Saturday, November 04, 2006

More teaching

I guess I must be fully recovered from the teaching episode in June, because I am about to do this once more, on Saturday next. The class size has increased by 50%, to three, and Eric, an ex-student from the first class, will be on hand to take pictures for an upcoming treament manual I'm writing. This time there is a name for the technique, discussed in a previous entry, Dermoneuromodulation. So things are looking up.

It's still a free class though. I can't bring myself to charge any money for this work. It's still in such a rough state.

Attending this round will be an old classmate, well, two in fact, who have taken an interest in this work that has defined itself through my two hands and mind and all the various beast brains that have stored themselves in my skull in this particular physical configuration, this particular intersection of life with space-time around it which I call me..

One of them became an academic, who is responsible for an entire PT program in a major university, and whose forte and personal interests happen to lie in research design. She and I have plans to begin a study in the new year.

I know it will be a few more years before anything comes about, but I have high hopes it will be published one day, that it will be a small seed that can grow into something substantial, something that can move PT from the doomed track it is currently on, or that I perceive it to be on, toward something more hopeful, not just for PT itself but for all the nervous systems of all the patients we treat.

It will be a single subject research design. My colleague will handle all the paperwork and analysis. All I have to do is treat the patients, who won't really be patients - they will be "subjects." She will measure their pain before and after, and again several months down the road.

This is all a dream come true. Despite that November and seasonal affective disorder is upon me once again, I still couldn't be more happy with the way life is turning out.

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