The Power of Skin Hunger

Faith, this piece is really a GRATE one to bring into the conversation at Lumigrate! Thank you.  Do they still call it "bonding theory" with babies?  I actually wondered when you wrote that it starts with birth, I think it has to start BEFORE birth, doesn't it?  The fetus is in the uterus being touched all over the place!  

I know I paid a lot of attention to this when I was in school because my father was adopted.  Ironically you posted this piece exactly 90 years after his birth day!  He spent the first years in orphanages and foster homes and my mother, who was a really intuitive and psychologically aware person, said he couldn't bond to any of us in the family because of that.  However, today and toward the end of his life, we understood that he was actually 'on the autism spectrum', as many of the amazing minds in engineering and sciences are now recognized to be.

This impacted my formative years less than it would have if my mother's mother hadn't lived with us from before I was born until I was four.  She was very loving and 'normal' -- my mother was not.  The only time I had physical contact from her was when I was 4 to 5 and was learning to read ... on Sunday nights I would sit on her lap and read along with the comics that were being done on FM radio by some guy out of Denver who did all the different voices for the comics that were in The Denver Post.  She'd point with her beautiful fingernail of her index finger of her right hand and have her cigarette and martini on the table to the left of the chair.  That was as good as it got in my house.  I recall when I graduated from high school she went home early due to lightning and thinking the gym floor would collapse with all the people in it -- besides, her cousin and his wife were there and they all were ready to get to the party started at the house.  My dad gave me a hug after the ceremony when he found me, and I realized it was the first time we'd had any kind of physical contact since he'd spanked me a couple of times when I was 5.  

I'd like to direct / remind people of my recent piece on Adverse Childhood Experiences/Cumulative Childhood Stress and Autoimmune Diseases in Adults.  I'd posted it just before you posted this piece, Faith, and I'd very much like your opinion of it.  The link is: 

www.lumigrate.com/forum/cumulative-childhood-stress-and-autoimmune-diseases-adults-fibromyalgia-applications [3]

I also wanted to add that in my opinion, the brain is not done developing at 18 always -- in boys/young men, it continues into the mid 20s, on average.  In girls, ON AVERAGE, it is late teens, but I always like to remind people that everybody is different and 'averages are averages'.  So, while the research about ACE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) deals with trauma up to age 18, which makes sense since that is when many people leave their homes of origin for college or the military or to be with roommates, etc., and the person legally is no longer a 'minor', I personally believe there's an effect that occurs after 18 that has to do with trauma that can happen because of the young person leaving home.  

I SO love the short video on Lumigrate about Chronic Illness and "Full Barrel Syndrome" because it shows the stressors on the body filling up the barrel and how a person has to 'drain the barrel' to keep from spilling to chronic illness.  (See Videos tab, 20 minutes -- Christopher Lepisto, ND is the presenter).  If one thinks about human touch as something that can be 'draining the barrel' and one of the positive influences on the body/mind/spirit connection.  

In the piece you link to that you wrote earlier, Faith, related to attitude and the mind/body/spirit connection, you talk about your realization of attitude and finding and remediating stressors in your life -- same thing.  So this all winds together nicely!  I hope it is overall VERY helpful to people.  I appreciate your sharing your personal experiences as well; I try to share mine, as well, as I think it can be powerful at 'hitting home' for someone reading.  

I also thought, when reading this, about 'skin as an organ' and how you talk also about the heart/brain --- skin/brain ... really ALL the organs are interconnected at some level -- all the fascia of the body, including the dura over the brain as well.  We're about to have some NEW interesting information from Dr Jeff McCloskey, a youngish doctor of chiropractic (DC) of "Neurologic Relief Centers".  I went to his presentation earlier this month (Sept of 2011) and it turns out I'd already corresponded with a DC in the midwest who was collaborating with others and marketing on facebook related to Neurologic Relief Center Technique, and it turns out Dr McCloskey was 'the' local chiropractor who had been searched for to become trained in this technique to follow up with a patient that had journeyed to work with the team in the midwest (I believe it was Arkansas, but it was a year ago so I might be a bit off about that detail.)  I was sitting there in the seminar thinking 'this is sounding SO familiar....' and I finally put it together afterwards.  

I get presented with a LOT of providers, many more than show on Lumigrate as I'm VERY selective. I believe his work will appear in the forum that is titled essentially 'the head/brain/mind/body connection'.  I struggle with how to group information in a way that 'makes sense in reality' which is sometimes different than how the typical person expects it to be segmented, due to our long-standing allopathic way of segmenting things as physical OR mental (and allopathy leaves out 'spirit' completely).  So please keep looking. 

When I was your age, Faith, it was relatively 'unknown' by the public that the skin was an organ.  My first project in OT school ("Intro to OT", which I took when I was 22 or 23) was related to burns and I had to do an oral presentation to the whole class about a little girl who had picked up a firecracker.  It was going to be a rough presentation for people to watch in terms of the slides I had to show, so I started by saying "What is the largest organ of the body?"  

Most of the students in my class were 18 or so, and all but one were women; ironically that one guy ended up being my first eye doctor /ophthalmologist when I moved to Grand Junction! He saw that I was an OT and he said 'that's what I originally was going to study for undergrad before medical school but I was SO dumb and felt uncomfortable being the only guy in the class."  I have an odd memory and can remember a lot of details that other people don't and I recalled one guy sitting over by the windows in the row in front of mine, and asked if that's where he sat.  Sure enough, that was him! He remembered us all thinking we were so 'risque' by thinking we were talking about the 'male organ' of the body and then going into talking about the skin.  

I was a bit older, as I'd been floundering around studying business for four years full/part time, before discovering there was an OT program at Colorado State University.  (Oddly I was buying a home from a graduating engineering student who was marrying a graduating OT, my business advisor had said 'you do so well in your health classes it's like you're in the wrong major' but then only knew what he knew of the University and it was up to me to take it from there.  

G-d intervened, (as Yenta would say/write the word) I believe, in my seeing his home go on the market and my inquiring about it, his girlfriend Bambi was there and I was so intrigued by what she said occupational therapy was.  I'd not yet come to the understanding that I really had significant learning disabilities! I'd attributed my 'floudering' with business classes to be a lack of will or not studying hard enough; I had learned to adapt to my family of origin dysfunction by being very social and getting out of the house to be with friends.  I was slow to redefine the 'boundaries' in my family of origin of what they should be expecting from me and what I was not going to 'go along with' once I was not living at home anymore.  

My first 'move' was to reduce the amount of money I needed to go to college and to get a job; that's why I was buying the home from the graduating engineering student; there was a very dangerous but CHEAP mobile home park two blocks from campus.  The summer I was doing internships in Denver, five people drowned from that park in a flash flood.  I'd sold after a smaller flood happened and the train derailed TWICE, once while I was on the 'lew' sprinkling and I was horrified to think what would have been the state of my body and the story in the paper had I been found squished while sitting on the potty!  

The trains came through so many times a night, literally only 25 feet from my head/body in bed and I just wasn't realizing how much my sleep was being disrupted.  I never felt safe there. But it was only $75/month in lot rent and I made about $5.50/hour typing for the Statistics Department.  That allowed me to start the transition of changing the expectations and 'boundaries' my father placed upon me, which had to do with staying very involved with him and my mother who were two hours away from my college, because she was in a battle with alcoholism and his way of dealing with it was to not confront things but to make and pull on strings that he thought was going to alleviate the problems.  However, that was at my expense, clearly.  

That is why I speak out a LOT about the mind/body connection with chronic illness in general.  With fibromyalgia specifically, there is SO much data supporting it is definitely being manifested in the body but it does have something to do with what is going on in the mind.  I was watching the Emmy awards, which I recorded while I was down in Telluride taking two days 'off' of work from Lumigrate to see the Blues festival and camp with one of the writers from Lumigrate (so yes, it was not really being 'off' of work as we actually met over the picnic table about some planning for the future.)  Modern Family won tons of awards and one of the tidbits of information I found fascinating was the writers are basing the show about their own families and they do not allow their families to watch for that reason.  Since my family is now essentially nil, I am liberated from that and feel it is one of the key pieces I can bring to the table here at Lumigrate. 

Eventually, in my late 20s, after my mother suddenly died secondary to her lifestyle choices and illnesses, which were many due to also being a big cigarette smoker (which also contributed to my health problems and those are hard toxins to get out of your life, unlike people who are not good for you (heavy metals -- lead and cadmium in the cigarette wrappers), on top of my work stress which included lots of toxins in a new building with new cheap everything -- government contract stuff which outgassed a lot of stuff) and immediate family stressors from husband's medical problems and his daughter's emotional problems due to having a dysfunctional upbringing in their original family unit, my health fell apart.  

And guess what? The silver lining was my reading problem got so much worse because of the fatigue and the eye muscles being small/first to 'go', that I finally spent the money to go to an eye doctor in the yellow pages that said 'vision therapy' in his ad.  And that allowed me to finally get good grades in college, go back to school and FINALLY graduate with a bachelors at the age of 36!  36!  And guess who 'missed it'?  My family! And it took me another 15 years to realize it wasn't a 'misunderstanding', it was manipulation in the family to not recognize and promote anything I did which had accomplishment with it.  15 years! But I finally 'got it' and deal only the bare minimum with that family member, which is the only one left alive anymore so that makes it very easy.  But that in and of itself is 'stressful' and, just as when I opted to get divorced -- something I only did with much deep thought and after trying very hard to have change come to remove the things that were stressing me within the relationship, you ultimately have to 'pick your poison' -- some poisons have easier antidotes than others. 

So I hope my words here have helped embellish your wonderful piece.  I believe this is one of the reasons people who have the opportunity and chose to spend some of their resources (time, energy, money) on massage or other body work find it so beneficial -- it's not 'just' the circulation of toxins out of tissues, the moving of lymph, etc.... it's very much the many other things that come from the power of touch.  

Again, thank you so very much, Faith, for having chosen to spend some of your time and energy resources helping others learn at Lumigrate. I know it is helping those who take the time to read here -- sometimes immediately or it might be one more thing that adds to the mix and LATER leads to change  ~~ Mardy

Here's a link to a resource about the type of 'bonding theory' I was discussing, above -- for those who want to go study more about these types of things. They specify it as 'social bond theory' on the Internet to discriminate it from other types of 'bonds'.....  criminology.wikia.com/wiki/Social_Bond_Theory [4]

Mardy,

Thank you very much for sharing your words of wisdom with my and everyone else on Lumigrate. I hope this helps many people realize that it is truly important for people to be loved and feel love. 

If is funny you mention that back when you were in college skin wasn't really considered an organ! I try to tell my students that and they do not believe me either. I have to explain to them that the skin is one of the only cells in the body that continue to grow, rebuild, and repair all throughout our lives!! It is truly fascinating. So, just like our hearts need exercise and proper diet to stay healthy, our skin needs nourishment as well as contact to keep the cells alive as well as our spirits! 

Again Mardy, your experiences as well as excellent resources are proving to be asset to all of those who read these articles and truly take them to heart. 

Thanks, Faith, for your great article on skin touch!  It brought back all the memories of my past when I adopted my son at three months of age.  He refused to let anyone touch him except his grandmother.  This was devastating to me.  Finally after three days passed he allowed me to hold him. My daughter was eight years old at the time so I had been a mother around my daughter when she was a baby and I knew my adopted son Tom had some serious problems. He also cried all of the time and never took a nap. 

Faith, I'm glad you liked my comment -- I'll be interested to see what you have to say about Petie's! 

Petie, that's really interesting.  I met Tom and you at the same time, as he was looking to learn to drive back when I was specializing in that for a couple of years. While it was an unfortunate employment situation I went on to in terms of long-term employment, since they backed out on the promised full time/benefitted position at the end of my probationary period due to their being self-insuring and my having put 'fibromyalgia' on my insurance paperwork, it was a blessing you 'coincidentally' were also working PRN (as needed, like 'substitute teachers' of the medical world).  

For those who don't want to, skip over the rest of what I've written and go to the other comments, below, if they appear. But if you want some insight about what really goes on in the medical world, please read on -- I hope that it will help people who are going for appointments, surgeries, etc. to be more aware consumers. There are going to be increasing shortages in the supply of experienced and qualified providers, or providers at all, in some places.  What I share, below, might shine some light for you on why that is, and I hope will motivate people to get more involved with their time, energy and money resources in creating the change that is needing to happen. 

What a mess that was when Petie and I were thrown together working 10 years ago.  At first, it was the BEST job I'd ever had; the supervisor was a really good therapist, which is not always the case, she was fun and the staff all got along well and we were in this high end, modern building with independent apartments, assisted living and skilled nursing and it was very similar to what I'd done years before in Denver before PPS was announced by the US government and put 50% of therapists out of work as therapists in 1999, which is when I went to doing driving rehab for two years.  The government had realized the errors of the rollout initially and added benefits back, which had allowed there to be a renaissance of therapies in geriatrics, which was my 'true love' and reason I wanted to become an OT: I love old people most of all types of people! 

I'd initially only been asked to fill in for the full time OTR while she went on vacation but then she had a lumbar disk injury occur while working with a resident/patient, and you were mostly working with hand patients -- which was REALLY a cool setup the way they were having you do that.  Then I stepped in that hole in the dark Chipotle parking lot and had a third degree sprain of my left ankle and was ever so grateful you could see some of my patients but yowza were we 'disabled' in terms of the patients needing 'brawn' as much as brains!  Talk about a GREAT company, though, Chipotle rented space and so turned my case over to the property's insurance but said 'if they don't take care of you right, our insurance will then kick in'.  

My significant other was out of town visiting his kids and grandkids at the time and when he returned and saw how swollen and bruised my whole leg was from the knee down, he took pictures of it and then he wanted to see the hole -- his job was with the city utilities and had a lot to do with safety and training, etc.  It was really 'meant to be' that he was in my life at that time, as I didn't know anyone who had been a Teamster or was a labor advocate.  His college degree was in management of human resources and I was the first medical worker he'd known so I was getting inundated with information about how messed up the medical system was compared to other industries, at least the power and utilities industry, and how 'wrong' I was being treated.  At the end of two years, I had to close out the claim on the ankle injury -- I'd luckily had a coworker at the next place I worked, the crazy city hospital, who was a Canadian trained PT and he'd taken advanced training in Mulligan technique/taping and he basically (for FREE on lunch hours twice) took my lower leg from being unable to walk on even groomed grassy surfaces to 'good'.

Those pictures actually earned me a 'thank you for not suing us ... you so could have sued us, but you didn't ...  and as a reward ..... ' they paid me the balance between what my ankle had cost them so far and the $20,000 the claim had available!  That's something nobody's EVER heard of, and the guy at the insurance company did it because he initially started to 'beat me up' over the phone presuming I'd intentionally hurt myself in the hole as it was clearly visible in the daylight pictures and he'd not read the 'detail' that this occurred at 8 pm, at dusk. Sometimes, not always, when you're nice to people, you are rewarded.

And that money came in just after the end of my job that I'll share with here, below, and got me through until a company offered to send me to Grand Junction and pay for the move, plus a $2/hour increase. Unfortunately they were literally killing patients with their ineptitude and bad management so I struck out on my own within a year. In lots of these situations, my leaving has had circumstances that trigger investigations from 'above' which then leads to positive changes of the bad management, but it's been very costly to me.   

It might have been that far back the wheels started turning for me for how to work with my brain more as in those jobs, if you don't get into a slot with benefits, you have no disability insurance.  I walked around Telluride for the Blues Festival this weekend and my ankle's telling me that it got really messed up in 2001/ten years ago next month, it was, as we were working together during 9/11/2001.  I've had at least $10,000 in PT treatments on it and merrily say I have gotten to where it is not what limits me in doing ANYTHING, work or play, but boy howdy, as you know, Petie -- and Faith's had some lower extremity challenges as well, it's just never as good after you 'mangle' something on your body! 

So it's just really NEAT to have this experience today on Lumigrate where, in your retirement, you're able to still 'be out there' sharing with people and educating them.  You really are an educator in OT clothing, Petie.  And Faith's an OT in educators clothing maybe!  As a young health educator, this likely will be helpful to her (and anyone else reading it), your taking this discussion into the realm of sensory integration dysfunction and therapy for it. And to also share how Tom is today, when I was at your home and he wanted to go to the guest room and see my kitty, who travels with me whenever possible, he is just SUCH a fine example of what the outcome can be with good parenting and therapy (and the rest of the village -- school, community-based resources for the disabled).  As we were sitting on the floor and he was waving the stringy thingy for Amber to play with, he said 'I think this is great Mom is going to write on your website and I give permission to talk about me if that will help people'.    

Knowing that Tom and you are both cat fans and know my cat, I hope you think it's funny that I chuckled at the part about his getting out of bed to the carpet, as she does the same thing!  She also calms herself by straddling the back of the recliner and it reminds me of Temple Grandin (now Dr Grandin) and her 'squeeze machine', made famous now in the HBO movie. I'm thrilled to say "I knew her when.....", though it was only through one hour she came across the Oval at Colorado State University's campus to the Occupational Therapy Department building and talked with my class. (The CSU OT program in the mid 1990s when I was there had Dr. Anita Bundy on staff, who also taught for Sensory Integration International (I believe was the name of the program).  

It was THE HIGHLIGHT of my two years in OT school, and I remember sitting there in class thinking that SI was on the autism spectrum, in my mind.  It's like a continuum of a perfect neurological system on one end of the spectrum and the most severely/profoundly autistic on the opposite end.  I don't know that SI is considered 'on' the autism spectrum nowdays; I only recently learned from gal I grew up with who is now a junior high school science teacher who has a son who is diagnosed to be "on the autism spectrum", that it's well known in 'the circles' that many top engineers and scientists are on the spectrum.  

I know there have been four in my life personally that holds true for; none were diagnosed, by the way -- that's me 'diagnosing', but since OTs do not have the power in the medical world to 'diagnose', we have to go off of other providers for that 'officially'; as you know they often appreciate our input in terms of what a diagnosis might be for what we're seeing with someone.  The good ones do at least, if they have a therapist who is good at being able to categorize things, and I happen to have that strength. (Talk about 'frustrating' -- things can so clearly be something and it sometimes takes the rest of the team 'forever' or maybe 'never', to get there, wasting precious time for the patient/client/consumer.  

Now you've got me curious what the newly educated are learning about this and what Faith might know about sensory integration! That would be NEAT / GRATE if she learned about it here and then it helped her with her students in her new career! I also know that there's another type of skin brushing that is becoming well known lately, which stems from Ayur Vedic medicine and is integrated into cleanses and detoxification because the skin, being an organ, is one of the ways we detoxify and cleanse all the time, and when we do an internal cleanse then all our organs that get things out of our system needs to be supported/helped -- liver, kidneys (lots of water), lungs (lots of good breathing), skin (skin brushing).  That type of skin brushing has been part of Lumigrate's detoxification and cleansing video from day 1, I am proud to say.  

Our videos really have amazing information -- six hours almost, essentially a full time day of learning we provide, all free to download, and it comes with the handouts to look at on the screen or print, whichever you prefer. We have had a link to Vitamin Cottage (now rebranded to be Natural Grocers), and they sell through their internet sales area or stores, skin brushes.  For sensory integration brushing, I'd never heard of using paint brushes, everyone I've known used surgical scrub brushes.  

Petie, if you haven't seen how the public schools do group sensory integration these days, you'd be in for a treat if you went to observe that somewhere.  They get the kiddos sitting on the floor in a line and each one has a brush and they brush the person in front of them and the therapist is at the back of the line.  I did a pediatric fieldwork in Boulder Public Schools and the OT supervisor was sick after a couple days so they rerouted me to a different school and OT and she was marvelous!

The first one provided the best learning for me in speaking up if something is so bad it shouldn't be allowed to go on.  She was so bad I went back and talked to our fieldwork supervisors and got one of my classmates, my best friend in the program, mad at me for a while because that was where she was going to do her Level IIs (three month fieldworks you do before graduation). But it worked out to her advantage because they shifted her fieldwork to the better / good OTR and then she had a good fieldwork and actually works to this day in Arizona in the schools.  Since I only had a bachelors, not a graduate degree, I wasn't interested in working in Colorado schools because they pay teacher scale to therapists in Colorado; in Arizona they realize they have to compete with the much higher wages the medical industry pays therapists so they have a higher pay scale for therapists in Arizona.  I opted to stay in Colorado for internships even due to my dad's medical issues, which were just starting to be problematic and require intervention/assistance, and so I stayed in Colorado to work as well, so went into skilled nursing as that's where the highest pay was.  I wanted to work with the elderly and was surprised to find out the highest pay was in skilled nursing (as it's such hard work, comparatively, plus the old 'cash cow days' of Medicare allowed it). I was eager to make a good salary, as I'd quit a relatively good job to go back to OT school and had not had income for three years so had exhausted my savings almost, plus paid out over $10,000 in deductible while in OT school when fibromyalgia onset occurred. (I  had symptoms of MS, so MRIs x 4 were $10,000, then the spinal tap/lumbar puncture and everything else over that $10,000 was covered by my insurance, thankfully.  And thankfully, it wasn't MS, but a more knowledgeable doctor about fibromyalgia would have known why there were lesions showing that were not where MS usually is and routed my treatment a whole different direction -- VERY frustrating and costly to me in the years to come.)

But as we said when talking on the phone, Petie, I think a lot of people have sensory integration dysfunction and don't know it.  I only found out at age 35 and when in OT school, and kind of by 'lucking out'! Dr Bundy, who I mentioned above, stopped by to check on how things were going in the lab session that went along with her class, as they were new TAs that year and naturally she was their supervisor.  I'd only four years before had my visual-perceptual learning disabilities formally diagnosed and tested and 'labeled', allowing me to finally be able to attend college classes and get good grades (again, that was also very sad to me, as it cost me a lot of hardship and money and with my mother's knowledge of learning disabilities it was really inexcusable that she didn't take me to the specialists she told other parents about.  But I had good grades in public school, it's not all that difficult if you have a decent intelligence and home that encourages/requires home work.

I then had benefits under the Americans with Disabilities Act for college after that, when I returned to study OT instead of completing a degree in business.  I also used the ADA when taking the OT board exam; I requested extra time and they granted an extra 50% I think it was. I actually did not need the extra time allowed but I did finish with only a few minutes left and was the last student to do so, which is the norm for me!  

Dr Bundy also, fortunately, filled in when the TA was sick on the day we had to do our practical exam on how to feed a child with CP and sensory integration dysfunction.  I was very serious about my studies and attending classes, despite that I had the onset of what was later diagnosed as 'fibromyalgia' while in OT school.  And it's not like CPR where you use a dummy, you do this on the teacher! So she stopped me after my first 'go' with it, and said 'explain to me what you are doing' and I knew the sequence, I just couldn't make my brain/body coordination 'do' what my brain knew to do!  She said 'anything you do as an OT is going to take you TEN TIMES MORE practice than it would otherwise or for another student'.  

So, after I was no longer working for the company who wouldn't give me insurance due to my having a fibromyalgia diagnosis, despite their offering me $2/hour more to re-commit to being a PRN therapist, I went to work for the city hospital in Colorado Springs, as a neuro therapist and that piece with my coordination came into play. I was so glad Dr Bundy had that time with me so I would know I needed to practice things with my mentor 10 times more than she would normally expect of an OT.  Unfortunately, she went out within a week on a shoulder injury (hereditary, not work related) and that messed up that WHOLE deal for me.  The manager of the outpatient therapists, who was older and appeared to me to be having some major cognitive processing issues (she lost my resume during my interview and her solution, rather than getting it out of the computer system, was to have me go back over to the HR building and 'fill out another one'.  I said 'why don't you just call HR and have you fax one over now?'  ... I should have just left and not gone back, if a manger is THAT inept! But I really wanted a job there as it would feed into the same retirement account I had 10 years with! So I tried to make things work and 'make lemonade out of the lemons' and I did okay with the neuro job I'd been hired to do, but the "crazy" manager also wanted me to do as the mentor had, and also "help out" the hand therapists.

The CHTs (certified hand therapists) saw patients in half hour blocks and also had to pull their own charts in a very busy charting room and had no assistants or aids!  There was also only one bathroom for all the staff, who all had breaks only at the top and bottom of the hour, and the public bathroom was at the very front of the building. This was in a timeframe when, due to doctors not knowing what the hormonal changes are with people with fibromyalgia, and hence not proper hormone supplementation/replacement, I was unknowingly growing fibroid tumors, which later pulled my uterus backwards into my colon and required a hysterectomy in December of 2006, just before Christmas, as it's an easier time to take a week off of work.  Yes, I only took off one week with an abdominal surgery I was told required six weeks.  This therapy for work stuff is NOT for sissies!

So one of those days I clip clopped (my ankle wasn't yet restored fully) all the way down to the bathrooms up by the front of this huge complex in between my 9 and 10 am patients; neuro patients got a full hour time slot. That afternoon the management put word out to us to buddy up that night when leaving the building but didn't say why.  Luckily one of my coworkers had a connection to the hospital security force and it was because a woman was raped in there just before 11 am that day and the perpetrator was at large.  Now why would they not tell us something that involved our safety like that?  Any man who is violent enough to rape a woman in eyeshot of the station where the armed guards sit typically (but had a back turned or was away from the station) might potentially only try to hurt someone else out in the parking lot, we should have been on full alert to watch for ANYBODY strange in the building!  I share this because I really think it is important for people to know what medical workers are putting up with at their jobs, for one thing, and overall just how badly managed the medical system has been, at least in my experience.  

And here, I'd thought going to work for the city would be a good thing, I'd be able to retire with excellent benefits in my fifties, which as my illness was progressing, was looking mighty nice! But that whole thing blew up in a big way during the fall; I'd had a really good six month review and when they got ready to do the one year review the manager was unhappy that I couldn't fill in for the mentor in the hand therapy 'additional' part of my job, so they started looking for anything to fire me on.  They found I'd not been tested by the mentor on things I needed to know to do hand therapy (since she was gone for months, how could she?) so they gave a deadline to test and pass.  

The assistant manager had to change our appointment until after that date and I questioned if that was going to be a problem and he said no.  So I practiced and studied for the month, tested and passed, even making a splint which was passable, and went back to the bullpen 20 therapists sat on each others laps to do documentation in, and the 'questionably sound minded' manager was waiting for me and asked me to go in her office.  I thought she knew I'd just passed and was going to then talk about my getting more training in hands or something.  Nope, she said I was to report the next day at a certain time for a firing hearing with HR.  I'd not tested and passed by the date in my performance plan, and it didn't matter to her that her assistant manager had been the one who needed to extend the date.  

HR the next day stood up for the company, which is HRs job, and they proceeded to fire me.  I proceeded to call my employment attorney -- I'd gotten in with him after a month's wait after the company I worked for when I met you (Petie) pulled the 'no job for you with fibromyalgia' move. He was very interested in this case -- he offered it up as a 'whistleblower' to the Colorado Attorney General.  The inpatient manager had dinged me for not billing for my time documenting on patients, which is illegal. At outpatient, which was the other half of my job, therapists were working off the clock in order to get their documentation done plus make their productivity requirement.  See, I bet a lot of people don't know that therapists have to bill for a certain percentage of the time they are paid for, usually 80-90%.  As the money in medicine goes from black/profit to red/deficit, those expectations have raised to a levl that you literally cannot do it and not break rules and laws. AND get their charting done in order to get an acceptable 'grade' and keep their jobs.  

My PT 'equivalent', also hired the same time, experienced, was to float around wherever needed in the whole hospital system, had told the medical director about the employees working off the clock in order to 'make it look on paper' like they were doing their jobs well/as expected.  I think these are important things to bring up on Lumigrate, because it relates to why it is that the medical system is frustrating everyone and literally 'failing' us all -- professionals and consumers alike. In that organization, it was poorly designed space that was built, and they had us documenting with phones and dictation for evaluations and then pen and paper for treatments and using file folder in DRAWERS which have to be opened and closed one at a time so only one therapist could be accessing charts for that part of the alphabet.  Take the (blankity blank) drawers out and put in shelves and have side tabbed files would have streamlined that part of the time waste.  Put in a second staff bathroom, it was ridiculous to have 15 women and 10 men trying to use the one bathroom between patients.  Schedule some patients at the quarter of the hour.  I had TWO departments memos to read every week in that extra % of time that I was allowed to be doing ALL my non billable activities.   

I wish I could say it was something going on a decade ago that's resolved, but it's not.  Last year, in 2010, I had a manager trying to hire me to do PRN and I was saying in meetings and emails and on the phone -- this went on and on for literally a year -- that I have a lot of limitations and a lot of strengths, particularly in education, building programs and promotion of programs and a forte with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, aging, and preparedness for driving.  "Can you help in the hospital?" was ALL they were interested in! Then I found out they weren't aware that OTs 'normally' don't 'do' shoulders these days, but the OT that was there was again, of your generation and lots of experience and had a good background for shoulders.  

So patients would, in my estimation, have been out of surgery, been given orders from the doctor for OT or PT on the shoulder and I'd show up to work instead of a PT one day and not be qualified to do what was being required of me that day because the management is not aware enough of everything they need to know to SAFELY get the patients treated.  If someone has a bad outcome, EVERYONE is involved in the repercussions and what people don't know is that that it's the therapists license on the line, NOT the managers!

And do you think the company is going to back the employee? Nope, they'll throw the employee under the bus and you have to hire $300/hour lawyers. Remember my story about the clearly off base manager whose HR people backed them when it was the assistant manager's schedule requiring we postpone my testing out on my qualifications for hand therapy? In the case of the bungling city hospital in Colorado Springs, my attorney said, essentially "you'll likely win this case, and you could receive millions of dollars in damages.  But it's going to be several years, it will be nasty and ugly and stressful, and it will require you pay me about $50,000.  I don't need your $50,000, and you have a medical condition that is made worse from stress.  So go home and think about it.'  

The next morning he called me at 8:25 and said the city attorney had already called three times, and I knew he'd only gotten the info the afternoon before because -- LOVE THIS PART -- the rehab department liaison didn't have something from the rehab director who'd fired me for NOT doing things the way everyone else was, as she really did not realize what was illegal and what was not, and rather than calling the rehab director to provide the copy she knew I had a copy and wanted ME to provide the copy for THEM in my own 'lynching'!  

My response was "I do have a copy, and I'll provide it to you if they don't have a copy, but why are you bothering ME with this when it is something THEY were supposed to provide YOU.  This is another example of how messed up they are and your calling me instead of them is just yet ANOTHER example.  But if you can't get it from them, call me back."

There's much with the education system that is 'messed up' and that is no exception in higher education and in programs related to medical.  So I think that is very important to say.  Faith made reference if you follow the link she provides up at the top of this topic, about her attitude having dwindled and her relationship with stress and changing how she thought about things.  One of them was a lot of the stuff that she has to do in college that seemed ridiculous. I'm glad she's decided to just 'go with the flow' but I hope she also doesn't do as many young therapists I saw do, which was not stick up and band together with their cohorts/colleagues and insist on change on things that needed to be changed.  Because in the long run, that's not right for anybody and our society suffers.  I personally believe that's partly why there are so many systems failing right now, there have been too few activists and now things are a real mess and people are finally starting to 'walk out', march on Washington again, etc.  

I remember being in the OT program and their wasting valuable time teaching us the dumbest things -- I mean, I bet a hundred hours of time were spent on diversity training and ZERO  covering wheelchairs, which is a huge part of occupational therapy in skilled nursing and shuffled off to OT by the managers who are typically PTs -- wheelchairs require a lot of unbillable time so they're not a good part to have as your job responsibilities.  Does the average consumer know that? You guys that went to OT schooling long ago before it switched to hand therapy only being done in graduate school received training in hand therapy as undergraduates, and I did not. And Petie, you were an administrator in the past, so think about how THAT is for doing staffing: Some do this and others don't, and your profit margins are nonexistent so you have to treat whatever you can possibly find on people who have insurance to pay for it in order to keep the lights on and a roof over the clinic or hospital.  Now PTs have increasingly become hand therapists but OTs and PTs cannot do treatment and charge insurance under the other's evaluations and orders so .... It's a challenge all the way around, which often is disastrous to the patient and the workers! 

I did have the sense, I am happy to say, that I'd been hired into a position in early 2000s that was the brainchild of a younger and newly hired overall manager and that the direct managers were going to be 'shuffled off to Buffalo' or would retire, etc.  So we can only hope that things 'turned over' and your city hospital there in Colorado Springs is better now.  I know the hospital here where I had my surgery five years ago went through a lot of changes since then and some say it's better, though I'm hearing from the workers end of it it is not.

After I got my agreement from the city attorney saying I could talk about this in exchange for my dropping the lawsuit, and their allowing me to officially resign, I went to that overall manager and filled her in on the details, as she was unaware of any of it.  I asked if I could use her for a reference, and I am proud to say she was right there on that list of references with you, Petie, for a long time.  Fortunately, I now have a lot of very current and recent people who will vouch for me.  

The movie about Temple Grandin showed her going through similar things in her career -- conflicts and things that were more difficult due to her differences in learning/personality and the people around her not understanding.  She was a woman, and a clearly 'differently abled' woman, in a man-dominated field of cattle processing.  She had teachers who didn't understand how to work with her exceptional abilities and with her difficulties, which is just so incredibly bad. I found it incredible as an OT that I'm being supervised by 'therapists' who don't understand how to work with someone with different needs as I have from learning disabilities or from fibromyalgia! Some friends and family don't understand and I finally am at the point of realization that if they don't 'get it', they don't need to be in my life, it's just not to my benefit and isn't 'worth it'.  Remember, I'm in my fifties now and I understand that attitude shift is something common and which I've been looking forward to!  <grins>

Temple, I believe, was born around 1950, so is a full generation older than Tom, but you mothers got the same 'pitch' from the 'experts' in about 1960 (for her) and 1975 (for you): the recommendation you institutionalize the child.  Temple's mother didn't do that, and they had the financial means to have her go to a private school which was helpful, but they also sent her for an extended stay to the mom's sister's cattle ranch, likely to get her transitioning into the unfamiliar in her late teens.  

That time was instrumental for her and what she ended up doing for her schooling (animal sciences) and career (designing cattle handling facilities which I believe half of the beef the world eats goes through today, providing much more humane treatment and better product for the consumer.  It's a fabulous movie, available in Netflix and all locations -- many people don't realize HBO movies are distributed like all other movies. I highly recommend it.  And I hope all people who have taken the time to read this that I've shared here might realize that there's likely someone at some point in their life they can be that 'person of influence' to; it doesn't have to be parenting, it might be a neighbor, friend of the family, etc. 

Looking forward to this collaborative discussion which spans a five decade age range, as Faith's mid 20s and Petie's mid 70s .. I'm right in the 'middle age' for sure at 50ish!  Lots of experience, new and old, in this group at Lumigrate! Thank you, Petie (and Tom) for sharing your experiences here with us at Lumigrate -- Tom's as exceptional and amazing as Temple Grandin is, his strengths and weaknesses are just very different than hers, almost opposite, in fact, with a whole lot of overlap in the middle.  

~~Mardy