Wednesday, June 30, 2010

The Vitaglide has arrived!

The long awaited vitaglide has finally arrived to Beth Abraham! It's still waiting on the pallet to be evaluated and assembled, but hopefully by next week it will be in full swing. I hope it will be utilized as negotiated: that all residents whether on or off therapy can use the machine as long as they have medical clearance.

Quadriplegics are quickly cut off from therapy and do not get the cardiovascular or physical training they need to maintain pushing off the wheelchair. The Vitaglide does this while it enables all users, even those with limited hand function, to use the machine with minimal to no assistance!

Beth Abraham therapists have much to learn in the realm of transferring. This is why many quadriplegics fail to get any mat time to practice trunk and balance control, bed mobility. I hope to maybe bring in someone to do an inservice in this arena.

ADLs are also put on the back burner: cathing, bowel programs, dressing. But let's deal with one thing at a time!

There's other exciting things going on for the SCI support group this summer. We've been invited to this years health fair along with NYCSCIA--more info to come! We've also been having individual meetings with our coordinator, Dan Tratt, to discuss our goals and how to meet them. Since I did so well with the vitaglide proposal, I decided to take an online course in grant writing. So far it's going well and I look forward to writing proposals for Wheels of Progress and support the work they do.