INFORMATION FOR CAREGIVERS
A mobility impairment, whether caused by spinal cord injury or disability, alters the life of the caregiver almost as much as the affected person.
To maintain good soft tissue health and avoid pressure sores the caregiver has to be there to lift, turn, move or reposition the disabled person in a timely manner. This results in the caregiver having very little time for anything else whether the disabled person is in the chair or bed.
Sometimes the caregiver cannot be there in a timely manner to do the required work. Our seating system never gets tired, never forgets and is actually does a far better job of preventing pressure sores, while the caregiver gets some needed rest. As age progresses the caregiver task grows increasing more difficult because older people lose the ability to lift and tug as they did when they were younger. Many older caregivers have found our systems to be the best thing ever to help with the care load ever!
With the "Active Massage" Seating System, with our patented CCPM Technology, the movement of the cushion assures good soft tissue health, the necessity for lifting and repositioning is virtually eliminated, freeing the caregiver of much of the workload.
One of our customers, Jim Ritter, is the same level of SCI as Christopher Reeves. Jim's life was miserable for years. He suffered reoccurring pressure sores, skin grafts, bone infection, and many months of hospitalizations. Each time the doctors would get Jim healed up, they put him back in his chair on a non-moving static cushion, and the pressure sores quickly returned to plague him.
Jim spends 12 to 16 hours a day in his chair on the "Active Massage" Seating system. Jim is active with good soft tissue health. Jim got on our cushion seven weeks after a flap surgery four years ago and has been pressure sore free ever since! He is a lay minister and travels around the country with his wife, Sandy, as his only caregiver.
"PREVENTION RATHER THAN CURE"
We believe the big difference between Jim's health and the tragic death of
Christopher Reeves, from a pressure sore becoming infected, is Jim's use of an Seating Systems.
Our experience with our clients has proven you should not wait until you get a pressure sore to start thinking "prevention rather than cure"! You can easily get pressure sores from simply going to sleep in your chair and not moving for an hour or more.
The are several hundred "Active Massage" users who are healthy, active, up and about, no longer suffering from pressure sores. You too can live without the threat of soft tissue breakdown with an "Active Massage" Seating System.
When you are sitting on a 'static' cushion that does not move under or do anything to promote circulation in the soft tissues under seating pressure, you are dependent on remembering to move or having a caregiver do the moving or repositioning. The best "static" cushions depend on distributing the load so that no area is under high pressure. The fact that so many people develop sores on even the best of the static cushions is proof that they are not adequate pressure sore prevention. We have noted that many people get their first pressure sores after they go to a self-propelled chair and do not get the movement they formerly had in the manual chair. This is even more proof that movement is what is needed to prevent pressure sores.
Our seating systems have proven that they can keep even the most severely disabled free from soft tissue distress. Our customers are able to go more, do more and enjoy life more. They and their caregivers enjoy far more freedom plus a greatly reduced caregiver workload while secure in their protection from tissue breakdown.
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