up main street to find the Welcome to Lynch sign (where we posed for a photo of course).
Lynch seemed slightly eerie to me. Eerie and odd. How could it not with a town motto of "Where coal mining is our heritage and bulldog and pirate legends live on." Pirates? Figures a town named Lynch would be crazy. I thought the homes that lined the streets in their Easter egg colors were quite quaint, but they were broken up by the deserted stone building, covered in vines, that at one point was a school as well as the abandoned coal shoots that crossed the road overhead. we were definitely in the heart of coal mining country and i wondered if the pastel facades served to lighten the gloom of this struggling industry.


Mom and I also had other adventures to the Breaks Interstate Park and Cumberland Gap. Check out the photos below.

The Breaks Interstate Park


The Breaks, called the Grand Canyon of the South


Cumberland Gap, a view of three states: Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee

HOTlanta

when asking around for things to do on the weekends in the area of Big Stone Gap, someone alerted me that Atlanta is only about 4 hours away. I immediately emailed my friends Carlo and Stef to see if they had any weekends for a visitor. Stef was planning on celebrating her birthday a few days early on July 10th, which marked the halfway point for my clinical, so I decided it would be perfect.
there is more than one way to get to Atlanta. i chose the straighter shot, but which also traversed the mountains of North Carolina and northern Georgia. it was slower going, but it was beautiful. I could equate it to the eastern/Appalachian Mountain version of driving the small mountainous road through towns like Ouray and Montrose, Colorado. Curvy roads and mountain passes, broken up by cute small towns that are vacation spots for local citizens. Unfortunately, two massive thunderstorms hit during my drive and it took nearly 6 hours to reach my destination.
but once i was there....well what can I say? Un finde lleno de travesuras. I ate Cuban food, danced to Latin music, met a lot of new people with interesting and diverse backgrounds. i hit up both an H&M and a Trader Joes. it was exciting but at the same time odd to be in a big city again. staying out past midnight was a change since my move to SW Virginia. shoot, seeing asian people was a change since my move to SW Virginia. and after my weekend dose of cultural diversity and city night life, i returned to the mountains.
monday morning it was raining, and a heavy mist was moving across the valley. it reminded me of the book the Mists of Avalon. its a King Arthur tale from the perspective of Morgaine who is a priestess at Avalon that is shrouded in mists, only lifted by those who know how. There, you are cut off from the rest of the world and only have knowledge of the outside through dreamlike visions. and thats how i felt on monday. i had penetrated the mists again, and i was again cut off, living amongst a people who really don't have a grasp on what goes on on the outside. and when thinking back on atlanta, it seemed like a blur.
that being said, i do enjoy and appreciate the life here. its quieter, slower paced, the scenery is incredible. but i think my trip to Atlanta made me realize that, at least while i'm young and unattached, i yearn for the diversity and the excitement that a big city offers.

fourth of july

since my last fourth of july was spent at Isla Amantani in Lake Titicaca, dancing around a bonfire, wearing traditional Quecha dress, and sipping a drink of coca leaves, pisco and milk, i figured i should probably do it up American style this year. and thats what I did. we grilled hamburgers and made various accoutrements to compliment them. not just various. too many. cabbage salad, breaded zucchini, red velvet whoopie pies. are you surprised?
after stuffing ourselves, we headed out to Bulitt Park, a regulation size football field/track used by the local high school in Big Stone. here are the benefits of living in a small town: we drove up to the neighborhood around the park, and although the streets were filling with cars, we found a spot, walked to the park, plopped down, watched fire works, got up and left. no traffic problems, no unruly crowds. and this was no po-dunk fireworks display. it was actually quite impressive and i was very satisfied with my independence day. grand finale

tonight's top story

something big was coming to town. real big. it's all that anyone could talk about for weeks. the radio gave daily updates about its arrival. and no it was not the president's caravan, a popular music group, or even a museum exhibit. it was a 1,300,000-pound generator headed for a new power plant under construction in St. Paul, Va. it had made its way all the way from Japan to Louisiana, then on to Knoxville where it began the last leg of its journey through the mountains of Virginia. it was bound for the new power plant via Route 58 from Cumberland Gap through Pennington Gap and then through our little town of Big Stone Gap. it was destined to make its 200 mile journey only from the hours of 8 pm to 5 am at a max speed of 10 mph. its size would take up an entire side of what everyone here calls "the four lane," which says to me that when this four-lane highway was first built in this area, it was a pretty big deal. and now they were going to block it with this 650-ton monstrosity. no wonder everyone was talking about it. well, that and this was wise county's news event of the summer. like you've probably already guessed, not much goes on around these parts.
when the day finally came for it to pass through Big Stone, we decided we had to see what all the hub-bub was about. we had heard that due to an overpass or bridge on the four lane, the giant generator was forced to pass through the main street of Big Stone Gap. we drove up around 6pm and people had already started to gather. lawn chairs, a tent set up with people selling food, musicians playing on the small stage in the park. they were turning it into a town event. police and firemen were posted along the main street blocking it from traffic and rigging a crane to lift the cabled stop-lights to a height that would allow the generator to pass. some even had to be taken down as you see above. as the evening wore on, more people began to gather and speak in hyperbole about the generator. i heard it took four hours for it to pass one house up near pennington. you know, 100 men walk along side it as it travels down the road. i heard this is just the first of four others. you know, it hasn't left pennington. it won't get here until after midnight. this last one was not an exaggeration. and so after soaking up the crowd, i returned home around 9pm.
the next morning, we got on the road to head to the clinic in Norton. the four-lane was partially blockaded with cones as we entered our on ramp with a gathering of equipment on the shoulder that said WIDE LOAD. is this it? no. it couldn't have only made it this far all night. it doesn't look big enough. once we got to the clinic, it was confirmed. that was the giant generator (that didn't look all that giant) and it had only made it a few miles outside of Big Stone after getting stuck for a few hours at two locations. on our way home that evening, it was still parked, causing a bit of a traffic jam as people pulled over to take photos. if you want to see the generator itself and hear more, check out this video from the local news.