3DPO Celebrates .... A Lot of Holidays to Celebrate!

3DPO really enjoyed the Winter Olympics. It started with the pageantry of the Opening Ceremonies.  Sometimes athletes would wrap themselves up in the flag of their country like a blanket, and everyone would cheer!  3DPO wondered what that felt like, so Jed Newhardt, CPO and Art Ross, Fabrication Tech found some flag like material that was for laminations so 3DPO could try it.  He considered there were actually holidays for celebrating with the flag.

There were holidays almost every month - with the exception of August, which didn't seem to have any!  He understood some holidays were to recognize historical figures.  Martin Luther King Day (1/15/2018) and Presidents Day (2/19/2018) did that.  There were other days about people - Columbus Day (10/8/2018) and Valentine's Day (2/14/2018). St. Patrick's Day (3/17/2018) was quite exciting to him as everyone and everything was green.  3DPO was always prepared, so no one could pinch him for not wearing green!

There were religious observances: Christmas Day (12/25/2018), Hanukkah (begins 12/2/2018), Passover (begins 3/30/2018), Easter (4/1/2018), Ramadan (begins 5/15/18), and surprisingly, Halloween (10/31/2018).  He knew there were many others, so he Googled "religious holidays" and found a list.  He had helped Heather Iman at the Cumberland office decorate for Christmas - but there were so many different celebrations to read about!  

Mardi Gras (2/13/18), the day before Ash Wednesday, seemed to be an enormous party day - specifically in New Orleans.  Nina Bondre, CPO and Kelsey Kasten, CPO had attended a P&O symposium in New Orleans that week and probably could tell him more about that.  "Mardi Gras" is French for "Fat Tuesday" and many people wore bead necklaces and masks as part of the celebration. He had a mask like that.

He thought about the nice notices that Nancy Lee, System Administrator, created to post on the Dankmeyer website and Facebook and the display board at the Linthicum office.  These included Mother's Day (5/13/2018) and Father's Day (6/17/2018).  Labor Day (9/3/2018) was a another day that offices were closed.  Thanksgiving (11/22/2018), which some people called Turkey Day, was a time Dankmeyer was closed for TWO days.

Days related to the change of time and seasons were on the calendar.  There was one called Groundhog Day (2/2/2018) when a groundhog predicts how much longer winter will last.  Imagine that! The biggest "time" day was New Year's Day - the first day of the year.  That was a day off from work, as the night before was marked with a lot of parties and particularly fireworks at midnight keeping everyone up late. 

Fireworks seemed to figure prominently on the Fourth of July.  Parades, costumes, fireworks, special foods - and definitely the flag, were all a big part of the day that marked the day the USA was born!  Flag Day (6/14/2018) was all about the flag itself. Other solemn days such as Memorial Day (5/28/2018), Veterans Day (11/11/2018), Armed Services Day (5/19/2018) and Pearl Harbor Day (12/7/2018) had parades and the flag was displayed in many different ways.

He knew people celebrated their own special days not on his printed calendar. One was Major League Baseball Opening Day - because everyone at Dankmeyer was a Baltimore Orioles fan, and they would probably dress up to support the team.  That was 3/29/2018 this year - the earliest Opening Day ever.  National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day was going to be 5/15/2018  and even more important than that was Take Your Dog to Work Day on 6/23/2018.  Jamie Dean, Patient Services Representative was sure to bring 3DPO's and Digit's friend Fathom, a therapy dog, to Dankmeyer on that day. Fathom visited the office every third Friday of the month.

There were also "snow days", which were pretty random and weather related, when children got a holiday from school.  And of course, everyone had their personal holiday just for them and that was their Birth Day!  That one had decorations, cake, presents and mini-fireworks!  Well, candles anyway.  Last, but not least, 3DPO considered the upcoming 4/1/2018 - April Fool's Day.  That was not really a holiday - no one was closed and there weren't parades or flags, or special food or people or even a historical event.  It was just a day about playing tricks on people.  3DPO thought he had some time to plan a trick he could play on Dankmeyer people.  They knew him so well, but he might be able to get away with coming to work disguised as someone else so they wouldn't recognize him.  This would require careful consideration, but he thought it might work!

 

 

 

3DPO Gets Fit

After the first of the new year, a group of Dankmeyer employees decided to get together and work out a fitness plan.  They divided into teams and devised a plan to report their progress weekly, with weigh-ins and exercise plans.  They figured that by working in teams, they could encourage each other and have a little "healthy" competition.  They also went back to joining in the Dankmeyer Plank Challenge, where at intervals thought the day, employees who could take a tiny break would gather and do some planks.  He observed the first time and thought it looked like fun, so he joined in! It was hard work.

After some consideration, he asked if he could spend some time rotating through the teams just to see what form the different exercise and nutrition plans were taking.  He had observed that this tradition of focusing on fitness at the new year seemed to be pretty common, and if his friends and co-workers were going to do it, he wanted to cheer them on.

He first was invited to go on a hike with Adrienne Castle, Patient Services Coordinator.  Adrienne likes to hike with her family and so they set out to explore Patapsco State Park. It was a little chilly and damp, but they made their way along some old railroad tracks and got some good steps logged for Adrienne.  Adrienne explained that at other times of year when the weather was more pleasant the hiking trails would be more crowded AND there would maybe be some mosquitos.

Also on Adrienne's team was Barbara Delorenzo, Director of Accounting.  Barbara took 3DPO along to her gym one morning.  There he got a good look at all of the devices that people used to work up a sweat (or so it seemed to him.) There were treadmills and elliptical machines, and rowing machines and bicycles.  Everyone seemed to be enjoying their work, and there was a lot of good music.  Barbara was kind enough to supply him with some of his own size weights, and then told him what the proper form was to use them.  Barbara also swims, but on this day they did not go into the pool.

Jamie Dean, Patient Services Representative, was on a different team.  She invited him to visit her at home one evening where she could introduce him to some yoga. This activity was good to stretch the muscles and improve flexibility and coordination and balance.  It did seem to require some concentration.  You did your work on a mat to provide a comfortable surface to work on, and sometimes you stood (sometimes on one leg), and sometimes sat, sometimes kneeled and Jamie twisted her body around in all kinds of ways that 3DPO couldn't do, or at least imagine himself doing.  She also did some balancing exercises, and had a jumprope.  Using that jumprope could really get her heart rate going!

Then 3DPO learned that Becky Snell, Director of IT and Marketing, had recently been out of town to run in some races and brought home some hard earned medals.  Her favorite form of exercise was running, using a walk/run interval method.  She was recovering from some hard races and so was limiting her recovery exercise to some walking and stretching but promised to have him over next month when she started training again.  He had seen runners and walkers and wheelchair participants at a run last year when he and Digit had gone to an event with some Dankmeyer clinicians, so he had a good idea what she had been up to.

Each team had team members working on nutrition.  Abi Ostrander, Patient Services Representative, was having him over for the weekend so he could learn about nutrition and food preparation.  Abi liked to prepare meals in advance to make it easy to bring healthy and nutritious meals for lunch at work.  As soon as he gets back, he will post pictures from that experience.

Everyone seemed devoted to helping their teammates succeed in reaching their goals.  It was very nice to know that Becky and her teammate Heather Iman, Patient Services Representative at the Cumberland office (3DPO had just spent some time in that office, so her knew Heather well), gave each other a pep talk regularly on the phone.  Since they worked in different offices they didn't see each other every day, but still cheered each other on.  In fact, while all the different teams teased each other in good nature about their progress, they all wanted everyone to succeed!  And teamwork is good for everyone!

 

3DPO and a Cumberland Office Holiday

3DPO has continued to enjoy his time at the Cumberland office.  Since he last wrote about helping Heather Iman get the office extra specially clean for the holidays, he helped her decorate.  He found himself strangely fascinated with Santa's hat.  Even though Santa did not look particularly amused, 3DPO wore it a lot, along with his new bright yellow work pants.  He did think that perhaps if his pants were red, he would look more holiday like, and perhaps even mistaken for an elf!  As long as no one thought he was that green guy the Grinch, it would be ok.  

Once the office was all decorated, though, he did have to get serious and do some work with Mark Treasure in the shop.  3DPO got some practice mixing up plaster so that he could help Mark modify a cast.  He had to mix it up in small batches, but they used that cupful to add some plaster in some different areas to build up the cast.  After it was dry, Mark showed him how to smooth and shape the rough plaster. It had to be just right so that it could be laminated.  

Another thing he learned to do was to use the sewing machine to sew some velcro straps for an orthosis.  He learned to thread the sewing machine and once the velcro was measured and cut he could do the sewing.  Though, he did have a tendency to get caught up in the velcro and had to be rescued once.  He knew that practice makes perfect, and he did want his work to be perfect.  After all, he wanted to be on the Nice List!  

A few evenings after work, he got with friends and watched some TV and sang some holiday songs.  Mark, who plays the guitar, accompanied him several times.  Digit even had a play date with a friend and they watched some classic holiday animated shows.  3DPO thought perhaps his time in the western Maryland mountains had been just about perfect, if only he could see some snow.....

3DPO Cleans up in Cumberland

After spending so much time at the Baltimore (Linthicum) office, and attending a number of Coffee with Dankmeyer functions at the Sinai office, Heather Iman, Cumberland's Patient Services Representative, asked if 3DPO could make a trip there to lend her a helping hand!  As we know, 3DPO never passes up an opportunity to travel.  Heather warned him that they would be spending some time doing a little extra housecleaning before she decorates the office for the holidays. Mark Treasure, Cumberland's Prosthetist Orthotist, promised that he would give 3DPO a chance to work in the shop, and they both wanted him to meet some patients while he was there.  With that in mind, he made the trip from Baltimore to Cumberland in Western Maryland.

The Cumberland office is the oldest of the offices outside of Baltimore.  Nestled in a valley in the Appalachian Mountains, Cumberland was founded in 1787, and built on the site of the old Fort Cumberland.  After Charles Herbert “Herb” Dankmeyer started Dankmeyer in 1954, doctors and therapists in Cumberland asked him to service patients in Cumberland at the hospital there.  He would take everything back to Baltimore for completion, because there was no local Orthotics & Prosthetics facility.  If patients didn’t see Herb, they would have to travel to Pittsburgh or Baltimore for their needs.  Dankmeyer started seeing patients in rental space instead of the hospital, and in 1980 purchased a former veterinary office building in La Vale on National Highway.  This is where 3DPO was headed.

Heather was ready for him and made him feel welcome on his first visit.  Cleaning supplies were already organized and after a brief tour they set about putting an extra shine on the office space.  3DPO had experience cleaning the shop in the Baltimore office, so he knew what to do.  They worked together and took a coffee break and then Heather showed him some of the office equipment she uses - answering the phone, signing in patients, and faxing paperwork.  Before long it was time for lunch and they went out to grab something quick since Heather hadn't brought her lunch that day.  Mark kept an eye on the phones while they were out.  

After lunch, 3DPO headed to the fabrication area to do some restocking and to see what Mark was doing.  Mark was working on a cast, and 3DPO wanted to help.  Mark thought it best for him to observe first, and he could take a more active role when he had more experience.  After all, that is what an intern does, right?  There is a lot of equipment to try his hand at - sewing on velcro, putting in rivets, tagging devices, some trimming and filing and using plaster and goop (officially known as resin.)  

He was happy to agree to hang around for an extended visit so that he could be more directly involved in hands on fabrication techniques - though perhaps he took that a little too literally.  After all, Halloween was over and no one was going to mistake him for a bat.  He was much too green.  Mark promised that they would take more pictures and he and 3DPO could write a followup blog, that would be both educational and entertaining.

Over the next several days, 3DPO was very fortunate to have his picture taken with several willing patients, some of whom had written patient stories for the website.  He felt like a real celebrity.  

3DPO Intern Checks Out Check In

Coming in the front door for the first time into a medical facility can be very intimidating, particularly to someone who is barely taller than the threshold.  Despite this, when Dankmeyer intern 3DPO took his first self guided tour of the Dankmeyer Linthicum office front entrance and waiting area, he was impressed by how easy it was to negotiate the entrance.  Both the outer and inner doors have assist devices to make it easy if a visitor is in a wheelchair to get in and out. With his small stature and short stride, he thought it might take a moment to be noticed,  but no sooner was he inside the door in the waiting area, than he was greeted by the smiling face of Jamie Dean, Patient Services Representative, at the check in window.

He had hoped to surprise whoever was at the front desk, actually.  He was exploring this space early morning one day a week before Halloween, before anyone else had arrived.  As soon as he was inside, he put on his Halloween disguise - a Mardi Gras mask! But, she recognized him right away (what gave him away, he wondered?) and greeted him by name.  She was eager to show him how the check in process worked.  With some assistance from Jamie, he was able to view the sign in sheet (with HIPAA protections), and she let him test the electronic signature pad. It wasn't often he was asked for his autograph. She told him she was very willing to come out into the waiting area to assist anyone who needed extra help with either of these functions.

If he had been an actual patient, instead of an intern exploring his workplace, his practitioner would have been told he was there and then he could have taken a seat for a brief wait before going back to a patient room. Jamie advised that while they are waiting, patients are asked to review their important information for accuracy.  New patients have the opportunity to get this paperwork from the website before their first visit. They can get the form to fill out and bring with them.  (Click here to see the form.)

He did note a play area for children, where he would have felt very at home.  He could have ridden the train or colored a picture that would be displayed in the foyer.  There was also some interesting reading material and a mesmerizing display board with all kinds of fun facts! (Most of his coworkers don't know that he secretly loves trivia games.) And, as it was the week before Halloween, there was even a contest for patients to guess how many candy corns were in a jar!

On that day, Jamie was the one to greet him at check in.  Sometimes, it is Abi Ostrander manning the front desk. Jamie and Abi are both part of the Patient Services team.  As Patient Representatives, they work very hard to make the visitor feel welcome and comfortable on every visit. He knows that visitors can expect the same welcome and procedure at the Easton office, where Moranda Ostrander is at check in (yes - Abi's sister), or Cumberland and Heather Iman, or the Sinai Hospital office where Jeanne Smith is on duty.  (For information on each Dankmeyer location, you can visit the Locations page on the website.)

Since Jamie needed to turn her attention to the first patient for the day, it was time for him to wrap up his investigation and check in with his supervisor for his first assignment. He waved to Jamie, and smiled at the patient, who smiled back!  Since smiling faces seem to be the norm around here, 3DPO felt very much at home - as this is his natural expression.  He was excited to see what other discoveries were waiting for him that day.