Patients

My new(ish) job is working in administrative support in a hospital-based outpatient physical therapy department, and it's really introduced me to a whole new set of people.

Our unit specializes in two types of patients: Pediatric and Neuro.  The pediatric patients are largely referred through a county-run program for early intervention services, mainly for help with developmental slowdowns and speech services, but we also see young patients who need help with walking after lower-extremity amputations, including one charming little girl who lost her foot after getting run over by a tractor, and a toddler who was born with leg deformities.

The Neuro patients are mostly adults, who have either suffered strokes or traumatic brain injuries.  The stroke patients tend to be elderly, although not always; one of our current patients is a middle-aged man who had a stroke while sitting in a tree stand during hunting season, causing him to fall out of the tree stand and break his neck.  Yeah. The elderly stroke patients tend to come in with an entire armada of shell-shocked family members for their initial evaluations; it's obvious that the entire family is struggling to deal with their new reality.  It's nice to see the patients progress over the weeks and months and watch the family members visibly relax as they see their parents learning that they can deal with their new situations; that life does go on, and improve, after a life-changing event.

Oh, and there's that subset of heroin-addict-stroke-patients:  The young men (and they are always men), who stroke out after OD-ing and are now trying to get back whatever they can of their former abilities.  Sadly, these guys tend to come for a few visits and then drop back off the map again., although sometimes they can turn out to be very dedicated. 

TBIs (traumatic brain injuries) aren't as common in our office, but we do see them occasionally,  most often when somebody's fallen backwards off a bar stool, and I'm not even kidding. Moral of the story:  If you're gonna get sloppy drunk, do it in a booth at the bar, and not at the bar itself.

We also see developmentally-disabled people whose new group homes are trying to figure out why they're wheelchair-bound even though medically they should be capable of walking, and other wheelchair patients who we are trying to help become ambulatory again.

Including one charming, wheelchair-bound, giant teddy bear of a man in his early thirties, who didn't show up for his appointment today.  It snowed pretty heavily here yesterday so his missing his appointment wasn't unusual; he relies on medivan transportation and also needs his landlord to clear the handicap ramp at his family's home in order to make it to his appointments, so sometimes when the weather is inclement he ends up cancelling. But he always DOES call and cancel; he doesn't just not show up.

A few hours after his scheduled appointment, I was about to call and make sure everything was okay and ask if he wanted to reschedule when one of the department heads came in and asked me not to make the call.

Because he committed suicide yesterday.

Rest in peace, good sir.  Rest in peace.