the weather in detroit right now is absolutely gorgeous. i walked back to the apartment from a friend's house and i smiled the whole way--the sun is out, the temperature is just right for a very light jacket, there's a nice breeze...it's perfect. everything feels so peaceful and beautiful. i suddenly feel like taking coco for a walk.
update on my adult client: over spring break she set up an appointment to meet with me and both of my supervisors. she wanted to make her concerns known again to everyone at the same time. so we did that yesterday and my supervisors were awesome. they countered all of her complaints and fully supported me on every issue. they feel like she's overreacting to everything, and actually suspect that she's racist and projecting her feelings onto me. anyway, they're assigning her to a white clinician now and the whole fiasco is over and done with. but this was an interesting learning experience. in the future i'll have a better idea of how to deal with difficult clients!
i played wii for the first time over spring break. my dad bought one a couple of months ago and he loves it and plays it all the time for exercise. whenever i call home and he answers the phone, he's always out of breath b/c he's been playing. hilarious.
my parents and i visited family friends in new jersey last weekend. this family's amazing--they've been through a lot and have so much faith. the mom has been battling lupus for many many years and she was recently diagnosed with lymphoma. she's physically frail but her faith is so strong. although she is the one who is ill, she is constantly encouraging others, praising God, even thanking Him for what she's going through. she exudes Godliness and she's such an inspiration. the day before we left she got the results of her latest PET scan and almost all the cancer sites were gone after four rounds of chemo. she had tears in her eyes as she showed us the report and praised God with every fibre of her being.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Dumped
My adult client left me. She’s an older African American woman who has an amazing life story, but somehow things didn’t work out between us.
It all started in January when I gave her a standardized language test as part of a diagnostic evaluation. She felt it was an intelligence test and she said she was insulted despite my many assurances that it was not in any way an intelligence test. She continued to come to therapy and things were okay for awhile. However, other issues came up, such as her bringing her schoolwork for me to edit rather than doing actual therapy for her articulation disorder. And one day she was confrontational, going back to the language test and then she also suggested that I was racist. I was pretty much in tears, lips quivering and everything. Last week we had a conference that included my supervisor and we resolved everything. We revealed the results of the standardized testing and she also agreed to do therapy activities instead of her homework. She apologized for being “harsh” about the testing. Everything was great.
Then this week, she didn’t show up for our Monday session and when my supervisor called her she said she wanted a new therapist. ??? She had a long conversation with my supervisor and apparently she feels that I look down on her because she doesn’t have a college degree. She also feels that there’s a power struggle between us and that she’s going to lose so she wants a new clinician. ????? My supervisor is fully supporting me and is hoping that the client will be switched to a different day of the week so that she doesn’t have to deal with her.
I am a student clinician. My clinical skills are still developing, but I haven’t done anything to justify her accusations. Honestly, I think she is just very sensitive to issues of race and is hyperaware that her speech isn’t perfect. She is paranoid that people think she isn’t intelligent because she speaks African American English and because she has articulation issues.
Anyway, now I only have two clients to think about.
And this weekend is the start of Spring Break (yay!), although I’ll be at the annual conference held by the Michigan Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
Friday seminars I’m attending:
- Outcomes That Count in Aphasia Intervention: Ideas and Applications
The speaker is Aura Kagan, from the Aphasia Institute in Toronto!
- Differential Diagnosis of Speech and Language Disorder vs. Linguistic Difference
Saturday seminars:
- Medical Speech-Language Pathology Forum
- Self-Rehabilitation Following a Supra-Cricoid Laryngectomy: A Case Study
- Developing the Role of Speech-Language Pathology Services in Palliative Care
The best part is going for free as a student volunteer. And of course, free stuff from the booths : D
It all started in January when I gave her a standardized language test as part of a diagnostic evaluation. She felt it was an intelligence test and she said she was insulted despite my many assurances that it was not in any way an intelligence test. She continued to come to therapy and things were okay for awhile. However, other issues came up, such as her bringing her schoolwork for me to edit rather than doing actual therapy for her articulation disorder. And one day she was confrontational, going back to the language test and then she also suggested that I was racist. I was pretty much in tears, lips quivering and everything. Last week we had a conference that included my supervisor and we resolved everything. We revealed the results of the standardized testing and she also agreed to do therapy activities instead of her homework. She apologized for being “harsh” about the testing. Everything was great.
Then this week, she didn’t show up for our Monday session and when my supervisor called her she said she wanted a new therapist. ??? She had a long conversation with my supervisor and apparently she feels that I look down on her because she doesn’t have a college degree. She also feels that there’s a power struggle between us and that she’s going to lose so she wants a new clinician. ????? My supervisor is fully supporting me and is hoping that the client will be switched to a different day of the week so that she doesn’t have to deal with her.
I am a student clinician. My clinical skills are still developing, but I haven’t done anything to justify her accusations. Honestly, I think she is just very sensitive to issues of race and is hyperaware that her speech isn’t perfect. She is paranoid that people think she isn’t intelligent because she speaks African American English and because she has articulation issues.
Anyway, now I only have two clients to think about.
And this weekend is the start of Spring Break (yay!), although I’ll be at the annual conference held by the Michigan Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
Friday seminars I’m attending:
- Outcomes That Count in Aphasia Intervention: Ideas and Applications
The speaker is Aura Kagan, from the Aphasia Institute in Toronto!
- Differential Diagnosis of Speech and Language Disorder vs. Linguistic Difference
Saturday seminars:
- Medical Speech-Language Pathology Forum
- Self-Rehabilitation Following a Supra-Cricoid Laryngectomy: A Case Study
- Developing the Role of Speech-Language Pathology Services in Palliative Care
The best part is going for free as a student volunteer. And of course, free stuff from the booths : D
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