Tahg Senior Project

  May 24th, 2021 Second to last day of senior project has come to an end, how sad. I have really enjoyed this time to really dive into something I care deeply about. Today was a short day for Teige and I because I had to rehearse for senior dinner. Therefore, we only spent two hours today learning about how to suture. We ordered a suture kit at the beginning of senior project and it just recently came! I am sure it will still get used much more by us. We watched a video and then just practiced suturing. We even practiced on a banana. It was very funny, but also a super cool experience. I am sure that suturing an actually human being is much different and I am excited to see what that is like, except I am not excited for anyone to injure themselves so that I have to suture, I am not a monster. Tomorrow, we are back at Ragged Mountain Physical Therapy working with our favorite mentor, Diane! We have finally reached 55 hours, and we are even a little bit over!

And just like that, we are finished with the second week of senior project, and only have two whole days left! What? That is so crazy to me, it feels like we just started. Before I know it, I will be walking across the stage at graduation, and I will officially be done with Proctor. Now that makes me upset! I have really enjoyed senior project, like a lot. Teige and I have been having a blast watching surgeries online and working with Diane Fowler at Ragged Mountain Physical Therapy across the street from campus. This is making me very excited to go into medicine, I can hardly wait. Well, actually, I can, I do not really want to go to med school at the moment. Anyways, I feel like I learned a lot this week, even though we did a lot of the same stuff that we did last week. First off, I learned how to read over a patients chart in physical therapy. Although it was not that hard, you really just read, it was still such a cool experience to have. I feel more professional! I learned what al...

  May 21st, 2021 Teige and I were back with Diane today! It was a very interesting day because I am currently on vocal rest during the days so that my voice is at its best for my performances every night. Therefore, it was a lot of listening for me today and using text to speech on my phone to communicate when I needed to. It was extremely entertaining. Teige and I were given the opportunity by Diane to read over a patient’s chart. This patient had COVID back in December and was hospitalized for eight days straight. Since then, his balance has just not been the same and he completely fell backward, straight down onto the ground. He is pretty okay from the fall, but he is coming into Diane’s to work on his balance, and help heal some minute injuries to his lumbar and thoracic spine. We did a whole balance test with him which was super interesting to see. He was amazing with some things, but others, he really struggled with. We then led him in exercises to help with his balance. We a...

  May 20th, 2021 Another day, another surgery, actually surgeries. Teige and I spent the day watching two valve replacement videos. We started off watching an aortic and mitral valve replacement happening at the same time. It was super cool to see that happen and to know that it can happen. Up till now, we have only seen videos of single valve replacements, but now we have watched a combination of two. It is still so wild to me that they can stop a heart on their own, cut it open, do whatever needs to be done, and then close it back up, then it will just heal. I feel like once you slice open a heart, it should be dead or something. I am just amazed that we have figured out how to make that possible. For our second video of the day, we decided to round out our valve replacements by watching a pulmonary valve replacement. Before this, we had watched an aortic, mitral, and tricuspid valve replacement, but we had not yet seen the fourth and final valve. So, now we can say we have seen ...

  May 19th, 2021 I cannot believe we are over halfway through senior project! That is so wild! Anyways, for today, Teige and I decided to watch two different surgeries. The first one we watched was a posterior hip replacement. We already watched an anterior hip replacement because of one of the patients we work with at Ragged Mountain Physical Therapy, so we decided to watch a posterior one. Anterior replacements are more technically challenging because it does not have as good of a view as posterior, but it also does less damage to major muscles. Posterior replacements have to cut through some muscles, but anterior replacements just work around them. The second surgery we watched was an ACL reconstruction. There are so many ACL injuries that come through Diane’s, so we figured we should probably watch one of those surgeries to get an idea of what they went through. Now we can put an image to the patients’ knees when we see them. We are now 43 ½ hours into senior project! We are al...

  May 18th, 2021 And another day with Diane at Ragged Mountain Physical Therapy has come to an end. Diane really put us to work today, learning about the knee and the shoulder for a quiz she is going to give us. We spent the first 30 minutes studying for that, then we got to work with the patients! Our good friend snowmobile guy was back and better than ever today. We joked around with him while also leading him in his usual exercises. Teige and I were very helpful today by “testing out” exercises, which was really just playing pass with a bouncy ball. We saw more patients with injuries such as ACL tears and the usual stuff, leading them in their exercises as well. After we returned from our lunch break, we had the chance to work with an old EMT who was having problems with his shoulder, it kept popping out. He told us a pretty awesome story where he had to hold onto an aorta of someone by pinching it with two fingers for 45 minutes straight while bouncing around in an ambulance. H...