Radiology Observation

I completed my observation of the radiology department at the hospital yesterday.  It was a different instructor taking me around to different areas to observe different things going on, and discussing things with me.  He wanted to be sure a radiography job would be a good fit for me, considering my deafness.  He's never worked with anyone who was deaf or hard of hearing in the medical field, so he had no idea that some deaf people work in different sorts of medical fields.  One thing he was concerned about was the phone use, so I told him there were captioned phones available that could possibly help with that.  He was also concerned about how much I hear or don't hear in certain situations.  There are situations, like going into the ER or OR with the portable X-ray units, which could be tricky hearing-wise.  But I do have an FM unit (I told him I had an assisted listening device), so I could either put the transmitter on the person doing the talking (or place it on something close enough to that person) to hear a little better, and of the different programming options I have on my CI and hearing aid.  At the end of the observation, he felt a little better about my wanting to go into radiography.  If I get into the program, graduate and get my degree, I don't necessarily have to work in a hospital setting; there are clinic settings that might be better for me.  Who knows!

But anyway, the observations were rather interesting.  Saw a couple more CT scans (one of the head and neck; another of the abdomen), various X-rays (ankle, hip/pelvis/spine, chest portable, regular chest), a fluoroscopy swallow study, interventional radiography where a team remove a filter from a vein and an interventional/fluoroscopy where they were trying to figure out why patient was having the issues he was having....  Definitely saw a lot in the 5 hours I spent in the radiography department.  I still feel the radiography career would be a good job for me, regardless of my hearing issues.  Yes, there will be issues that might arise, but I will do whatever I can to remedy those situations (like getting a captioned phone to use in the radiography office, using my FM unit, etc.).  I've also looked at other jobs in the medical field, like physical therapy, respiratory therapy, etc.  I just feel like radiography will be a good fit for me. I really appreciated that the instructor would lead me to a quiet area so we could discuss what I just observed, discussing my deafness and solutions for possible scenarios where hearing would be tricky, etc.  He was truly curious, not aware that there were special technology developed for the deaf and hard-of-hearing.

Got my 8 hours of observation time done, paperwork has been signed off!  Now I need to answer the questions, explain the different radiography areas I observed, etc., make sure the application is properly filled out, and have everything turned in by Feb. 15th.  They will let applicants know if they've been accepted to the program or not in April.  In the mean time, I'll have to keep on top of my school work, and get good grades! 

Another semester down

Got through another semester of college!  A in intermediate algebra, B in human anatomy, government, and English comp 1010.  Whew!  Also got the first half of the radiology observation done in December as well (second half will be in a couple of weeks).  Observing the radiology department at the hospital was interesting.  I had my FM with me, wore the Neptune with the FM receiver plugged in and all that.  I kept the transmitter on me, and just followed the instructor around, doing my best to follow what he was saying, and what others in the department were saying as well.  Got to observe an ultrasound being done on a gentleman's arm (checking for blood clots), a CT scan of another person, a couple of different type of X-rays.  Instructor asked if I wanted to observe an MRI and I had to decline, due to the cochlear implant.  I emailed Advanced Bionics later and they confirmed that I cannot be in an MRI area at all with my CI (I also forwarded their response to the head of radiography program at the college as well, so she knows I cannot include an MRI observation on my application).  All the information I was told, it was all kind of overwhelming. Whew.  But I got through the morning. 

Got through the holidays, which had its crazy moments.  Christmas Eve with all families over at my mom and stepdad's house was nuts.  A FULL house, with kids running amuck.  It was all fun though.  Sis and I exchanged stockings (yay we did our sister stocking exchange!), and funny enough, we both got each other the wooden peg games, which was hilarious.  We definitely know each other well haha.

my dog enjoying the snow

a video project I worked on between Thanksgiving and Christmas

bunch of tapes to go through, whew. Ended up with 3 sets of 8 DVDs for 3 members of the family.

some cookies I made

my new toy.  Decided I wanted to get back to videoing stuff again.

Am registered for the Spring 2014 semester.  Let's see if I remember what classes I signed up for... oh yeah.
Pre-Calc Algebra (online); English Comp 1020 (online); Human Physiology (online), BLS for Healthcare/CPR (on campus); ASL 1 (on campus, evening class).  English and human physiology I need to take in general to graduate from the college, ASL will fulfill my culture credit (and it couldn't hurt to try to improve my ASL skills, I'm rusty and still have trouble converting English language structure to ASL language structure).  Will still need to take PE, Psychology, and maybe another class or two just to graduate from the college in general.  Deadlines for applying for the Radiography program is Feb. 15, and hopefully my midterm grades will be good enough.  The CPR class is done with (originally I signed up to take it Feb. 22, which is after the application deadline, and then decided I should take an earlier class if possible, so I signed up for yesterday morning's class instead!).

Did the CPR class yesterday.  Got through it just fine.  No interpreter, no captioning.  I didn't request any accommodations for any of my classes this semester.  ASL I'll be fine, no problem.  And the instructor and I know each other so we'll get along just fine.  CPR, I've taken CPR a couple of times before so I had an idea of how it's done (there were some changes since the last time I took CPR, but no big).  I did buy the book for the CPR class, reviewed it the night before.  We watched a video in class, it wasn't captioned but it had random bits of text here and there.  I used my FM, and I got through the class just fine.  The video showed how to do the CPR on adult, kid, and infant, then the students each got to practice on the manikins.  Not a problem! 

College classes don't start up again until after MLK day, so I still have some time to enjoy a break from school.  Of course, I'm still working in the afternoons, and hanging out here and there.  Will possibly start getting my textbooks needed for classes soon enough, will call Vocational Rehab one day to make sure the paperwork/vouchers have been sent to the college and that sort of thing.  Will also be receiving the Pell Grant again, which will help with paying for books as V.R. doesn't cover all of my book costs (they have limited expenses).

I did also get my Neptune back from the audie, yippie!  Not sure Optima is actually installed on it.  Audie said she added it, but I haven't noticed any improvements in battery life.  Wondering if something went wrong somewhere.  Oh well, she'll be back up here in town in April so we can figure it out then.

I bought a few of the Little Critter interactive books on my iPad... I can listen to the stories, interact with them, and just enjoy them.  Have gone through about half of them already with just the CI alone.  I know, little kid books.  But, oh how I remember reading some of them as a kid!  And it's good auditory practice for me as well.  Have slowly been making my way through the audio of The Little Mermaid as well (free classic book I downloaded from the iTunes app store on my ipad ages ago).  I'm trying to get more audio book listening in, trying to do some actual rehab with just the CI alone.  Oftentimes I go to work with just the CI on, the hearing aid is turned off.



Oh yeah, I made a jack o lantern with CI's for Halloween.  Thought it'd be fun, hehe!

I keep adding to my skeletons family each year it seems.

Geez, I sure do ramble on don't I?  Of course, this does tend to happen when I don't blog for quite a while. Oops!  I shall try to update my blog a bit more often, but we'll see if that actually happens.  I may start blogging about random stuff every now and then.