Life by PJ

1.4 million people experience a TBI in the United States each year. When a loved one has been through a TBI, many aspects of their life will not be the same. After the hospital stay is over, there is often little to no guidance given to caregivers about how life will be different now that a loved one has experienced a TBI. Here we'll break down what exactly a TBI is, what can be expected through the course of treatment for an individual with TBI, and give additional resources that can be used when needed. What is a TBI? TBI stands for traumatic brain injury. A TBI is any abrupt external force that hits the head and causes either temporary or permanent problems. The external force can either be an object that was moving, such as a baseball, tool, or bullet, or the force can be a moving head that hits an object that is not moving (such as slamming the head onto a dashboard in a car accident, or falling and hitting the head on a floor or bathtub.) Temporary or permanent ...

It's Hump-Day! Congratulations, you've officially made it half-way through the week! If you're having a week like I am, then you are currently experiencing the Moody Midterm Blues as I like to call them. I have a thousand tests and no energy. So, things are going really great. Michigan is also currently getting DUMPED ON (literally.) The forecast calls for snow all day, every day and we'll never see the sun again. (Thus why I tan for a few minutes each week. I need that Vitamin D.) Moody Midterm Blues I'm going to be very candid here. Throughout undergrad, I thought people who had majors that weren't science-related had it easy. I didn't think they had to kill themselves over their studies, like us science majors did. I would look at their homework load and laugh. I didn't take them seriously. Now that i'm in the non-science category (besides our anatomy and speech science classes), I see how very wrong I was. And I've experienced not ...

It's finally Thursday! Thursday is the start of my weekend and I could not be happier for this weekend to come. Taking seven classes is finally starting to catch up with me. Even though in dental school I would be taking up to 26 credits a semester, I didn't really care if I passed or not because I didn't want to be there anyway (wow that got real dark, real fast.) So I didn't put too much effort into anything. Now that I'm in a program that I absolutely love, I not only want to do everything I can to be the best SLP possible, but I also have a real, personal interest in all the material. Combine that with seven classes and I'm up every night reading one thing or the other.  However, unlike the PJ that was in dental school, this PJ knows not to let herself get too stressed out. I've learned that it's not worth it to ruin your body because you're so stressed to the max you can't think straight. (And I learned this the hard way.) So new grad sc...

I almost said Happy Hump-day and then I realized it was Tuesday. So there's that. Happy Tuesday! One of my very good friends called me up today to tell me that her and her fiance have chosen a date for their wedding. This new addition of my friend's wedding will bring the total number of weddings that I am invited to/a part of in the year 2018 to five. That seems like a lot, right? (Too bad I don't drink anymore!) I personally love weddings. I love the food and the dancing and the dressing up and the creation of beautiful memories that will last a lifetime. To be a part of that (even as a guest) is magical. But no one really talks about what comes after the wedding. My dad always said that the most important decision you make in life is who you decide to marry. He would continue on and say that the person you marry can either make your life a dream, or make your life a nightmare. He would say that your spouse should bring out the best in you, support you unco...

Happy Tuesday! I've found that there are few things greater in life than feeling content. When I'm at home in my cozy apartment on Friday nights with my husband and my dog playing Super Mario Odyssey and chowing down on pizza, I feel like the happiest girl in the world. Some people say that feeling content can be dangerous; that it can make you stagnant and stop you from progressing forward in your life. However, I disagree. Being content is accepting all that you have been given and being grateful for the roof over your head and the pizza in your belly. (And the 800 something moons to collect in SMO that are sure to keep you busy for decades.) I saw a tweet going around that said something along the lines of how people living in big cities, LA, New York, etc, were jealous of how those residing in small towns could be so content with what they have. A few years ago, I was more like those who constantly yearned for excitement and adventure. I would have thought that a bi...

There was a Facebook post circulating a while ago that compared grief to an ocean. The post read that experiencing grief is akin to being lost out at sea, with tides that ebbed and flowed. There was no compass, no map charting out your journey. You were simply afloat. My dad passed away almost a year ago and this analogy is the most accurate way I've seen to describe what I've been going through since. Grief has no pattern, it has no rules; similar to the water of the ocean, it can rise and strike without warning, or it can be calm and simply lick at your heels on the beach. I can be what I consider to be "totally fine" and "in control," like a captain that has sailed this route a hundred times before, but before I know it I've been sent overboard into a screaming, swirling whirlpool that doesn't allow me to tell up from down. I've put off writing this post for a long time now because I didn't want to deal with it. I knew it would be o...

Cheers to a four-day weekend! Well, I've officially made it through week two of my graduate program and I'm feeling really positively about the whole situation. What it all boils down to is how much I love speech. I. Freaking. Love. Speech. I could talk to you all day about all the brain pathways and motor pathways it takes to function correctly in order for you to talk. Or about how the majority of your personal and cultural identity is resting in your ability to speak. Or about how losing this ability and having to rehabilitate is devastating, but regaining it through therapy is beautiful and life-changing. Big sigh. Speech is beautiful. This kind of passion was what I was missing in dental school. I always thought teeth were fine, but, that was about it. My feelings about them can be summed up by something one of the dentists I shadowed said to me one day, "there's only so many teeth and so many things that can be done to them." Anyway, we began our SLP g...

Happy Wednesday! Someone please tell me how to make the transition from a dental blog to a speech therapy blog? And gracefully? I know this blog is grounded in dentistry, and the vast majority of my posts are related to the field - but now that I've made this transition in my life, it's time to change over the blog as well. But that'll be for another day. (Although I have no doubt that my DAT guide will always be my #1 viewed blog post. Seems silly now that I'm not even becoming a dentist.) Today I want to reflect on everything that 2017 brought. Well, that's not entirely true. I only want to focus on the positive things. Because honestly I'm sick of reflecting on the negativity I've dealt with this year. Health diagnoses, losing my dad, yadda yadda, I don't want to write about it. (Not that i'm dismissing my dad passing away, but I would much rather write about honoring him, than about the loss of him.) 2017 was a year of discovery for me - d...

Dentistry had been my dream since I was in middle school. Grown-ups would ask me “what do you want to be when you grow up?” And much like the elf on Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, I would answer them with “a dentist!” The adult’s face would light up at the prospect of a little girl growing up and getting a “real” job and my future career choice would become further solidified in my mind. The odd thing was I had absolutely no idea why I wanted to become a dentist. I didn’t even go to the dentist until I was in 12th grade since growing up we didn’t have dental insurance. My entire desire to become a dentist stemmed back to one conversation I had with a friend of mine in the fifth grade.   “Dentists get paid a ton of money and don’t even do anything! That would be a great job.” My 10 year old friend offered up her career advice in the middle of an elementary school classroom. I agreed. Doing nothing and making a lot of money? Sounds great. Fast-forward 13 years and I’m ...

(This is a copy and pasted FB post that I posted a couple months ago. I lost my dad on January 24th.) “I love you too, sweetie” These were the last words my dad said to me, as I kissed him on the cheek and told him I’d be back tomorrow. He always told me how much he loved me. Every single day of my life I talked to him, he told me how proud he was of me, how I was the greatest daughter ever, and how much he loved me. In return, I told him how he was the greatest Dad I could have ever asked for, and how much I loved him. He would always sigh at this, as if it wasn’t true, but  it was. He was the greatest dad for me and my brother that we could have ever, ever asked for. I could write a book on the lessons my dad taught me throughout my life. But I think the most important is one he taught me just a few weeks ago. After an especially tiring week in December, when it seemed as though the cancer and the surgeries were just too much to bear, I had a long, sobering phone con...

Hey Guys! Happy (Almost) Halloween. And for those of you who celebrated all weekend like I did, Happy Halloweekend. I haven't posted much honestly because I've just been tired. So very, very tired. I think I'm experiencing what they call burn-out? I'm not sure, but I'm hanging in there in any case and I'm almost done with this semester (yes, I know that's a slight exaggeration but that's all I'm holding onto at this point.) This weekend was a BLAST. I had two old college buddies come up on Friday and it was so so great to catch up with them and hear about their lives outside of school. One of my friends now works as a BHA in a psychiatric hospital and boy, I thought I had crazy patient stories. But nope. I mean, none of my patients have proposed to me and/or tried to escape through a window of the dental school. (Well...yet.) This is your captain speaking ;) Saturday Jeff & I had a party at our apartment and everyone had a great time...

Happy Thursday! It has been an extremely tumultuous week. I say this in regards to both what my week has consisted of, and the weather. It's funny how they always seem to line up together. (Or maybe that's just my imagination.) I'm trying to embrace the storm. You can either hide in it, or dance through it. Practicals, midterms, assisting, quizzes, oh my. This week has been crazy and honestly, I'm exhausted. But that's okay. Sometimes dental school can be exhausting. (Sometimes? Okay PJ.) I've probably accumulated somewhere around 6 hours in napping this week, so at least I'm making up my sleep debt. The weather has been storming. Pouring. Angry. I walked from the gym to the dental school (about a 4 min walk) and I was SOAKED. We're talking every step felt like a puddle, soaked. I was thankful I put on my old sneakers this morning before leaving the apartment. But at least last Saturday I got to go tailgate with some awesome people. And the weat...