Julie R: The Rehabilitation needed for a patient with vertebrae damage

Even though sitting in a wheel chair might seem easier to live your life you have to keep your head on straight and work towards your goals so you can go back and lead your normal life, Should the patient be paralyzed the process for rehabilitation is lengthy and requires commitment. because Commitment from the patient its self is one of the only ways you can success because the therapist can only help you if you're willing to help yourself and Physical therapy and family support are two important things that help the patient in there success.

While visiting the physical therapist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital I hoped to find the rehabilitation process for a soldier who encountered vertebrae damage during the war and later was temporarily paralyzed from the surgery. Janice started off by saying how rare it is for this to happen and that they mainly see school aged children. Sam asked if they had seen people from the war but we learned that war victims are treated in three own war hospital. Janice ended up telling us that to help this partially paralyzed person it would take a long term commitment. The entire family has to be willing to commit and go through some type of stabilizing therapy. The hospital would then evaluate you after a while they might need to do another surgery to help stabilize the patient. Herniated disks sometimes occur and this can cause pressure with the fluid around the spinal cord which causes great pain and could temporally pause therapy until an MRI can be taken to see if therapy could do more damage than its worth. The patient would need to be in a rehab center seven days a week with a minimum of four hours of therapy per day. She then went onto explain to us how the insurance is working with therapy. There is something called the manage care system which is dominate and it’s important to work with your goals they have a sixty day benefit. This is the amount of time you have to reach your goal. If you reach your goal you’re allowed to stay and if you’re not successful with reaching your goal then you are released from the program or you can continue the program with no insurance.

Following the trip was over the knowledge that I hoped to gain was something to help my cousin but I ended up being a little confused. After hearing from the physiologist and the folks at dymax Stressed about there finding of new medicine, even if the disease or sickness was small and rare. Well what about my cousin where there was a 1 in 300,000 chance of something going wrong with the surgery. This is a little of his story, after the surgery he’s blood pressure rose sky high and he developed hematoma and they had to make a 10 inch incision down his back to clean out his vertebras when they stitched him back up he couldn’t feel anything below his neck. Slowly he has regained feeling but other trams have happened to set him back such as herniated disks, insurance and other medical dilemmas. So I guess the thing that bothered me the most was that the “doctors” are willing to finding new medication for patients of rare cases but what about someone that might not be able to be fixed with medication like my cousin Brian or a school mate Gardner? It’s very frustrating to watch your friends and family suffer.

Web Links:
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos080.htm
http://www.aota.org/
http://www.spine.org/articles/spinalfusion.cfm