Urbanathlon Craziness

I dare you to even look at this course and the obstacles:

http://www.menshealthurbanathlon.com/course.cfm

I just ran 55 flights of stairs to prepare and ouch!

The best news is the following day I am signed up for a marathon tune up which is 18 miles!

Although I will only be medically volunteering for the NYC marathon for the 3rd year in a row, I should be able to qualify to run next year's race which is a mini-dream of mine.

Hope you got your workout in today!

September Blues

I'm actually not blue, I'm quite the opposite (whichever color that would be...)

But I did end a pretty good position at HSS and then I failed my board exam, then all the funk surrounding the NYJets and Yankees... As for my exam, I took it before I was prepared and only to appease my employers at the time which was doubly foolish since they are no longer my employer. My biggest advice to anyone who is lacking common sense like I was (and hopefully no longer am) is to wait until you are ready and make sure your practice exams are higher than the 75 percent you need to pass (mine were not).

I have not failed many exams in my life, but I like to roll with the punches. I have plenty of excuses but at the end of it all that doesn't mean much. Bottom line is I still have my deep rooted passion for working with individuals to help improve their health, movement, and functional capacity. As far as my clinical abilities I am confident that I am more than competent. In my three months at HSS my patients gave me some really positive feedback as did my supervisors and that is the major litmus test for me right now. I realize for my sports/ortho focus I have a million and one more things to learn and smooth out and am excited to continue that process. In fact that is what I am doing with my time off, just reading and learning more and more along with studying for the boards properly.

I am also exploring my job opportunities. I will be doing some part time work at one outpatient clinic in Williamsburgh Brooklyn and am interviewing at a few others. Traveling to other cities is also a possibility. While it is hard to leave NYC, the capital of the earth, I am sure other cities have something to offer :-D
I am truly in that "new professional" stage of my career where I have oh so many possibilities. Should be a fun ride.

All Night Long (All Night)

By Lionel Richie


Thanks, in part, to the Happy Hospitalist I know that this was the #1 song the day I was born. What's yours?

Final Tune Ups

Firstly, my time at HSS is over, sad to say, but that is what it is, and that is all there is to say until at least after I pass my exam, and who knows when that will be, I know quite a few people who just missed the passing grade, gulp...

License exam is in a few days... just need to get a few things straight that always seem to be pesky in my brain (usually because it is of little interest or little practical use in clinical settings)

1) Levels of measurement: nominal-yes or no, one or the other... ordinal-ranking scale with no equality btwn each category... interval-distance btwn each # is =, scale and 0 are arbitrary... ratio-has an absolute zero

2)PNF patterns, although seemingly useful for most major conditions, are just one thing I have yet to wrap my little brain around.

3)There will likely always be a nerve innervation or two that I forget... but this morning I blanked on the thoracodorsal nerve innervating the lat. dorsi... duh!

4)Modalities, especially TENS settings, i.e. sensory-level stimulation is characterized by a relatively short phase duration of 20-100 microseconds... I just haven't used most modalities pretty much in all my time in PT... and I have not committed the brain power to memorizing as much of this madness as possible... but I will try just so I don't fail by one question or so...

5)Conduction aphasia... I am good with Broca (difficulty speaking) and Wernicke (diff. understanding)

6)For the record, IER has much better explanations/rationales than Scorebuilders (not sure why that link has the book so expensive) but the latter has a clearer and fuller look into most of the actual information, especially the "other systems".

Alright, this post was drawn out over a few days... but now that the JETS won and I have less than 24 hours... I am going to cram a little more, watch a movie and let the PT gods decide what they want to do with me... hopefully they are kind

Have a great one, world!

Body in Motion

Pretty cool website I stumbled upon when researching "thomas heel" (I especially like the runner one)... as a PT ya gotta love the body in motion... even if it is a sculpture that is not moving at all

More on running

On my morning commute I see a lot of people running/jogging. One thing I always look at when observing other runners is the trunk rotation. Simply look at where the arms would (or worse, do) cross. A long while ago, in the very scientific journal 'Men's Health', I read a piece of advice that if you were to extend your arms out while jogging that is only when the wrists should cross. Any extra trunk rotation is wasted energy.

Think about it. The idea of jogging is to go straight forward, why would you include any motion going sideways? Take a look next time you see a runner or are a runner...