Nancy did well in the physical therapy room today.\u00a0 She was helped from the wheel chair into a standing position and into a simple \u2018walker\u2019 and as she walked I followed with the chair.\u00a0 While upright she is supported by another person holding onto her \u201cgait belt.\u201d\u00a0 You may know this by another term, such as transfer belt or transfer aid, and it may (or may not have handles or loops for the assistant to grab.\u00a0 The ones used for Nancy are simple heavy canvas straps with a single buckle.\u00a0 Not fancy but they give a sturdy no-slack support.\u00a0 She did two rounds of the circuit (about 100 feet) during the first excursion.<\/p>\n
A person from a medical supply firm showed up with a half-dozen walkers of various styles.\u00a0 The PT crew inspected them and used another lady and Nancy to test them for sturdiness and height.\u00a0 Unlike the one Nancy has been using in the PT room, these were more fancy, with wheels (with hand brakes), and a seat.\u00a0 Most are gray or black but the model that seemed most suitable for Nancy had a dark red anodized aluminum frame.\u00a0 [Years ago when I was pretending to be an archer I assembled arrows both from wood and anodized aluminum.] \u00a0The process is described here:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Anodizing<\/a><\/p>\n Most folks are more likely to see this surface treatment on promotional items such as you will find by using Google Search, click on \u201cImages\u201d and cut-and-paste the following as a search phrase<\/p>\n [\u00a0 carabiners “anodized aluminum”\u00a0 ].<\/p>\n The \u2018walker man\u2019 had a bluetooth headset for his cell phone and talked with a person in their warehouse during his demonstration.\u00a0 Very convenient.\u00a0 It made me wonder why out in the facility the patients must still summon help by pressing a button on the end of a ten foot cord that then turns on a small light over the doorway in the hall \u2013 a light that might not be seen for several or several tens of minutes.\u00a0 Then an aid comes into the room, turns out the light, assesses the patient\u2019s need, and either helps or goes and finds someone, like a nurse, who can.\u00a0 This signaling method became practical about 1910.\u00a0 You do the math.<\/p>\n On another front the morning nurse did not have on her chart that it was allowed for Nancy to have the small carton of chocolate flavored drink with which she has been taking pills.\u00a0 Two of these a day has been standard procedure now for at least a week.\u00a0 Not this morning!\u00a0 A little later someone brought her a cup of vanilla ice cream.\u00a0 Then at supper an aid promised to bring her a scoop of strawberry ice cream.\u00a0 The person was interrupted and that scoop never showed up.\u00a0 The indignity of bureaucracy, procedure, and slow motion chaos is impressive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nancy did well in the physical therapy room today.\u00a0 She was helped from the wheel chair into a standing position and into a simple \u2018walker\u2019 and as she walked I followed with the chair.\u00a0 While upright she is supported by another person holding onto her \u201cgait belt.\u201d\u00a0 You may know this by another term, such … Continue reading “FRIDAY — the connected walker man”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p72iNf-56","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=316"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":320,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316\/revisions\/320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rocknponderosa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}