ABI Anatomy and Assessments

Tuesday May 30th – More ABI stuff today. Each day we have a section on client assessment and interviewing and an anatomy section. Today during the assessment section we learned about the VAT (Vision Assessment and Training Tool) and how to use it. It is also called the Liddle Scanning Device. The VAT is a rectangular box 6 feet long and about 6 inches high. It has two rows of different colored lights spaced across the length of the box that can be turned on and off by the assessor. It is used to evaluate field of vision loss and to teach effective scanning techniques to people with visual field loss.

In the afternoon we had a lecture by a local speech pathologist who talked about speech impairments and therapies for an ABI client. She showed some interesting video of clients both at the beginning and end of their therapies.

We ended the day with more video, this time of some client assessments conducted by one of the ABI mobility instructors at GDV.

In my spare time I have been busy putting together the travel itinerary for my time after the course. I don’t know if I have mentioned it here in the blog yet, so if I have, sorry for the repetition. My husband Grant will be arriving next week just at the end of the course and we are traveling Australia for the next 3 weeks! Sue will join us on and off for different portions which should be really fun. The course ends on June 9th and on June 10th we catch a flight to Christchurch, New Zealand. We will travel across the south island to Greymouth, down the west coast, stopping to see one of the glaciers (Fox or Franz Josef), and Milford sound. We will go to Te Anau and see the glow worms and end up in Queenstown. From Queenstown we will fly to Sydney for 3 days before flying up to Cairns to see the Great Barrier Reef and the tropical rainforests. Then it’s off the “the red centre” to Ayers Rock or Uluru for a three day tour of “the rock”, the olgas and kings canyon ending up in Alice Springs. From Alice we head back to Melbourne where we have 4 days to see the Great Ocean Road and Phillip Island before returning home to the US. If anyone reading this knows these areas and has some advice for points of interest and places to stay I would love to hear them.

I’m getting excited for the travel part, but I’m also getting really excited to go home. It’s been a long time and I miss my family, friends, dogs, and my job.