First Year In Review
My first year in the Athletic Training Program here at Emory has been a fun and unique experience. Before we had to report back to school in August I was nervous, I kinda knew what to expect but now I had to actually go in and do the work. So my confidence was kinda low going into the Fall semester but once I started doing the work in class and getting hands on experience in the Athletic Training Clinic I started to get more comfortable. So as a person my confidence has increased a lot and as an athletic training student and scholar I feel like this year has been my best when it comes academics. My time management is so much better, being in this program has forced me not to be lazy. I would have to say that highlight piece of my first year would have to be Upper and Lower Extremity class. Those two classes were a fun challenge especially learning about all the different injuries and anatomy of the body, and doing examination practicals for each area of the body was really helpful as well. As for the rest of my years here I am just really looking forward to learning more information and becoming the best Athletic Trainer I can be!
Junior Year
Senior Year
Gen. Med. Rotation with Dr. Handy
September 19, 2017 3:30pm-5:30pm
September 19, 2017 3:30pm-5:30pm
- My first day with Dr. Handy I saw some interesting patients. The first patient I saw was an elderly woman who in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s. She had difficulty remember things such as what activities she did the day before or even what she ate earlier that day. To assess her memory loss Dr. Handy had her perform a memory test called the Mini-Mental State Examination, which is used to assess a patient’s cognitive function. Dr. Handy then had a patient who suffered from anxiety fill out this questionnaire titled GAD7. This is a self-evaluation questionnaire to determine the severity of someone’s anxiety. The final patient I found to be interesting was an autistic child who came in with an ear infection. I found Dr. Handy’s meeting with this patient to be interesting because of how he had to change his approach, he had to be a lot more patient and calm around the patient while also performing the examination.
- Today I got to hear a heart murmur in a patient with aortic stenosis which was quite exciting! The murmur sounded like a high pitch whistle. I also got to feel and see a patient’s scoliosis, this patient was also diabetic so he had the typical loss of sensational in his feet but along with that he also had a lot of lower extremity weakness and difficulty walking so Dr. Handy feared he could have ALS. So for this Dr. Handy recommended he go get physical therapy to help regain some strength.
- Didn’t really see much today at Dr. Handy’s office. One interesting patient was woman who had trigeminal neuralgia. She complained of the typical symptoms such as facial pain, burning and tingling in the face and she said these symptoms would also flare up at random times. She had been seeing Dr. Handy for quite some time now and he had prescribing medication to help with the neurological symptoms but she reported that nothing has seem to drastically help the problem so she decided that she is going to get a surgical procedure done to remove the trigeminal nerve. Dr. Handy informed me that neurosurgeons perform this surgery by removing the nerve with a gamma knife.
- Today I got to see Dr. Handy administer a steroid shot for a patient with rheumatoid arthritis in his hands which looked very painful. I also got to use my stethoscope again on a patient with carotid artery stenosis with afibrillation. The sounds I heard from this auscultation was an irregular, fast-paced heartbeat.
- Today Dr. Hand had a patient with a suspected torn supraspinatus muscle so he allowed to recommend some at home exercises the patient could do because he was afraid to go to physical therapy. I recommended that the patient get a 2.5 lb weight and do flexion, abduction, and internal/external rotation exercises. I told him he should start off doing 3 sets of 5 reps for each of these exercises. This was kind of exciting because Dr. Handy definitely put me on the spot.
- Today I got to meet a 23 y/o patient with bipolar disorder. I found him interesting because he is around my age group and I have never actually encountered anyone with bipolar disorder. I also found out that he was still attending college which was good and he told Dr. Handy that graduating school was pretty much the only thing right now keeping his spirits up because his home life wasn’t very ideal.
- I got to see another patient with arthritis. This patient though had gout so he had the typical swollen fingers which were very tender and painful. To relieve his pain Dr. Handy gave him a steroid injection.
- For my last day with Dr. Handy I saw a patient who was 41 y/o but smoked a ton of cigarettes so he had the lungs of a 72 year old. But the reason he came to see Dr. Handy was because over the past 6 months he had lost 60 pounds unwillingly. Upon his physical examination Dr. Handy noted that the patient had swollen lymph nodes and a palpable nodule on his thyroid. The last patient Dr. Handy saw today was a woman who suffered from Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. I had never heard of this disease before but Dr. Handy informed me that when dealing with patients who have this he has found that it is best let these patients vent to you and not to go against what they say. And hearing what this woman actually believed was wrong with her children was quite eye opening.
AAU Wrestling Tournament Reflection
wrestling_tournament_reflection.m4a |