The Life Cycle of Mobility Devices
from a wheelchair to a cane.
When I broke my hip, my first stop after the ambulance was the hospital, where I stayed in bed for a week post-operation.
After that, I went to rehab, where I was at first confined to a bed or a chair, and eventually, as my strength grew, I graduated to a wheelchair.
The wheelchair life gave me some freedom, but certain rules and regulations tamped down that freedom… being accompanied to the bathroom, for instance.
I was in the rehab facility for four weeks. During that time I received physical therapy. One of the rehab specialists would come to my room and wheel me up to rehab. There, I could leave the wheelchair to use exercise machines, attempt to walk with a walker or practice climbing stairs. This was all very tenuous; walking with the walker was especially challenging for my leg with the broken hip.
On the second to last day in rehab, I was given a walker to use. This must have been a judgment call by the medical staff based on the slight growth of the strength of my leg.
So with one day of walker use under my belt, I headed to my home away from home — my sister’s single-level home. No nasty stairs to fall down.
I was sent home from rehab with a walker and a four-pronged cane. Obviously, the idea here was to use the walker as necessary and begin mixing in the cane at less challenging opportunities.
This happened over a month’s time. In the midst of that month, I attended a wedding with a walker and cane in tow, using the walker to “dance” to upbeat tunes from the deejay.
In my out-patient physical therapy, my therapist weaned me off the walker in favor of the cane.
More recently she suggested using a single-point cane rather than the four-pronged one.
It was easy finding one on Amazon, and yesterday I assembled it and we’re off to the races (with slow horses).
The next step will be leaving the cane behind but I think that’s about a month off.
My brother keeps telling me “No pain, No gain!” But the real path is “no pain” which means gaining the full use of my legs again. Walking, climbing, driving, and more.
I can’t wait.
