I've been wondering this past week why I haven't been as lonely as I expected and I think it's because I get to be around people all day at work and I have made friends with so many of my patients. Obviously all of them are temporary friendships but I still enjoy all of them very much now! Recently there was a 25 year old girl patient who I bonded with who is a dolphin/whale trainer at Shedd aquarium- how SWEET is that!
I've also been wondering how I'm surviving because I'm severely lacking in my hug count. My mom has told me from a young age
that you need 8 hugs a day to keep your love tank full and I definitely don't
get that here. But I've realized that because I am always touching patients- either
soft tissue mobilization or other hands on approaches- I don't feel as deprived. I still know I' m
lacking in my hugs since touch is one of my love languages and there's not many friends here that I am close enough to hug.
It's crazy when I think about how different my life is here in Chicago. My friends are different than friends I've ever had in the past- they're more artsy and they have really creative jobs/dreams for future jobs. It's been fun to not only work at the PT clinic with a wide variety of people but to also hangout with a variety of Chicago-ians (although most of them are from all over the country/world and have decided to call chicago home in the past 5 years). I'm almost positive that I have eaten out more in the 5 weeks I've been here than I did my whole past year in IC. It's difficult to avoid it when that's honestly all people do here- they eat and they drink. It's totally part of the Chicago culture. I'm trying to embrace and live the culture here while at the same time not trying to gain weight and spend ridiculous amounts of money. I love all the fun food options- there’s literally every potential nationality of food and it’s all so good. My roommate and her friends go out to eat every Wed and my favorites so far have been Thai and costa rican!
It's crazy when I think about how different my life is here in Chicago. My friends are different than friends I've ever had in the past- they're more artsy and they have really creative jobs/dreams for future jobs. It's been fun to not only work at the PT clinic with a wide variety of people but to also hangout with a variety of Chicago-ians (although most of them are from all over the country/world and have decided to call chicago home in the past 5 years). I'm almost positive that I have eaten out more in the 5 weeks I've been here than I did my whole past year in IC. It's difficult to avoid it when that's honestly all people do here- they eat and they drink. It's totally part of the Chicago culture. I'm trying to embrace and live the culture here while at the same time not trying to gain weight and spend ridiculous amounts of money. I love all the fun food options- there’s literally every potential nationality of food and it’s all so good. My roommate and her friends go out to eat every Wed and my favorites so far have been Thai and costa rican!
Probably the thing I love most about the city is all the activities that are happening all around. My favorite part of my day is running/biking on Lake Michigan. There is always so much activity happening- sand vball, swimming, running, biking, roller blading, paddle boarding, sailing, yoga, etc. I really enjoy working out by the water and seeing the skyline because it's so pretty but I also love the people watching. There is a very diverse crowd that works out in this area and some of them wear crazy clothes. My favorite was a man who looked like he stepped straight out of a Richard Simmon's video because he was wearing a bright yellow tank with bright yellow checkered spandex. It's really obvious that I'm a PT because I always am analyzing people's walking and running gaits and I usually make predictions of who I will be seeing in the PT clinic within the next week!
Ok now it's time for my BEST patient story EVER:
Thursday I was doing a new eval on a patient who was just starting PT after a knee surgery that had been done 6 weeks ago. He was very fearful of moving his knee and our whole time together was just over the top ridiculous. First of all, I went to greet the patient and his wife and the wife started out by telling me that her and "Ronnie" (the stuffed animal frog that she pulled out of her purse) were going to come to PT with him. Then when I started treatment the patient was in pain as I was moving his knee so his wife placed "Ronnie" on the table with him in order to cheer him up. "Ronne" stayed there for the duration of the appointment until I had to use that part of the table so I kindly asked if I could move him but the patient's wife insisted that only she could touch him and move him. (You have to realize that this whole time I'm trying to not bust out in laughter because this man and his wife are both 50 years old and they both looked like they had walked straight out of the 1980's.) Finally my boss came to check in and asked what was up with the stuffed animal and the wife literally told a 10 min story about "Ronnie" and she proceeeded to pull out her phone and show how the stuffed animal was the background of her phone. WOW. I know I'll collect more and more crazy patient stories but as of now this is my best one!
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