Lifting OThers: Journey of a Future OT

 Beth Malone, in her TedTalk titled "How my dad's dementia changed my idea of death (and life)," discusses the phases of her feelings towards death in regards to her dad's frontotemporal lobe dementia diagnosis. Her initial feelings towards her father life or death were that she was going to kill her dad. Not because he had done anything wrong, but she felt as if the quality of life that he was living was not one that he would have wanted. She saw his body as the torture device that was inhibiting him from living how he would have wanted. This then made her long for discussions about death while everyone was healthy. After realizing that she could not actually kill her dad, she began to seek guidance. Many people told her that often times people who are ready to die hold on for their family members, so she should tell him that they are all okay and he can go if he needs to. When she did to go tell her dad that, she had an experience with him that led her to the realiz...

Kim Gorgens, a neuropsychologist, addressed concussions and how to protect our brains in a TedTalk titled "Protecting the Brain Against Concussion." I chose to watch this video because, with the prevalence of concussions in youth sports, I thought it would be important to understand them more and ways to prevent them.  From Dr. Gorgens's presentation, one of the main pieces of information that stood out to me is that a brain can recover from AN injury. When a person gets a single concussion, they become more likely to get more. This is practical information to know from an OT standpoint because when working with clients, if you know the person has a history of concussion, you can be proactive in teaching safety as well as educating on the increased risk of getting another one. Another piece of information that I thought was important to know is that a concussion does not just occur when their is a loss of consciousness, but simply a change in consciousness. This can be ho...