A story from Living Rehab
Tom's granddaughter is 13, and she is in a lot of plays and musicals. He goes to as many as he can. For a long time that meant bringing a rollator into a room with a hundred people in it. Then working out what to do with it once he got there.
A rollator is not only a mobility device. It is a thing you have to park, and steer, and apologize around. It decides which seats you can take and how early you have to arrive. Getting free of it is not a small ambition. He also had a year and a half of ground behind him. He did not want to give any of it back.
Lee McComb, a PTA and Living Rehab's Director of Rehab, took the rollator away in stages. The cane came into sessions first, then it came everywhere. Neither move was automatic. Too early and Tom is unsafe, too late and he is held back for no reason. So during his rest breaks the two of them would sit down and open his OneStep data. It showed how his gait was changing between visits, which is what the timing had to be built on. Tom watched the same numbers, checking whether his left and right steps were evening out. He could see his step length, his stability, and his endurance on the sit-to-stand test.
WHAT CHANGED
Tom made a steady climb from the rollator to the cane. Lee says he is working toward using no device at all. He walks into his granddaughter's shows without the rollator now. He says watching his own numbers move is what does the most for his confidence.
He is not hoping to walk without the cane. He is planning on it.
“Ultimately I'll walk by myself without a cane.”
Tom Lynch, a patient at Living Rehab