Once your doctor gets all of the information they need, then they can begin developing a treatment plan. While this plan may center occupational therapy, also keep in mind that this can include assistive devices as well.
Assembling a toolkit of assistive devices through your house, can make your daily activities much easier.
Nowadays there are devices that can help in any realm of your life. There are devices that assist in the kitchen, bathroom, car, and other areas of your life. In terms of occupational therapy, this plan will focus on improving your strength. This doesn’t necessarily mean lifting weights!
A lot of physical therapies have patients work against body weight or resistance to increase their strength. Your occupational therapist will most likely have you doing different exercises with a cable machine or resistance bands to slowly strengthen your muscles.
Additionally, they will likely give you exercises to do at home to keep up this strength outside of the therapy facility.
Although these movements might not exactly mirror your daily activities, you may notice that daily activities become easier due to your strengthened muscles. It’s also important to keep in mind that these exercises may hurt or your muscles may become sore. While pain is not okay, soreness is to be expected when working muscles consistently.
If any exercise makes you uncomfortable or is painful, immediately talk to your occupational therapist about alternatives you can do.
Talk to your doctor at your next appointment about how you can work together to create a therapy plan. Be ready with symptoms you are suffering from and how they are impacting your daily life. Be ready to put in the work to get you stronger and back to a more normal life!