Day by Day

A long time ago I designed a board game.  I was taking a class in my graduate program entitled "Teaching Health Professionals," and one of the assignments was to create and present a teaching project for the class.

I wanted to raise awareness of what it was like to live with a chronic mental illness, and thought that a game would be a good way to do this.  Obviously, I had some literature that backed up using games to impact the "affective domain of learning," which essentially means impacting attitudes of the learners.

The game had a track that snaked around the board with numbers randomly assigned.  There was a second board showing six different "health and function" tracks.  These tracks showed each player's status in Self Esteem, Mental Status, Relationships, Physical Health, Housing, and Job.   These tracks were number lines, going from 1-40.

To play, each team would place their movement pawn anywhere they wanted on the board, and a pawn on the number 30 for each of the Health and Function tracks.  The start player would roll a die, move the number of spaces on the board, and call out the number of the space landed on.  Someone would refer to the reference book and read the event associated with that number.  The results would impact some or all of the Health and Function tracks in some way.  Most events would drop one or more statuses in some way.

Play continued like this until one of the tracks dropped to 10 or lower.  Then the player would be in "Crisis." There was a separate section of events for being in Crisis.  If two tracks dropped to 10, the player would be in the psych hospital, and would use the events from the Hospitalization section of the results booklet.

I used this with a couple of different groups, all nurses in my grad program, and people loved it.  It really prompted some great discussions, and I think it was successful at helping people understand chronic mental illness a little differently.  Then I filed it away at the end of the semester and forgot about it.

Recently I found the event booklet in a box of things I was sorting through.  That gave me the idea to revive it, and over the past few weeks I completely updated the game.  Instead of a single status board with everyone's pawns on the same tracks, there are now individual player boards, one for each player.  Instead of three sections in a reference book, there are three decks of cards, all revised to reflect events I'm familiar with from working with people in the community over the past 11 years.  Instead of a randomly numbered board and a die, the movement board is a six-week calendar.  Players move one space at a time and draw a card from the appropriate deck.  They move one day at a time.  A lot like how so many of my clients live...Day by Day.  Which is now the new name for my game.

I made two copies today, complete with wooden cubes to track status and wooden meeples to move through the calendar.  I wrote up the rules and discussion guidelines last week.  It's ready to play.  I'll be using it this week with my students, and the week after that with the group of newly graduated nurses on orientation at the hospital.  I can't wait to finally have this as a teaching tool!

Wordlessness

I changed offices at work two weeks ago, and it highlighted a wordlessness that I find confusing.  My new office is in an older section of the hospital.  This means that when you get on the elevator there are two buttons that say "Door Open" and "Door Closed."  This is in stark contrast to the buttons on the elevators in the new section of the hospital, that say "<||>" and ">||<"  

I'm sorry to say that it takes me more than a few seconds to figure out what these pictures mean.  Every time I get on the elevator I have to stare at them for a few seconds to figure out which is which.  They are confusing.  A while back I pushed the button I thought would hold the door open for someone and ended up closing it in their face.  Now I usually stick my hand in the doorway and hope the door opens.  Or do nothing.

Moving also showed me another way that wordlessness makes things confusing...

We got new phones a while ago, but my old office had both a new phone and an old phone.  Since the old phone was "where the phone should be" on my desk, I kept using it.  The old phone had buttons saying "Transfer" "Conference" "Hold" etc.  My new office only has the new phone.  This phone is a really sophisticated piece of technology, which is obvious because you can customize the ring tone.  What confuses me about the phone is that the buttons have a bunch of meaningless pictures on them.  Even though I had a two hour inservice on how to use the new phone, and I have a quick reference guide (somewhere in my moved stuff), I have no idea what the wordless buttons on my phone do.  The pictures are indecipherable.  

Today I got a phone call from an agency looking to refer a patient to the hospital.  The number they were trying to call is one digit different from my extension.  I politely gave the caller the correct number before attempting to transfer the call.  I warned her that I might lose the call, because I had no idea what the buttons on my phone did.  She laughed and said she understood, because she didn't understand the buttons on her phone either.

I realize that the intent of wordlessness is to create an environment that doesn't discriminate against people who can't read English.  The problem is that the solution discriminates against people who can't understand the icons.  Which might be everyone.

The elevator example is probably my own mental block against figuring out what the icons mean.  They're pretty obvious, just hard to read quickly.  The choices for icons on the phone, however, are really tough to figure out.  Other than the envelope icon (clearly voice mail, at least to someone who grew up with real mail), the button to transfer a call and the button for a conference call both include an arrow and a person.  I'm not quite sure which is which. 

In order to cope with this wordlessness, I may have to make some labels with real words and and tape them to my phone, so I know what each button does.  

I have no idea how I'll ever figure out the elevator buttons.  I guess I'll just have to stand and wait for the doors to do their thing.  

Wordlessly.

Marry Christmas!

It's Christmas day today.  We have only three in the house today.  Jeanette and Dave are at his folks house in Lowell.  Nick flew to California last week, watched Sam graduate from the DLI, and then the two of them road tripped to Georgia, where Sam will be based.  Amanda flew there the week before.  We're driving there with everyone on Thursday, so we will have our family Christmas and New Year's celebration in Georgia on the weekend.

We had a lazy morning, sleeping in.  I cooked brunch at noon, after we opened presents.  I took a long walk this afternoon while Theresa sewed.  While it hasn't snowed, it sure is cold today.

I'll be roasting a duck for dinner this evening.  I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.

Merry Christmas, peace on earth, and thanks for reading.

Reviewing My Preview

In January, I posted a "Year in Preview."  Not predictions, just speculations about what would happen with me this year.  Here's an update on the previews, which are listed in red.

I will get my first research study approved by the IRB.
This probably won't happen.  IRB shot down my one proposal, and my second proposal can't be submitted until we move our unit to the newly remodeled space.  I'll have to wait for at least 30 days after moving before putting the study together.  Since the move has been delayed until the end of September, it will be November at the earliest before I can submit the proposal.  Getting it approved by December is going to be iffy.

On the other hand, IRB did approve my poster presentation at a Spring research event as a quality improvement presentation.  So I sort of managed to correctly speculate here.

I will go backpacking twice this year.
Unfortunately, I haven't gone even once.  Now that it's already September, and my entire month is planned, the chances of getting out twice in October and November are pretty slim.

I will post at least twelve times to this blog.
I think this is post number eleven.  This looks solid.

I will continue to think about writing a book about psych nursing but won't make any real progress.I have sort of made progress.  Whether it's real or not will be more obvious after October.

I will not become a grandparent.
Amanda's due date is January 5.  Or 10.  As long as she doesn't go early, I got this one right.

I will travel to California once.
The trip is booked, I leave September 29 and come home October 8.

I will get an article published in a professional journal.
I received a request to contribute an article about teaching strategies for impacting the affective domain in January, and my article was published in March.  Also, in April my poster on best practices for care of the patient with dementia was accepted and I was a presenter at a research conference.

So if my previews were goals, I'll need to go backpacking and work on my research proposal and my book.  Since I simply guessed at things, I don't feel like I'm obligated, although being obligated to go backpacking isn't such a bad thing.

Looking for a Fish Named God

When I was in sixth grade my teacher would read to the class every day after lunch.  I don't know how long he would read.  Maybe a half hour, maybe more.  I can still remember some of what we heard: Oliver Twist, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Huckleberry Finn, and short stories from Poe, Harte, Twain, and many others.

When I think about these books and stories, I consider myself fortunate to have been exposed to some classic but controversial works.  What sixth grader today reads, or even hears, The Lottery?  Many things we heard have faded from my memory, but I can still hear Mr. De Young's voice painting pictures of Simon Legree, Calaveras County, the mean streets of London, or a murder mystery in Paris.

Which brings me to the title of this post.  For some reason, I find myself looking for a fish named God.  This may sound strange, but Mr. De Young is back in my head, 40 years later, reading a short story about a wise old trout, so elusive that the author has named him God.

Suddenly, for the past week, I'm remembering parts of this story vividly.  I have no idea why this is coming back to me.  I remember Mr. De Young describing the the community reaction to the use of God's name for a fish.  Apparently this was edgy stuff in the early 1970s.  I don't think I was all that upset at the time.  I was hooked by the awe, amazement, energy, and visual imagery of the story.

I can't remember much about the story, but for some reason, and I don't fish much any more, I've got a fish named God stuck in my head.  A simple internet search should help, but I'm striking out.  There doesn't seem to be anything I can (easily) find about this fish story.  I don't know the author, and I can't remember what happens at the end.  I have trolled the internet looking for this story, but I'm getting skunked.  (Wow, two bad fishing puns on one sentence.  Sorry!)

Does anyone know anything about this story?  Can anyone help me find this fish?

Music

I listen to music all the time in my office at work.  I buy used CDs at thrift stores, online, and at stores.  My iPod has over 65 GB of music packed inside.  Plus, I make sure to listen to everything in my music library.

Every week I sync (synch?) my iPod to my iTunes library, then check for anything in my library that I haven't listened to yet.  That gets moved to my "Unplayed" playlist, and I start shuffling that list on Monday morning at work.

This week my unplayed list had 119 songs.  I got done listening to them about 6 this evening.  I worked until 9.  After going through the list, I went to one of my new CDs that I had really liked, and listened to it the rest of the time I was in my office.

That CD is "Love and Theft" by Bob Dylan.  I really like Dylan, but I don't know much about his music.  I know he's been a significant influence in American folk and rock music for as long as I have been alive, but I'm not full of Dylan trivia.  Until I found "Love and Theft" at a Salvation Army store last week, I had never heard of this album.  It might be a throwaway, contractual obligation, or one of his "worst" albums, something that was a commercial bomb that critics hate.

Doesn't matter.  I was mesmerized by the bluesy sounds of the songs.  The lyrics of "Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum" teased me.  I didn't hear Dylan's usual nasal twang, it was deeper and huskier.

I think this means I need to dig up more Dylan music.

Words. Sort of

I love words.

I complete at least four crossword puzzles every day (which makes me a cruciverbalist).  I play with words in my head, usually creating Spoonerisms.  For the unenlightened, a Spoonerism is when you switch letters or sounds around in adjacent words.  Supposedly there was a minister in England whose last name was Spooner who frequently misspoke like this.  The famous example is when he introduced the "queer dean" instead of the "dear queen."

My brain creates Spoonerisms almost constantly.  I often have to thop and stink so I don't way my sords wrong.  But I also find that I Spoonerize syllables, so instead of "spoonerism" I sometimes think "oonerspism."

I suspect I'll be retoping to this turnic at pome soint, or at pany moints in blis thog.  It's the thay I wink, so it's easy for te mo standunder bry mown ain.