NeuroNote 2
I read an article
from Sioux City Journal called “From
high school to nursing home: 20-year-old learns to cope with fatal disease”.
The article talks about Desiree Buettner, a 20-year-old girl who has juvenile
Huntington’s disease and how she is learning to cope with her disease in
Careage Hills Rehabilitation and Healthcare. She was diagnosed with HD when she
was 18 years old and moved into the nursing home by the time she was 20. Dawn
Young, the director of nursing services at Careage Hills, asked Desiree to
create a bucket list which landed Desiree on a plane to Disney World with her
nurse, Ashley Curtis. The healthcare team at Careage Hills, as well as some
other resident’s family members, have taken Desiree under their wings and
treated her as family, and because of that, she has grown to like being there.
I
chose to read this article because it is what we have currently been focusing
on in class, and I was interesting in learning more about it. I was
particularly interested in learning more about juvenile HD, since we didn’t
talk about it as much. The article said that about 10% of people who have HD
have Juvenile HD, and I wanted to learn more about the specific symptoms in
Juvenile HD and why it will sometimes occur in children.
Something
I took away from this article is that the way you treat someone really does
matter. Desiree was depressed and didn’t want to live in the nursing home when
she first got there, but the way the staff members, residents, and the family
members of other residents treated her turned her viewpoint around. In the
article, she stated that she was starting to like living there. It was so
inspiring just to learn that the way people are treated can change the way they
think about what they are going through. I want to always keep this story in
mind when interacting with people, not only as an occupational therapist, but
with anyone I come in contact with.
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