For this project, I was assigned to use a cookie sheet as my household item. My client's name was Paula and she was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. She is a 76 year old woman who used to teach history at a college. She is stated to be a strong willed and independent woman. She wants to be able to do things like bathing, dressing, and communicating with her college peers and husband again independently. She currently lives in a skilled nursing facility, but would like to be back home with her husband. It is important to her that she becomes more independent again so she can move back home. She is not too fond of occupational therapy services and really doesn't understand what it is or what she is doing. She does not like group therapy sessions either. When trying to come up with an innovative idea for Paula to use, I thought about the things most important to her. She wants to be home with her husband and be able to take better care of herself. I knew then that I wanted to come up with something that would help with dressing herself. I know not being able to do that can feel demeaning to her. She stated that it take forever for her to button up her blouse or shirt. I wanted her to be able to do that, but in a way that would be interesting for her to practice. When I observed an OT before getting into the program, I had seen a device used to help children develop fine motor skills like buttoning up a shirt. I knew that the same device would not work for Paula since she had tremors and the device I had seen before was flimsy and that would only make things worse.
I decided that I could use the cookie sheet as a stabilizer for button device. It would provide support and stability a person with tremors would need. I decided to get a variety of button sizes so it would give a range of difficulty. Shirts are made with all different button sizes so I thought it was important to practice with the easiest ones and the most difficult ones. I knew fine motor skills start to deteriorate when a person is diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, but I never really thought about the specific skills that would be hard for them to do. Practicing buttoning a shirt seems like a child task, but it is important for day to day life. Most jeans and pants have some sort of button that you have to work with. I see now that it could be so frustrating for a person who develops PD. They would struggle every time they got dress, every time they had to undress, or even every time they had to go use the bathroom. It would take up so much time struggling to button or unbutton something. Practicing with a support allows them to focus on just the button and not about if they will drop the fabric or not.
Doing this assignment gave me a great appreciation to all the OTs before me who have came up with such creative interventions for their clients. It took me a few days to thing what I could do that would be the most helpful for my individual client and also thinking how other clients with the same diagnosis could use it. It also taught me how to look at the personal details in a case. Yes there are things that are somewhat routine for diagnosis like Parkinson's disease, but it is important to look at what the client wants to accomplish at the end of treatment versus what you may want as a standard care. Diseases that are degenerative are the worst to be. I cannot even imagine what it must feel like to know how to do something one day and not be able to do it the next. This assignment has given me an insight to how a client may feel. I feel like I will be a better occupational therapist because I know that they want to get better just as much as I want them to. It has also taught me to be creative and try new skills for the sake of an intervention. I did not know how to sew a button to fabric, but I asked my mother to teach me and now I have a new skill that I can put to future use! I really enjoyed doing this assignment because it made me think and try to create something fun!
Here is a link to watch me explain just what a "Dressing Pan" is!! :)
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