Thursday, May 18, 2017

Range Of Motion (ROM) for Spasms


I've addressed Range of Motion (ROM) for people in bed. The video specifically talks about the wheelchair.
 

I have recommended ROM exercises to immobile people. In the video, the woman and her caregiver/husband show how.

ROM exercises are done to keep the joint in working order. If some sort of cure is found in the future, the person with the disability will want to be able to use those joints again. This will not be possible if the joint ends up frozen, deformed, or in some other way to not be working properly.
 
For a growing child, it is very important to do these daily and to wear braces and splints as directed. The reason is that bones and joints grow. A spasmed muscle can pull on a growing bone. Deformities can form. (Make sure to always check braces and splints for proper working order and if it is causing any redness or chafing.)

Children grow. They need to wear 
appropriate braces/splints.
(This doesn't say, but appears to have been a fracture.) 

Now this is a personal experience.... At a long-term care in a hospital, there was an older woman who was Spanish only. She did not speak, but followed simple commands in Spanish from her husband. Maybe she had had a stroke. She used a wheel chair. She had developed a habit of wrapping a foot around a wheel chair leg. It looked odd and her foot was becoming odd-looking. 

One day the Physical Therapist came to observe her. She ended up getting passed over for a walking rehab program. The reason was her foot.

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

A stroke is just a type of brain injury.



If your records say "stroke" anywhere on them, you are in luck . "Stroke" happens To be one area in brain injury that is funded. My issue has been the other areas. (Only part of my brain is funded? No, all of me would, but my roommate in the hospital would get nothing. She was car accident only.)

Get this...my records don't state I even have a brain injury. They say something like "a hemorrhage from an arteriovenous malformation and a car accident earlier." Most medical people know an arteriovenous malformation is an AVM. It bleeds and is a stroke. A hemorrhage is a bleed. My records state the cerebellum. Umm...that's the brain.

I do have a brain injury and AVM stroke.  My records use words that have some family in a whirl.

If you have stroke written anywhere, you would qualify for stroke programs. I haven't kept up on these because my issue has been everyone else.

I don't care what your brain injury is, so if there is a free magazine called Stroke Connection, I'm going to tell you about it. So what if "Stroke" is in the title? A stroke is just a type of brain injury. http://strokeconnection.strokeassociation.org/Subscribe/

StrokeSmart is also free, http://www.strokesmart.org/. I haven't seen as many helpful articles, but it does have a lot of pertinent ads... that fuel your search for cheap knock-offs.

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A few years ago I was in Stroke Connection magazine, http://www.strokeassociation.org/idc/groups/stroke-public/@wcm/@hcm/@mag/documents/downloadable/ucm_463065.pdf . Just type in "9" for the page.