Walking with walker

msprunk

Looking for someone to help my mom walk with a walker. She is at woodlake nursing home and they confine her to a wheelchair. We live 1 hour away. I want to keep her strength up.

terei

If your mom has dementia, it is unlikely she will ‘learn’ to use a walker. I had the same issue you have with your mother. We got a walker for her, put it in front of her + helped her use it, but as soon as we were not physically assisting her in doing it, she would simply turn + walk away from it + proceed to fall.

You can try, but that was my + others’ experience with trying to introduce a walker

SusanB-dil

Hi msprunk - Does her insurance maybe allow for some in-person assistance? MIL has allowance for 60 hrs/year. Wouldn't hurt to ask them, and start there.

Or it might be put-of-pocket, but maybe could check with a private nurse svc? Maybe a little while a day for two weeks or so? Then wait a bit, and then check on her again.

harshedbuzz

@msprunk

When you say "confine to a wheelchair" do you mean they are restraining her in some way? Or are they just using a wheelchair in order to avoid falls? It's illegal to actually restrain in most circumstances a SNF.

Fall prevention is a goal in care to not only avoid fractures that will cause a cascade of other issues often lead to rapid decline, they avoid ED trips for imaging and observation. PWD often need family bedside during these times.

If the facility has an in-house PT, could the doctor order her some one-on-one sessions to work on this? Alternately, you could hire a companion aide to come and spend part of the day working on using a walker. That said, unless a PWD has the muscle memory from long-term walker use, it highly unlikely that your mom will "learn" how to do this properly because of her poor working/short-term memory. Given anosognosia, she may not be convinced she needs a walker. We had this with dad— he thought he was just fine and resented the notion that he should use the walker. We didn't win that battle.

HB