LIVING WITH A DISABILITY BY JERRY LEVINSON
I am told the use of the STS machine is therapeutic. So I will persevere.
Like many other people with multiple sclerosis (MS), I use the services of a physical therapist (“PT”) to keep what’s still moving, moving. The MS Society touts physical therapy as an essential part of an MS Rehabilitation program. These programs focus on improving all levels of function that may have been negatively affected or lost (following a relapse or exacerbation in a person’s MS, for example) and maintaining optimal function over the course of the disease. Rehabilitation is designed to maximize the person’s participation in everyday life, and physical therapy is a vital part of a rehab program.
My PT is a young man named Dean who works for Fox Rehabilitation, headquartered in Cherry Hill, NJ. Fox is a private practice of full-time physical, occupational and speech therapists providing care and therapy to patients –
whether in a house, apartment, senior living community, adult medical day care, or outpatient clinic. Unlike the
physical therapy that I received in California, which required me to travel to a hospital twice a week, Fox provides geriatric house calls, and Dean either comes to my home twice a week or meets me and my wife at the clubhouse here in the Jackson NJ Retiree Shangri La, where my wife and Dean help me use the exercise equipment.
THE “SIT TO STAND” MACHINE
One of Dean’s other clients owned what is called a “Sit-to-Stand” (“STS”) machine, an expensive piece of hardware that uses hydraulics to allow a disabled individual who cannot walk to stand nearly upright. The client planned to move and could not take the machine with him, so he asked Dean if one of his other clients could use it. Dean asked me and I jumped at the idea.
The STS Machine works by first affixing a strap-like sling to the user’s lower back and another sling beneath the user’s buttocks. Eyelets at the other end of both slings are then attached to one of three bolt-like appendages connected to each arm of the gizmo. The user’s feet are placed in specific areas on the bottom plate of the contraption, and his or her knees are placed in contoured plastic guards that face the user’s legs as he or she prepares to stand. The hydraulic motor is engaged and the user is then slowly placed in an upright position, the slings and knee guards working to force the user to stand and support his full weight (a person’s legs must be capable of supporting his full weight as a prerequisite to using the STS Machine). As the user slowly stands, the eyelets on the ends of the slings are then replaced on other bolt-like appendages, forcing the user to stand more and more erect.
LIKE MEDIEVAL TORTURE
This is about the best way I can describe my experience using the STS machine. It reminded me of the “Iron Maiden,” popular among medieval torturers and, I believe, among those similarly occupied during the Inquisition. The Iron Maiden was a bodysized sarcophagus with a hinged door lined with sharp spikes. Once a person was placed
in it and the door was closed, they were guaranteed to have a real bad day. The main difference between the Iron Maiden and the STS machine: the STS machine didn’t have impaling spikes. But to describe my 15 minutes in and on the STS machine as uncomfortable would be a gross understatement. It sort of felt the way a fly that’s caught between a screen and the glass pane of a window must feel. But I am told the use of the machine is therapeutic. So I will persevere.•
LIVING WITH A DISABILITY
This column has a simple purpose, but a difficult goal: discuss issues that affect the lives, well being and state of mind of those who must live and cope with a disability and do so in a humorous way whenever possible. This isn’t an
easy thing to do, since there’s certainly nothing funny or humorous about being disabled, or in the difficulties and obstacles that those with chronic disabilities encounter daily. However, I’ve personally found that humor has to a great extent helped me cope with my disability (I’ve had Multiple Sclerosis for 45 years and use a wheelchair), and I hope this column helps others in the disability community do so as well.
