Health Warning ( this may turn into a ramble or an essay or a tome so watch out!) The work started with an hour and a quarter spent with Amy Clements-Cortes a Music Therapist at Baycrest. I hire a bike and cycled there thinking it was all flat in Toronto ( wrong again, so got there a bit late unfortunately). We had a great morning talk and many points of overlap in practise, with a focus on the qualitative approaches in research interests for example. Amy is a very experienced musician and music therapist ( sorry Amy I forgot to get your picture!) and has been at Baycrest since 1995 when she did a music therapy internship there. Since then she has worked in many of Baycrest's facilities which is one of the leading dementia care facilities in the whole of Ontario ( if not in Canada?) and many older people come to the Baycrest for diagnoses as a result of the wealth of expertise, brain scanning equipment etc etc. Baycrest is a kind of healthcare campus and similar conceptually (in some ways) in the UK to the Extra Care Charitable Trust's work in Birmingham and the West Midlands.
What happens if you are an older person seeking more support than you have in your own home? 1) You buy a condominium ( No 2 Neptune) at Baycrest and live independently, selling your own home in order to do so I think. 2) You become more frail and enter a retirement home (residential home in UK?) ( Wagman Terrace), where you have extra supports e.g on-call nurse & at least 1 hot meal per day. 3) You become frailer & enter Baycrest Nursing Home where there are 575 beds with a Behavioual Neurology Unit ( 4 floors of people with dementia here). 4) If you need hospital care during any of this time you go to their on-site hospital for folk with chronic conditions. If it is an acute condition then go to the Mt Sinai Hospital temporarily before returning to Baycrest. Amy explained that Baycrest keep/treat chronic & acute conditions separately, only specialising in the chronic side of care. At the Baycrest Hospital you have access to Rehabilitation, Psychiatry, Behavioural Neurology, Complex Continuing Care and Palliative care. Amy's own specialism at the moment is palliative care and she is currently developing a music related research project. Arts therapists in Canada are not state-funded yet and therefore her post is funded by donations from Baycrest benefactors.
Baycrest also have a world leading Brain Research Centre (Rotman Centre)...see pic with me and musician / research scientist Dr Takako Fujioka. I will be blogging about a fascinating meeting with her another time as otherwise you may be very bored indeed if I carry on with this story which followed my time with Amy - Amy it was who told me about Takako and so I called to see if we could meet as she works in the same building at Baycrest. Takako couldn't believe it because in the morning she was reading a paper about dance therapy and then I call soon after asking if we can meet. Oh!! & not forgetting Baycrest also have Day Care facilities which people attend on a daily basis while still remaining in the community. I plan to visit this if I possibly can.
Feeling very excited and stimulated by what I'm learning and the people I'm meeting. Everyone is very friendly here and I keep toasting Sir Winston as without him we wouldn't be here...must do that too for brother David who made it possible for Amy & Mary to come of course. Thanks David if you're still in sweltering Bermuda that is!!
Well done you too for getting this far...AND...Cardo if you get to read this don't forget to clock in for my next blog about the amazing Magnetoencephalography machine...(can hardly spell it!!) which will blow you away. Bye for now folks...AND do leave comments if you can be bothered otherwise I think I'm writing all this to myself.
Cardo, my friend how did you get to know I was blogging about this m/c before I even pushed the send button!!! Right, I am bushwackered and will have to come back to it but essentially the m/c is the next development from an ecg m/c. Replace the electric at the beginning with magnetic and there you have it. You don't need electrodes as brain activity is recorded within a magnetic field. You stick yer up the hole and that's it..it's a big machine and more about what Takako is doing another time. I hope she may be able to blog her comments on this site too. Thanks Takako you're brilliant!! Cardo, you're a star too of course. Can you tell Gleavio about this blog??
ReplyDeleteSorry Cardo...before you get carried away with some mega-puns of he awesome variety....you stick yer HEAD up the hole..GET IT!!! You radiographers you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI have told Juan Gleavio. All very good to stick your head up a big magnetic hole ..... but what for?? Does it cure or diagnose or is it therapeutic? If it diagnoses ... what do you do with the diagnosis?
ReplyDeleteHave you had your head up the hole??
ReplyDeleteDear Cardo, I thought you would be the least deprecating person ever, when it comes to knowing the ins and outs of shoving people's limbs and bits in and out of x-ray machines!! You of all people!! Now for the serious bit, as no doubt you want to know and me being a leading expert in the subject (not)I can tell you everything you probaly don't need to know...so..here goes. In fact Dicky read me blog otherwise I have to type it twice. Over & out..ps keep up the good work replying to me as it makes me feel better knowing that at least 1 person in the world is reading this stuff.
ReplyDelete