Mademoiselle D

Mademoiselle D is my FW patient. She is a retired French teacher, hence the title and pic. I decided to blog about my experience thus far with her. My first impression was that she was going to be a bit difficult based off of what I was told by someone else. However, during my initial time spent with her she was not difficult at all...she is quite a "Chatty Kathy" though. Then in our next encounter we did the icebreaker I planned which included some writing but of course she wanted to verbally do the icebreaker. So then my impression was she does not want to leave her room and all she wants to do it talk! My thoughts were "how is that going to look productive to my instructors?" During that session she did leave her room and we sat in the rose garden for a while and I got a chance to see she moves really well. I am still worried about the amount of talking compared to the amount of "meaningful and purposeful" activity going on. I've found that once I get on the subject of something dealing with therapy (or she thinks is therapy) she starts to complain about something "they're not doing right" or "they don't understand". So my dilemma is to find a way to keep our convo therapeutic. I am really glad I had a chance to sit in on her ST session last week. The therapist talked with her the entire session about the importance of being continent (she is incontinent but does not have to be) and progressing in therapy and said her therapy today was all about problem solving. I learned a lot in that session ( I hope Ms. D did as well). I learned that some conversation is good and just because it seems light and easy it still can be deemed skilled and educational. I learned that other disciplines can educate on matters that they normally would not (never thought a speech therapist would be discussing toileting) and I learned there are certain things that you can say that will get the patient's attention like...."you wanna go home don't you?!" No, seriously her ST session was very helpful to me and in a nutshell that is the message she was trying to get Ms. D to see and I think she is starting to get it. So although I am still a bit concerned about keeping Ms. D on track I know Rome wasn't built in a day...or as the French would say, "Paris ne s'est pas fait en un jour!" (Paris wasn't built in a day)