Then this week was nuts for me for massage. Because we left for the wedding weekend on Friday (Greg had a rehearsal dinner - he was in the wedding party), I had to get one of the girls to cover my clinic shift that night, meaning that I picked one up for her on Tuesday. So Tuesday I had clinic, Wednesday I had outreach, Thursday I worked, Friday I had clinic, and Saturday I had clinic. Today I did nothing. Ha!
Outreach is really cool. Last week was the first one I'd done. The college makes a bunch of them available and we sign up for ones that interest us. Each one is a different kind of massage and a different length of time commitment. We have to complete 8 hours of sports and 24 hours of hospital (two categories of outreach) by the time we graduate. If you do 50 hours of either you get a certificate of specialization.
The outreach I picked runs every Wednesday afternoon all this month, and is at a local nursing home. Both my clients this week had dementia and were nonverbal. It's a challenge ethically, because you're not dealing with people who can give their own consent, and their family who've requested the massage aren't there when you get there. It was a very different setting than I've worked in before, and I really enjoyed it. I think I'm going to try to get my certificate of specialization in hospital. Sports massage doesn't interest me really, but this work in the nursing home is really fulfilling.
Even the conversation I had with one of the residents in the lobby was fantastic. I sat down to wait for my supervisor at the end of the night and he asked me if his son had sent me to visit with him. It was mildly heartbreaking, and we talked for about 10 minutes. His memory was gone, and by the end of it he'd decided that I was born in the UK and came to Canada just like him. He said that it was a pretty good place to come live because everyone spoke English.
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