Paraplegia

[Mika Freaka =)]

Im doing a project on it and any help would be appreciated.

 

I dont know anyone who is paraplegic, but ok heres the Q's:

 

1. Impact on their quality of life.

 

2. Housing and furnishing with regards to:

Entrances

Kitchens

Bathrooms and toilets

Bedrooms

 

any help would be appreciated!!!

[Lucy]

How can we (I) help??

[Mika Freaka =)]

How can we (I) help??

 

Well if you know a paraplegic person you can ask them how paraplegia affected their life.

 

And if possible think of ideas for how a house can be more suitable for a paraplegic person in those rooms.

 

eg. entrances - no steps

- ramps

- lower door handles etc

[ruxi]

mmm i don't think i could help, but you can try posting this on yahoo answers as well.

 

i did my project on cancer there and found many people willing to answer my questions

 

good luck!

[chickadee]

Im doing a project on it and any help would be appreciated.

 

I dont know anyone who is paraplegic, but ok heres the Q's:

 

1. Impact on their quality of life.

 

2. Housing and furnishing with regards to:

Entrances

Kitchens

Bathrooms and toilets

Bedrooms

 

any help would be appreciated!!!

 

When I was a student nurse I worked as a personal care attendant for a quadraplegic. He was in a purpose built place, but I'll try to remember how it was set up. And some of it is different between a quad and a para, but some of it would be the same.

 

It was all flat. No steps, no ramps, all built on the level. He had a remote controlled sliding door to get in, but I do remember the track for it was very flat, so he didn't have to roll over too many bumps. All doors were built wide to accomodate a wheelchair going through them. And not just a wheelchair being pushed by someone else, where the quad's arms are inside the space of the wheelchair. To push your own chair through means there has to be space for your arms down the sides of the chair too.

 

He was a reasonably low quad (ie the break was fairly low down the spine), so he still had some arm movement. He couldn't cook or wash up, but he could feed himself and the kitchen benches were all low so that he could sit at them in his wheelchair. There were no high wall cupboards, and he had a small fridge that had a fairly low door, so he could manage to get into the fridge and grab a drink for himself if there was no-one there.

 

His bathroom and toilet were all in the one large room. The toilet had to be low to accomodate a wheeled commode, and the shower was an open space with a slightly sloping floor to allow for drainage, but there was nothing that had to be stepped over or that you had to try and get the commode chair over. He couldn't shower himself so that was one of my jobs. He really only used the sink for cleaning his teeth, but I think it was lowered as well. He had gloves that he wore for pushing his wheelchair around and they had like a little pouchy bit where he could stick attachments in to give himself more independence. Like a special toothbrush attachment thing, and special cutlery.

 

His bedroom really could have been bigger. It had a double bed water bed in it. The water bed was to help prevent pressure sores considering that he couldn't roll over in bed and didn't have anyone come in through the night to turn him. And it worked surprisingly well. The reason I say his bedroom could have been bigger was because of the hoist. It was a bugger to maneuvre it around his bed, but you couldn't get him out of bed without it.

If I remember correctly, he had some kind of buzzer/alarm thing in the head of his bed, so that if he ran into trouble in the night he could contact someone. I don't recall how it worked though.

A lot of paras though develop very strong upper chest and arm muscles and are able to move themselves around, in and out of bed etc, with a slide board on their chair and placed under their hip. I think some of them also have bedsticks. I can't remember what their proper name is, but they are shaped like the letter L. The short horizontal part gets slipped under the mattress, where the weight of the mattress keeps it in place. The long vertical part sticks up and people use it to pull themselves into a sitting position. Some people also have a bed cradle in their bed to keep the weight of the bedclothes off their toes/feet. Because they can't move their feet and toes around, they can't reposition them so that the same part of the foot/toe isn't taking all the weight. Also, because they can't feel their feet they can't tell when damage is being done. You might think it strange that bedclothes could damage people's feet but when it's all night and it's repeated night after night, people can actually get pressure sores from the weight of the bedclothes. Unless they (or someone else) inspects their toes, they don't always know there is a problem and a simple wound can turn nasty. Plus, the circulation to the feet is impaired and this impacts on wound healing. They don't just heal like you or I.

 

I've got so much more to say!

[chickadee]

Because he couldn't get up to go to the toilet overnight and no longer had bladder control, he had to have a urinary drainage device in place. Some people have indwelling catheters. My quad had a different arrangement. I won't go into details, but overnight he had a large capacity bottle attached for drainage and in the day he had a small "bladder" strapped to his leg that he could empty himself. To be honest, I've no idea how he managed it. But a para has the use of his hands so that wouldn't be such an issue.

 

Because a quad is not "walking around", their bowel function tends to suffer. They don't tend to have accidents though, it's usually more that they suffer from constipation and need intervention (ie suppositories etc) to pass a bowel motion. My quad had a routine. Three days a week were bowel care days and you had to get there earlier to allow the suppositories time to work.

 

One of the biggest issues is the loss of independence and along with it, the loss of control. Depending on what your circumstances are (ie living alone, living with a family etc) you lose differing degrees of control over stuff you never thought of. Because the guy I worked for lived by himself, he had people coming in every day to get him up and put him to bed. That meant that a little thing like wanting to stay up a bit longer to watch something on telly becomes more of an issue. The person coming to put you to bed has a scheduled time they are booked to arrive. You can ring them and ask them to come later if you really want to, but considering it can take an hour to put someone to bed, it's not like you can decide to stay up till 2 in the morning and have the person come then. That loss of control can be very frustrating.

 

 

I could say heaps more, but I might leave it there for the moment, cos I'm not sure if I'm really answering your questions...

[Mika Freaka =)]

mmm i don't think i could help, but you can try posting this on yahoo answers as well.

 

i did my project on cancer there and found many people willing to answer my questions

 

good luck!

 

Thank you il try that:wink2:

 

@ chickadee: Thank you, wow wow, that is a lot of useful information!!! Its really gonna help thank you so so much. I will PM if i find more questions that needs to be asked if you dont mind?

 

Thank you again!