I was brought up to believe that the most important thing about getting nine-and-a-half-out-of-ten in a Latin or French vocab test, was the half you got wrong
I was brought up to believe that the reverse side of your embroidery had to be as neat as the front, otherwise your needlework skills were very poor indeed
I was brought up to believe that "if at first you don't succeed, try try again" (until you do)
I. . .
I. . .
I. . .
I could go on, but you get the drift (and regular subscribers have been here before, so you're probably neck deep in said drift, eh)
yes, it's going to be one of those me me me pieces: so switch off your technology and go and do something more interesting instead should you so desire; I won't be the least offended
when I was a Speech and Language student at Uni in the mid-80s, I spent two years in hospitals and clinics studying the practice of being a Speech Therapist, as part of my four year Honours degree was to pass sufficient units at a high enough grade to gain a Licence to Practise as a Speech Therapist
I trained all over London in some of the best hospitals and some of the most deprived areas: voice patients (people suffering either psychological issues, or neurological or oncological damage for example); stutterers (ditto); children and adults with cerebral palsy - completely normal inside their brains, but almost unable to communicate with the outside world; children with Childhood Developmental issues (babies unable to swallow; children with cleft palettes; five/six/seven-year-olds who have neither vocabulary nor concept of shape, colour, number, position because their parent(s)/carer has never actually talked to/communicated with them);adults who had suffered a trauma to the speech and language areas of their brains (thru disease or accident); the list is endless: but I'll stop there for fear of boring those of you who are still with me, and get to the point. . .
one clinic was in Greenwich in South East London at an ordinary General Hospital with Geriatric patients - I saw the ones who had had strokes and had lost their verbal abilities, not just reading and writing but all aspects of communication (speak, express themselves verbally in any way; listen, understand the words that were being spoken to them) and some who had also lost their swallow reflex and so had great difficulty eating
I developed what I thought at the time, being young enthusiastic and full of energy and interest, was a brilliant idea: a pictorial menu - so that these people of a generation or two/three before me could actually choose what they wanted to eat from the daily hospital menu - rather than just have to eat what was put in front of them. . .
there was one old lady I saw week after week who was able to point to some of the pictures - I hoped she was pointing to what she wanted, not to what she didn't want (such was the obvious flaw in my system); she'd smile, in what I hoped was recognition - everytime I went onto her ward - we'd order her lunch and I'd then spend a quarter of an hour or so icing the back of her throat to stimulate her swallow reflex, so that when the food came she might actually be able to get it from being chewed in her mouth into her stomach to be digested
about three quarters of the way thru the term of this particular clinic, the therapist who was training me took me to one side and said that altho the old lady was still well and her condition had not deteriorated, and even tho she was still in the hospital receiving care, I was not to spend any more time with her
I had to spend my time with other patients who would benefit more and had the potential to make a better recovery than this old lady might; the lesson was one of managing a case load of patients, which was as important a part of the training as the therapy work with each individual patient
so I never saw her again
