When a loved one or friend is recovering from an injury or surgery, physical therapy is often necessary. Physical therapy is something we offer here at Back and Body Pain Relief in Springfield and we have seen many patients over the years. Moreover, we not only help and treat the patient, but we also speak with those family members or friends who help them at home. The support network that a patient has is every bit as important as the surgery and treatment that follows.
Getting over serious injury or surgery does take time and does take a great deal of effort, so the support system has to be there and it’s critical those who are taking the time and effort to help fully understand how to help.
We’ve obviously spoken to many people over the years and the advice we give is often the same. Here’s five things we often suggest:0
- Often patients do get tired from their physical therapy sessions with us. This is normal and good because we want to get you working and functioning properly. Just like training for a marathon, all the work in training is also tiring. But it’s necessary. So a simple thing you as the helper can do is to drive the patient to and from their therapy session. It may sound simple, but it can take a weight off the patient’s shoulders.
- Listen to the patient. It may be easy to give your advice or opinion, but unless you are trained that advice may not be helpful. Moreover the patient is focused on recovering and may find the advice annoying. Instead, listen to the patient, maybe make notes so that when you take them to their next therapy session, you can provide that information to us that may help recovery.
- When you bring them in, learn from us. We encourage you to watch and see how we help the patient in therapy and we can help you help them in this regard when they do their exercises at home.
- Offer to do the errands that the patient really can’t cope with. Things like cooking, picking kids up from school, the laundry and anything that could be too physical for them.
- Finally, be nice and maybe surprise them with a gift every now and again or if they are able, a trip out somewhere, or even just an evening of binge watching a favorite tv show.
Recovery from injury or surgery can be hard work, but as much burden as you can relieve the patient, the better.
Above all, be patient with the patient. They will be setting all their energies to recovery.
