That's a pretty janky looking monster walk..

Wow, Wildwood is for sure kicking my butt. Good thing the people I work with are so amazing and fun to be around, otherwise I would lose my mind. I have never been on such a demanding clinical. It's tough, but I'm so glad I'm getting this experience, because a) it makes all my other clinicals seem easier and b) I'm learning so much more than I have learned in any other clinical. It's just too bad that I am learning so much based on the fact that I ask so many stupid questions and get so many easy questions wrong. Evaluations are still intimidating because my CI does things so much differently than any other CI I have had before and I have a hard time explaining things to patients when I barely (or sometimes don't) even know what I'm talking about. I am really pretty amazed that my CI has not punched me in the face.

On top of all this, I am starting to study for boards, which is entirely too intimidating to think about after working a 12-14 hour day. All I want to do is sleep or actually lay down and watch tv. The big review book came in the mail over the weekend and you wanna talk about intimidating? I feel like I need to teach myself how to become a physical therapist in the next 4 months. Scary! Good thing my former CI let me borrow one of his other review books to practice with as well. The more help I can get the better. However, it's also pretty difficult to start studying for boards when you get homework (or something to study / work on) from your CI every night. He doesn't necessarily give me "homework," but he does give me things to review or look up. If I were actually a smart person, I wouldn't have to work so hard. For example, he gave me some background info on a patient we are going to evaluate tomorrow. The patient had a shoulder surgery that I should be pretty darn familiar with. However, I'm not...So I feel like a normal student would not have to look up every single thing about this type of surgery and what to expect, but I am spending hours tonight doing so, and thus will get no studying for boards done....or sleep.

On the plus side, I have some AMAZING family, who have been super supportive. I couldn't do it without them. My mom has been cooking food and putting it in little to-go containers for me to pick up on my way home for supper a couple of nights a week so that I don't have to cook. She wasn't able to do it tonight, but it just happened that my uncle saw me on my way home tonight and stopped to drop off some fried fish for me! It was amazing. No one realizes just how much time that saves me. The time I would have had to spend figuring out what to cook for supper is valuable time that I could be spending studying. This way, I can just come in my apartment, put my food on a plate, and eat while studying. It's such a time saver and it is very much appreciated!

With that being said, I should get back to studying. If I really want to look somewhat smart tomorrow, I have about 50-75 pages of an ortho book to read. I'm sure I won't get all of that done, so let's just all keep our fingers crossed that I end up skimming the right parts of the chapter.