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Switched from a walker to a gait belt for my mom's transfers and I wish I'd done it 8 months ago
My mom had a stroke in March and came home in April, and for the first several months I was using her walker for every single transfer from the bed to the chair. Her PT at the rehab place in Mesa kept saying the walker was for walking, not for pulling her up, but I didn't listen because it seemed to work fine. Then one Tuesday she grabbed the walker wrong and it tipped, and we both almost went down on the tile. The PT brought over a gait belt the next week and showed me how to stand behind her with my knees bent, and honestly the difference was night and day. With the belt I have something solid to hold and she has something to push against, and my lower back stopped hurting after about 10 days. If you're caring for someone at home, has anyone else made this switch, or did your therapist have to nag you too?
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grayb6420d ago
The part about the walker tipping on the tile made my stomach drop. My dad did the exact same thing with my grandma and she went down hard on her hip, ended up in the hospital for a week. Nobody ever told us the walker was just for walking, her doctor never said a word about it. We finally got a gait belt from her home health nurse and it was like a whole different world. That PT in Mesa sounds like she knew what she was doing, wish we'd had someone like that.
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