American Experience Profile

When I first met Tami, I wasn’t quite sure what to think of her. When she came back to work at our place of employment we shared a desk but most of her books lived in a box. Our personalities seem to click right away and I knew we had several things in common. What I didn’t know was what an interesting life she had already had up to her young age of 31. Tami grew up in the town of Altoona, Pennsylvania leaving home for college when she was 18. She left and never looked back. One of her memories of Altoona, Is the Winter of 1994 just before Christmas. She woke one morning to be told the local mall, Logan Valley Mall, had burned to the ground while she slept. Tami grew up to get her Occupational Therapist (clinician that provides treatments that focus on helping people achieve independence in all areas of their lives. They also address psychological, social, and environmental factors that may hinder an individual’s functioning) license with a recent certification in NDT or neuro-developmental technique. NDT is a problem solving approach to the examination and treatment of the impairments and functional limitations of individuals with neuropathology primarily children with CP and adults with stroke or TBI (traumatic brain injury).Tami also holds her certification in lymphedema, which is a treatment with use of massage and compression wraps to guide fluid to the lymph nodes to rid the body of excess fluid. At this point Tami has been an Occupational Therapist for ten years. Tami is a unique individual who holds many things dear to her heart.

Where did you go to college and why is that important?
Well college was an interesting decision to say the least. When I was in high school from the time I was in nineth grade I knew I wanted to go to be an Occupational Therapist. And that was the most important thing to me. And I did lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of, lots of volunteer hours and I went to the career counselor and I told her what I wanted to be so she gave me the list of the top ten OT programs in the country. And we sat down at the computer and she said “OK, so we’re gonna search for occupational therapy programs?” And I said yea and she goes “So let’s narrow the search a little bit, where are we looking?” “ I said anywhere but Pennsylvania. And Pennsylvania’s obviously where I’m from. So I took my college list home and my mom said “well don’t they offer OT in Pennsylvania?” and I said I’m sure they do but I don’t care. I’m not staying here. So I narrowed it down by ones that were too far away and schools I didn’t necessarily like the name of like Xavier. I was just like no. So I narrowed it down to East Carolina University which is in Greenville, North Carolina and Ohio State. And I applied to both and got accepted to early admission to both. And my dad brought me out here for my first visit. My dad and I don’t get along so I was like hiding in the car all weekend I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t even want to really look at it, but I did and it wasn’t bad, it was 5 hours away and I was like ehhh maybe. But all my cousins had gone to East Carolina so I was like yea lets go there. So I went down there with my mom and my step dad and we walked the campus and the campus was kind of smaller. I came from a really big high school. So small wasn’t necessarily my thing I like to blend in and not stick out. Then there was one thing that really got me, 2 things actually that really got me about East Carolina. Number one, the freshman dorms were not air conditioned. Seriously this is North Carolina and if you expect me live in a dorm that isn’t air conditioned then you’re on crack. Then they’d walk around and say “well one of the old the-aters is right over there and the new the-ater is right over here. And I looked at my mom and said I don’t think I can go to a school where they all walk around and say the-ater. And I’m serious, my mom made me make the decision by Christmas so she could buy me the appropriate college gear. And I chose Ohio state. And I came out here for the first time for orientation. We stayed in the towers and I just fell in love. Fell in love…and after going there for 4 years and being a part of the university and being a part of such an amazing history of a school… Ohio state has something almost magical about it. Ya know you come in as a naïve freshman and your kind of like “Oh this is where I chose to go to school because it was big, it was cheap, whatever.” I like the colors because college students pick weird things for the reasons they go to school and places. And you come out with so much pride and so much love for the university. You couldn’t pick a more beautiful school. I mean I’ve seen so many changes there since I went there and you couldn’t pick a place where “I mean just the other day seeing the president of the university on Youtube doing a dance from Glee. I mean you can find any other place like that in the country…I wouldn’t say I defined my college career I’d say my college career defined me. And I’m really really proud to be a buckeye.
Who had the greatest influence on you during your childhood?
My mom. Hands down. My mom was a single mom, my parents got divorced when I was probably five. I don’t even remember when they got divorced but, um my mom would work from five AM till five PM every day. She would go to work at five ‘o’ clock in the morning um this is ya know like when I was older. She would go to work at five ‘o’ clock in the morning, she would call me at 6: 30 to wake me up. I’d get up get ready, I’d wake my brother up and then my mom would leave work, come home at 7:30 to pick us up, take us to school, then go back to work. And she even, when we were in Jr. High and High school had a pager and each of us had a number so when we were done with whatever we had after school we’d page her, she’d come back and pick us up and take us home. She’d leave dinner sitting out. She cooked dinner every night. No fail, every night we had a hot dinner on the table um she’s probably one of the strongest people I’ve ever met. She’s still to this day just Absolutely amazes me.
What are you most passionate about?
There’s two things. My work and my kids. Um, My kids I’m most passionate about because they mean everything I, I wouldn’t have what I have today and I wouldn’t work as hard as I do if it wasn’t for them. And then I’ve wanted to do this job since I was 13. So, being able to graduate and do something that I’ve loved my entire life and then just getting my NDT certification, which is something I’ve wanted since I graduated college. I killed myself to get that certification so obviously I have to be passionate about it if I was willing to go through what I went through to get it.
What are you most proud of?
There’s a lot that I’m proud of, but I’d probably say my life. I’m proud of my life. I have a great husband, I have two awesome kids, I’m surrounded by a bunch of friends that are absolutely fantastic. I worked hard to get to where I am right now. I moved away from home when I was 18 and never went back. Um, I survived my parent’s divorce and subsequent hatred of each other and just kept pushing through and made it to where I am. So, I’m just proud to be me.
What do you want to accomplish in your life or have you already done so?
I’m getting there. Umm, obviously the NDT certification was a huge accomplishment for me that… that’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Umm I want to go to the lymphedema course still and be fully certified for lymphedema. I want to see my kids grow up. That’s a dream that I’m gonna spend years trying to accomplish and I wanna see them be happy and I wanna make sure that they have a good life and I wanna be able to take care of my husband because I don’t think his vision’s gonna last forever so that’s a dream and a goal too, is just to make sure Chris is okay. So yea.
Do you consider yourself a dreamer, visionary, or eccentric and why?
[Its] kinda funny because I just started back at my old position part time to help them out. And the restorative aid there, was there the other day, and we were good friends when I was the manager there… and she was like “ I was just telling somebody the other day, you were probably the most creative and inventive therapist that we’ve ever had and we miss you so much and we want you to come back. And you always came up with new ideas to help the patients. You always had the patients and mind and I hate the fact that we don’t have people who are willing to do that anymore.” So that made me feel really good but when it came to that I’d say that especially in that setting I was more of a visionary because I did things with my patients that nobody else thought to try or nobody else wanted to do because they didn’t think that they were going to make a difference. And the most important thing is especially with dementia patients is that you’re trying to make that difference that your trying to do something that nobody’s done before. And just because they are sick, they don’t have their memory, doesn’t mean they can’t get things done, and you want to improve their quality of life that’s the whole point of being a therapist. So sometimes you have to come up with new and creative and weird inventive ways to get it done so I would say visionary. Do you want me to tell the pink arrow stories so you have it on tape? Ok. I had a dementia patient I will never forget. She was the cutest little thing. She had white hair and classes, which pretty much describes every nursing home patient. Um and she was like five foot. And she was so confused but she was pleasantly confused. I always told people that was going to be me when I get old. I’m going to be the pleasantly confused one that you can point in any direction and say go. And you just cooperate. Check me into a nursing home now, I’m ready [laughs] but she was having the most difficult time finding the dining room. She could never find it. And she lived on the main hallway, and you had to go down the hall, turn left, go down that hall, turn right, go probably about 30 feet and turn left into the dining room and her’s was the second table. She could never find it, ever. So I came up with the idea of getting fluorescent pink poster board and cutting out like 50 arrows. The arrows were probably a good 6 inches long. But getting these arrows and I would go every morning five days a week and lay out those stupid arrows, lighting a path from her room to her seat in the dining room. And every morning I’d get it done breakfast was served at 7:30, I’d go down at 7:15 and have the arrows lined up and the staff knew not to touch my arrows because I might hurt someone [laughs] because we had worked so hard and so long on this. And every 1 1/2 – 2 weeks I’d take away 10 arrows. Because it was a learned behavior, she had to learn how to get there and she responded very well to visual cues. So I laid out those arrows every day and I did it for like 6 or 8 weeks but by the time we were done I had it down to 3 arrows just to help her with the turns and by the time I discharged her she could get all the way from her room to the dining room. She did periodically have a problem finding her actual chair but she could get there. And that was the most important thing. Someone was always in the dining room to point her to her seat but to get from her room to the dining room because it was an assisted living, the staff wasn’t there and they weren’t supposed to be there to help her find her seat but or to help her find the dining room. So it was really important for her to maintain a level of function to remain in an assisted living that she be able to do that. So helping her do that was probably one of the most important things I think I’ve ever done. I changed a person’s life, I got to keep them where they were. And that was really important to me.
Tami continues to live in Ohio with her husband, Chris, and her two kids Ally and Drew. She spends each day treating patients and always coming up with ways to help them and improve their function. She loves her career and would like to one day return to being a manager at a facility.