Pureed Eggs and Ham, Sam I Aren't

I've only been at my internship a week, but it's given me a lot to think about...

Today, as I helped a patient eat ham and eggs, both still in the shape of an ice cream scoop, I decided that there should be a dysphagia-themed Dr. Seuss-esque book. She would not eat them with a cue, she would not could even chew....

And so you know, just because you have to chew your milk, it doesn't mean it's rotten.

Just because the lawn mower shredded your dentures, it doesn't mean you can't still enjoy a majority of your favorite foods...they can be prepared in a variety of textures.

If your patient is going to forget who you are every time she looks away, it's a sign of progress when, upon re-introducing yourself for the 10th time in 30 mins, your patient says, "Amanda? oh. right. You're the funny one."

It's also progress when your elderly memory impaired patient is aware enough to quiz you. Patient, "What's this? (pointing to a blanket)" Amanda, the intern, "Hmm...can you tell me what that is?" Patient (smiling mischievously), "It's a blanket. Just thought I'd through in some humor."

Just because you aren't 5 ft 2 inch Reese Witherspoon, it doesn't mean you can't still be the star of your own awkward moment. Male elderly patient, "[incoherent mumbling]...Wendover or Vegas." Amanda, still the intern, "What's that? I didn't catch what you were saying. Remember to think LOUD!" Male elderly (and married) patient, "Are you married?" Amanda, the unassuming intern, "Nope, I'm not. Ok, so next is 'Deep breath, and OOOOO." Male elderly (and undeterred) patient, "Why not?" Amanda, the sometimes unprepared intern, "Oh, no one has asked me, yet. Ok, let's here a nice, clear OOOO." Male elderly (and you can see it coming now, can't you) patient, "I do! I'll marry ya!" Amanda, the aspiring cool as a cucumber intern, "You already have a wife and that's not what we talk about in speech therapy." Male elderly (and insisitant) patient, "But I love you!" He doesn't have a bus pass, but he does have a motor home...

Chinese is truly a tonal language. If you don't understand the words, you will understand the tone of voice.

Some patients should come with subtitles.

Don't wear undershirts/tank tops under a sweater if it closely matches your skin tone. Without glasses and from a distance, some patient's will deem your outfit scandalous.

Phlegm is not my phavorite.

When inquiring about patient charts, introduce yourself to the head nurse at the nurse's station BEFORE you ask about confidential matters...or else be prepared to be recieved as a wandering patient.

Don't laugh at inspirational quotes posted in your facility. If you must, laugh to yourself.
For example: “Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall” --Confucius

Above all, remember that moment by unpredictable moment, you are serving God's children. Treat them as such.

Hungry dogs, Japanese tourists, and brine stank

My wonderful boyfriend Aaron was here for the weekend and we had ourselves some funny adventures. We had other not-so-noteworthy ambitions for the weekend, but here are some of the funnier moments.

1. We had a picnic at Veteran's park next to the Utah State Capital building in Salt Lake City. It was a beautiful park, complete with a cool breeze, warm sun, babbling brook, and hungry dogs. We picnic-ed with a bucket of KFC chicken and soon discovered that even the most well behaved dogs can't resist the aroma of Original Recipe. I was surprised to discover a wet nose sniffing inches away from my chicken and biscuit. His master called and he very slowly heeded the call. The other dog that was with them took a little extra encouragement. For about 3-5 minutes, the dog stood staring at us, tail wagging, and obviously suffering from the internal battle of "to chicken, or not to chicken." It took a collar and leash to pry that poor pooch away from our bucket of deep fried temptation.






2. We (independently) toured the Capital building. After our picnic and after dragging ourselves back up to my car at the top of what seemed a very steep ravine (that's what we get for eating so unhealthy...), we decided to take a tour of the Capital building. As we were crossing the street, a large yellow tour bus pulled up to the curb. We weren't sure if we could just walk in and take our own tour, so Aaron joked that maybe we could try to blend in with the yellow tour bus group. I said that with our luck, it would be a bunch of Japanese tourists....and as we reached the sidewalk, we watched as the first of many Japanese tourists unloaded from their big yellow tour bus! What were the odds? We laughed and laughed, and then took pictures so we could laugh for years to come. (If you look at the people taking pictures in the background, you'll see that they really were Asian tourists...) When we finally got inside the building, neither one of us wanted to wait another 10 minutes for the guided tour, so we improvised.










3. We went to the Great Salt Lake. As soon as we stepped out of the car, Aaron started gagging on the repulsive and pungent odor of the Lake. He couldn't understand why anyone would use it as a recreational destination. ("Surf board rentals?! really?!?") On our way to the water's edge, we had to navigate our way through dozens of seagull carcasses (carcaci?..) Eww! At one point, I stepped in a particularly soggy spot, slipped, and fell. I landed pretty gracefully, though. Aaron was mostly concerned that I now had "contamination" (smelly sand) on my hands and I needed to wash it off immediately. As we approached the water, we quickly changed course because Aaron spied "fermenting stank." I washed off my hands and we stood there, not breathing through our noses, and enjoyed the view. Every now and then, Aaron would forget and would end up with a hefty whiff of the "putrid stank." My favorite quote from that adventure was, "No wonder these people were so industrious. Somebody must 've stood here and said, 'Look, we can either stay here and smell the stank, or we can go to work. Maybe we should build something to shelter us from the stank." Aaron was definitely not a fan of the the Great Salt Lake..but he is a fan of me, so he was a good sport about it. I even made him touch the water, so he could feel how warm it was...the results are in the video below :)

Culattes (cu-LA-teez) and Culinary Ambitions

So I've spent the last few days cooking and preparing for my fiesta tomorrow night. This blog has opened up a whole new world to me and totally prompted photo documentation of my life. Today, I managed to multi-task like a champ. Thanks to Larkin and her willingness to put up with my multi-tasking while we worked on our project for Dr. Culatta's class, I was able to accomplish quite a bit today.

I've also decided that Dr. Culatta's projects (even the assignment directions) are like mental stretches to tone and shape. It's more than mental yoga, less than Tae-Bo, so I've decided that it's like pilates...or in this case, Culattes. (cu-LA-teez)

When Larkin arrived, is was total chaos. My dad had just called. The vent over the stove wasn't sufficient venting for the amount of smoke billowing from 2 pans of roasting chiles..so the smoke alarm was going off. Larkin was given the post of fanning the smoke detector with a small cutting board while I scrambled from room to room to open windows and doors. I'm proud to say that we only managed to let in 1 or 2 flies. My poor roommate Alfreda was upstairs in the shower and didn't know I was downstairs cooking. She heard the alarm mid suddsing and panicked. She came flying downstairs in her bathrobe to find out which part of the house was burning down and why. Shak made a cameo which involved the "Harriet Tubman Dance." Larkin, Shak, and I all decided that the "Harriet Tubman Dance" would probably get us banned from public schools and so we shouldn't use it as an extension project for Culattes.

Eventually, the smoke vented. The project projected. And I further added to Aaron's belief that he is turning me into a Mexican.

Yesterday, I made salsa (red and green).






























Today, I made:









RED CHILE SAUCE FOR THE ENCHILADAS...AND...








ROASTED GREEN CHILES FOR CHILE RELLENOS...AND...







CALABACITAS (ZUCCHINI, YELLOW SQUASH, ONION, GREEN CHILE)...AND...




CUT UP FRUIT FOR THE FRUIT SALAD...AND..


am currently attempting horchata....no pictures, though because, really, rice soaking in sugar, water, and cinnamon just isn't that exciting.


Tomorrow, I'll make the spanish rice, approve/reject the horchata, and finish up some other last minute tidbits before all my lovely friends arrive!


Courtesy of Larkin...

Academic Bulimia

For the past 24 hrs or so, I've been binging on every scrap of SLP-related material I could find. It was a crazed, driven need to consume as much knowledge as I could stuff into my brain. I barely slept. I lay in bed last night, thinking about where I could get another fix. I woke up this morning with a buzz from all the words and concepts I'd consumed. I was so full but I knew I wanted more. I needed more.

I scrounged in my desk for every learning addict's favorite tool...my #2 pencil. I found 2...but no sharpener! Feeling anxious and rushed, I added a stop at Allen's to my itinerary. I hurried through the aisles and in the bad, yellow lighting, I felt like I was in some Napolean Dynomite horror-flick. I grabbed premium grade pencils..the ones that were already sharpened, and headed to the cooler for a juice. From there, it was to the bakery for a convenient breakfast donut. I realized that my 2-day binge on communication disorders was hitting critical when I passed a tottering old woman shuffling by me with her cart. Patient displays tremor in the neck and shoulder areas. Gate seems unaffected. How's her speech? Oral-mech. Assymetry? Weakness? Dysarthria? type...Degenerative. Parkinson's? LSVT. Motor-speech. Dr. Dromey!

On my way out the door, I passed a girl about my age, hovered over the trash can. As I passed by, I realized we were the same. She was hurridly sharpening a handful of #2 pencils. "I bought the pre-sharpened ones," I said. "Oh. I thought about that, but they were more expensive," she replied. "I know, but today I decided to go for conveience instead of cost." I got in my car and drove away.

After circling all the faculty and staff lots like a vulture waiting for the lions to have their fill of the wildabeast, I finally settled for the long walk up the hill. I wanted to get out and find my testing center, my desk, a place to organize my #2 pencils, but I couldn't get out of the car without one more fix from the large blue book of SLP knowledge sitting in my front seat. I kept flipping pages. One more fact. One more scrap of knowledge to get me through the test.

Mentally licking my fingers from the quick fix I just had in the car and literally wiping chocolate frosting off my face, I trudged up the hill to the Praxis. The lobby was buzzing with elementary ed teachers, health ed, chemistry majors, and more. I found the only other aspiring SLP and we engaged in nervous small talk until we were ushered in to take the test. I lined up my #2 pencils and waited to vomit my knowledge into 120 small ovals in varying columns of A-E. Two hours later, after having regurgitated what felt like everything I had pumped into my system, I walked out, came home, and crashed. Now the 3 week wait begins to see if I passed my standardized intervention or if the binge will start all over, again.

La Huera Loca

La huera loca means "crazy white girl" and it's the name some crazy Mexican gave me at a job I worked at last fall. I was living in Albuquerque for an externship for my grad program through BYU and worked an evening shift at a residential treatment facility for at-risk youth. Intense! Teens screaming, threatening to hurt you, trying to commit suicide, or attempting escape. In the midst of all the chaos, I met my best friend, Aaron. It still amazes us to look back and see the evolution our relationship has taken from the day we became co-workers through now, where we have been dating for the past 7 months.

I went to Albuquerque expecting to spend my days fixing bad "r" sounds and teaching social skills as an SLP intern. I worked with an amazing SLP who taught me so much and treated me like a collegue, took me to lunch, and became a dear friend. I LOVED working with my kiddos! After a full day of playdoh pies, go-we-ha-has (gorillas), and predicting just what might happen if you did indeed Give a Mouse a Cookie, I would dash off to work and spend the rest of my day asserting myself against angry, hormonal, slightly (sometime clinically) psychotic teenagers. Somewhere in the midst of keeping me safe from the danger, making me laugh to relieve the stress, and hiding in the "attic" after work (my friend's car...so the 3 of us wouldn't get in trouble for chatting in the parking lot), Aaron fell in love with me. And I fell in love with him.


Our first date was a late night venture to IHOP after work for hot chocolate. Two nights later, we went to Village Inn. Then it was IHOP, again. We talked for hours, sometimes til dawn. Aaron says he knew from the first day he met me that there was something different about me that he was really fascinated by. He liked me from that moment and spent the next few months getting up the courage to ask me out. We had about 4 or 5 dates in the first week after he first asked me out. That Saturday, he showed up dressed in slacks and a nice shirt, holding a single rose, ready to take me to a local art museum. Later, we walked around Old Town, went to dinner, and then went back to my apartment to watch a movie. It took him nearly all the way through Count of Monte Cristo to commit to holding my hand! I knew exactly what he was up to because every time I left the couch for something, I would come back to find that the space on my side of the couch had significantly decreased... When he was getting ready to leave, he very respectfully asked if he could kiss me goodnight....and I said...no. not tonight. I still can't believe I told him no, but it seems to have added to the gold star count I was racking up because it showed him I was a "respectable woman." He's been the first guy to ever bring me flowers. The first to make me a candlelight dinner. The first to show up to make me dinner when I'm sick. The first to give me a card on my last day with my students because he knew I'd need cheering up. He's been the first man to really, really love me.



My crazy Mexican has gradually been trying to convince me that he's turning me into a Mexican, too. The day we went to meet his mother, I got a nervous and rushed crash course in Mexican etiquette. Turns out, I've been practicing Mexican etiquette all my life and didn't even realize it.
I spent Christmas Eve with Aaron's family and what an adventure that was! I'd been battling allergies all day and so was drugged up on Benedryl. Aaron's mom gave me an extra strength Benedryl when I got to the house and I spent the next few hours trying to keep up with an entirely spanish-speaking family through the haze induced by one single little pink pill. I also managed to pass the 4 Tamale test. Apparently, Aaron decided it would prove to the family that I was a good woman if I would eat the LARGE bowl of posole and the FOUR tamales he served me for dinner. Now, I'm a girl with an appetite but that was a LOT of food. I couldn't bring myself to waste the homemade food, so...I ate it all. And now I'm totally in with the extended family.















This past Valentine's Day, my crazy Mexican came to see his huera and we had a wonderful weekend.



















La huera loca is the name some crazy Mexican gave me at a job I
worked at last fall and what I've learned is that was really
his way of saying, "I'm going to love you someday."